CBC – For the first time, the final declaration of the Ministers of the 8 countries that make up the ICC did not include the views of the Arctic Council’s permanent Indigenous organizations, Unlike the usual declarations, which are developed with their input, the compromise joint ministerial statement – which did not include any reference to “climate change” at the insistence of the United States – was put together without them. The ICC, which represents 165,000 Inuit in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Chukotka, Russia, blasted the U.S. for torpedoing the Rovaniemi Declaration at Tuesday’s Arctic Council ministerial after refusing to sign on if the words “climate change” were included in the joint document.
James Stotts, ICC’s Alaska president, said sidelining Indigenous contributions and views was a dangerous precedent for the Arctic Council, a forum that has long prided itself for including Arctic Indigenous groups since its founding.