ICC council confronts challenges, frustrations (fwd)

[Phil Cash-Cash]

January 23, 2004

ICC council confronts challenges, frustrations

Four national units talk about their daunting goals at Iqaluit gathering

JANE GEORGE
http://www.nunatsiaq.com/news/nunavut/40123_04.html

Immense distances, large problems, poor infrastructure, limited power,
little cash, big dreams and high expectations.

When the executive council of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference met in
Iqaluit this week, the organization representing Inuit in Canada,
Greenland, Alaska and Russia grappled with the same challenges that
confront Inuit organizations and governments throughout the circumpolar
world.

Until this week, when ICC's executive council inaugurated an office
provided by Nunavut's Department of Executive and Intergovernmental
Affairs, ICC couldn't find any reasonably-priced space in Iqaluit.

At least, ICC's president, Sheila Watt-Cloutier, now has a place to work
with her new assistant, Miali Coley, who is also head of ICC's youth
council.

And with help from offices in Ottawa and the other ICC member nations,
the ICC will continue work in five priority areas: economic
development, culture, language and communications, internal operations,
human rights and sustainable development.
ICC President Sheila Watt-Cloutier and Aqqaluk Lynge, the head of ICC
Greenland. Lynge reported on the frustrations he's faced in trying to
get compensation for the relocated Inuit of Thule.

Over the past year, ICC has received international attention for its
stand on global warming, POPs (persistent organic pollutants such as
PCBs), and human rights, and continued its work in such organizations
as the Arctic Council and the United Nations.

However, as they met for three days in Iqaluit, ICC executives
underlined their frustration in achieving all their goals.

In Canada, the vexing matters include finding ways to provide leadership
and visibility while doing justice to the pressing global issues of
climate change and contaminant pollution.

In Greenland, it's finding the energy to pursue their fight for the
Thule Inuit who were relocated to Qaanaaq in 1953, while continuing
international human rights work. ICC Greenland suffered a big blow in
the Danish Supreme Court last November when they lost an appeal for
more compensation and rights.

"The power is in the attempt when you defend Inuit rights,"
Watt-Cloutier said in consoling ICC Greenland's president, Aqqaluk
Lynge, about the efforts ICC Greenland, and, in particular, Lynge, have
made on behalf of the Inughuit relocatees.

In Alaska, the challenge is rallying the Inupiat and Yupik communities,
and their development corporations, to see the relevance of ICC when
they're already heavily involved in the powerful Alaskan Federation of
Natives and over-burdened with local responsibilities.

"One of the challenges we face is just to have a board meeting," said
Chuck Greene, ICC Alaska's president.

However, a board meeting must review and formally approve a resolution
in favour of holding the next ICC general assembly, scheduled for June,
2006, in Barrow, Alaska.

Greene and Alaskan ICC executive Mic hael Pederson said ICC Alaska plans
more education about ICC's role and purpose.

"You are really a strong foothold for us, and we can't permit it to
waver," Duane Smith, ICC Canada's president, told the Alaskans.

In Russia, survival is the main obstacle that ICC must overcome. ICC
Chukotka has to find something just to hang on to in a region plagued
by high unemployment, alcoholism, poor communication and cultural
disinterest.

That's not to say that ICC isn't trying hard.

ICC Chukotka is cooperating with the local association for sobriety.
Last December, a store opened in the city Anadyr to sell ivory
products, under a joint Canadian-Russian project called "Marketing
modern arts and crafts of Chukotka's indigenous peoples."

The store's opening was "a miracle," said ICC Chukotka's president,
Natalia Rodionova, but, in spite of the new outlet, artists have
trouble with transportation and getting enough raw material, so the
store is often closed.

Rodionova, a linguist and teacher, is working on a textbook on the Yupik
language and writes a Yupik column every month in the local paper,
Krainy Sever, The Far North.

ICC Chukotka held a party in December to commemorate the 115th
anniversary of the first teacher in the Providenya district, who
compiled the first Russia-Yupik dictionary.

ICC has also asked the World Bank for money to publish a newspaper in
the Yupik language as another way to increase awareness of language and
culture.

But Rodionova, who teaches Yupik, said through an interpreter that
there's not much interest in learning the Yupik language. A resident of
Anadyr, far removed from the Chukotkan Yupik-speaking villages,
Rodionova said she speaks to her children in Russian.

But ICC Chukotka isn't giving up - there was to be a traditional feast
for youth this month, and there are plans to have an ICC Chukotka
sports team.

Apart from the many hurdles that make ICC's work difficult, the
executive council looked at a variety of programs such as "Future of
children and youth in the Arctic," the international meetings ICC
attends, as well as special projects.

Anders Berndtsson from the Nordic Institute of Greenland, a cultural arm
of the Nordic Council of Ministers, was in Iqaluit to seek support from
the ICC for a joint dance production that would combine traditional
Norse, Saami and Greenlandic elements.

The production would premier at the next ICC assembly and then tour the
circumpolar world.

The ICC executives also heard from elders' representative David Angnakak
of Pangnirtung and youth president Coley, who both underlined the need
for better communication.

The council will meet again in Nuuk, Greenland on June 21, the Greenland
home rule government's 25th anniversary.