Circumpolar leaders reach out to Russian aboriginals

MONTREAL — Shocking testimony from Russia’s northern peoples about their dreadful living conditions dominated the recent Arctic leaders summit two weeks ago in Moscow.

“We wanted to give them the floor,” said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Canadian president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference.

The Arctic Leader’s Summit brought together the leaders of the circumpolar world’s aboriginal peoples — Inuit, Sami, Aleuts and Russia’s northern peoples.

Delegates offered silent support as they listened to the sad stories of a region that’s been left on its own to survive or die.

Watt-Cloutier said that stories told at the summit brought home the “sad reality of the state of health and poverty” in Russia’s North.

“The non-indigenous people are leaving Siberia and taking their resources and technology with them,” Watt-Cloutier said.

According to a recent report of the International Working Group on Indigenous affairs, the situation in Russia’s North is increasingly bleak.

With no nationwide legislation to protect the rights of native people, there is little official protection for the livelihood or resources of 200,000 northern indigenous people in Russia.

Fewer and fewer of them are able to pursue traditional activities. Reindeer herds have decreased by over 900,000 since 1990, and biologists now say that the breeding nucleus of the herd has been destroyed.

At the same time, unemployment among Russia’s northern peoples has risen to between 45 and 100 per cent.

And the state of health of this destitute population is deteriorating. The rate of tuberculosis is three to four times higher among northern indigenous peoples than in the rest of Russia. Their rate of alcoholism is 12 to 14 times higher, although there are no controls on the sale of alcohol.

Last year, ICC came under fire for its delivery of food and other essential items to Chutkotka, because the gesture was seen as overly expensive.

But ICC now plans to set up a more modest, Inuit-to-Inuit aid campaign, to deliver essential hunting equipment to Chutkotka before winter. A former resident of that region, who now lives in Ottawa, will spend thrree months coordinating the drive.

Watt-Cloutier said the ICC also plans to pursue the second phase of its capacity-building project in Russia, to strengthen the role and importance of groups that work with aboriginal peoples.

ICC has has submitted its new project proposal to the Canadian International Development Agency. Its goal would be to set up mini-economic projects and a training centre.

In 1995, ICC received $1.9 million from the federal government to oversee a project to help Russia create new aboriginal and northern policies.