Does the ICC matter?

Does the Inuit Circumpolar Conference matter anymore?

When 700 members of the circumpolar elite gather in Kuujjuaq next week, we hope that at least some of them find the time to think about this serious question.

To help focus their minds, they might wish to consider this: Just last week, an 18-year-old Kuujjuaq man was charged with first degree murder after another young man, aged 27, was shot in the head with a rifle. When this happened, the 18-year-old already faced an assault with a weapon charge laid in connection with a violent incident earlier this year. In that one, a man was wounded in the stomach 10 times with a 12-gauge shotgun.

This kind of incident — violent death by homicide, suicide or accident — is one of many reasons explaining why the life-expectancy of people in the Nunavik region is 64 years, in a nation where the average life expectancy is 79.

In Nunavut the life expectancy is a little higher — about 71 years. But the rate of violent crime in Nunavut is the highest in the country, and it’s rising rapidly. The rate of violence against the self — suicide — shows no signs of abatement. Neither does the rate of substance abuse and other forms of self-destructive behaviour.

So as they engage in the obligatory rituals of self-congratulation that will mark the ICC’s 25th anniversary, the circumpolar world’s political establishment might be well-advised to take a look at the world of misery that lies all around them. From Chukotka to Greenland, social deterioration is visible across the part of the circumpolar world that’s inhabited by Inuit.

But the agenda for next week’s ICC gathering contains no evidence that the circumpolar world’s political establishment is even aware of the basic social and economic problems that plague Inuit communities in the Arctic.

Issues like global warming, human rights, circumpolar trade, and the development of a common writing system for the Inuit language are all important, of course. But in the course of its work, the ICC has rarely been able to capture the imaginations of ordinary people living in the communities they purport to represent – mainly because they have rarely been effective in handling the issues that matter most to them.

Another difficulty is that their much-vaunted idea of circumpolar unity often breaks down when faced with the parochialism of its constituent members.

For example, the organization has been promoting the idea of a common writing system for the Inuit language since 1989. It’s a well-intentioned idea, based on the hope that one day, Inuit in Canada and Greenland will read each other’s books, magazines and newspapers.

But in Nunavut and Nunavik, the idea has gone nowhere. Most Canadian Inuit who use syllabics have no interest in switching to Roman orthography, even though Roman orthography materials are cheaper, easier to produce, and would be accessible to Greenlanders. In Nunavik, the Avataq institute has gone back to the old “ai-pai-tai” syllabic system, turning their backs on the modern dual orthography system developed in the 1970s.

It’s no wonder then, that the ICC language commission will be talking next week about whether the body should even continue to exist. If that happens, the ICC will have lost a chance to make a difference in the lives of ordinary people.

The ICC has been less than effective on circumpolar trade issues, for similar reasons. At the 1998 ICC gathering in Nuuk, Greenland, Canada raised the idea of lobbying the U.S. government to amend the Marine Mammals Protection Act, so that sealskin products from Canada and Greenland may be legally exported to the vast U.S. market.

But Alaskan delegates opposed the idea, because for them, the MMPA is a guarantor of those few aboriginal rights they have left. Since subsistence aboriginal hunting rights are constantly under attack in Alaska, this is not an unreasonable position for them to take — but it doesn’t do much for the cause of circumpolar unity.

Another example is last year’s cancellation of a longstanding Canada-Greenland airline service by Nunavik’s Inuit-owned airline, First Air. Even though this happened on the eve of the Nuuk-Iqaluit Arctic Winter Games, political leaders in Nunavut and Nunavik hardly seemed to care.

Maybe that’s why ICC leaders don’t want to discuss the Arctic’s appalling social conditions. Having demonstrated their impotence in handling a range of less difficult issues, perhaps they’re reluctant to set themselves up for even more failure.

It may also be that such a discussion would force Inuit leaders to take a hard look at their most precious beliefs — beliefs that many are apparently unwilling to surrender. The strongest of these is that self-government and self-determination will, all by themselves, eradicate crime, poverty, addiction, suicide, mental illness, and all the other evils that have been attributed to colonialism.

We know now that various forms of aboriginal self-government, although right and necessary, do not by themselves guarantee that the lives of aboriginal people will get better.

In May of 1998, Aqqaluk Petersen, a Greenlandic researcher, presented a paper to the Congress of the International Association for Arctic Social Sciences that showed how Greenland’s social problems have intensified since the creation of its home rule government in 1979.

Petersen found that after home rule, Greenland’s suicide rate jumped from an average of seven deaths a year to an average of 49 a year.

“I have witnessed my own generation of Greenlanders either kill themselves, commit suicide or succumb to deep alcohol abuse,” Petersen told his fellow researchers.

Petersen’s own conclusion is fairly simple — that the real cause is not colonialism, but modernization. Although European colonizers stimulated the modernization of the Arctic, the pace of modernization tends to move even faster in the post-colonial period. The creation of Nunavut and the settlement of the Nunavut land claim agreement are good examples of this. Just look at the turbulent urbanization of Iqaluit, and the tide of social problems that have arisen in its wake.

Petersen said, however, that Greenland’s political elites are ignoring these realities: “The Greenlandic political establishment now has to wake up to the fact that these social problems are our own making — although there is still a powerful movement in the Greenlandic society for more independence from Denmark, implying that in the process, our social problems will be solved,” he said.

These words could be applied just as readily to Nunavut, or to any of the other regions that the ICC claims to represent. If the ICC wants to make a difference, its leaders must adjust their thinking. It’s not 1977 any more.

JB