ICC to give hunting equipment to hungry Russian Inuit

DENISE RIDEOUT

IQALUIT — ICC Canada is helping out Inuit in Chukotka, a region of Arctic Russia where food is scarce and unemployment abounds.

The Inuit Circumpolar Conference’s Canadian office has raised $21,000 for the beleaguered Chukotkans, who need hunting equipment to fend off the threat of starvation.

Inuit across northern Canada donated the money to ICC’s fundraising campaign. The organization will join forces with the North Slope Borough in Alaska to send the hunting, fishing and trapping equipment to Chukotka.

Irina Appa, who administers Russian projects at ICC, said Chukotkans will welcome the supplies. According to news reports coming out of the isolated region of eastern Siberia, living conditions in the area are rough. The impoverished Russian government has largely ceased providing services to the area. Villages have gone days without heat and electricity in the winter.

Several years ago, ICC President Sheila Watt-Cloutier told delegates at a Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. meeting that Russian aboriginals in Chukotka were in desperate need of food, fuel, clothing and medicine. There were also reports of people dying of starvation in remote Siberian villages.

Appa, who is originally from Chukotka, said some people there have jobs, but many of them haven’t received pay cheques in years.

That makes it difficult for them to buy food and other supplies for their families, she said. The hunting equipment will make it possible for the Chukotkans to get traditional foods.

“It’s nice to get some humanitarian aid with food and stuff,” Appa said. “But I think what people need in the Chukotka region is hunting equipment to get their own food.”

Although living conditions are harsh there, Appa said things are beginning to look a little better now that the region has a new governor.

Roman Abramovich, who represents Chukotka in Russia’s national legislature, is one of Russia’s oil barons. He has already started a humanitarian aid organization called Polisu Nadezhdy, or Pole of Hope, which sends children to summer camps and provides food to families.

“We have a new governor and hopefully things will change there,” Appa said.

ICC is also working with the Russian Association of Indigenous peoples of the North to start a multi-million dollar, multi-year program in the Russian Arctic that will train indigenous people. An ICC press release said the program will help replace the short-term humanitarian assistance.