Inuit Circumpolar Conference
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The Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC; formerly the Inuit Circumpolar Conference) is a multinational
non-governmental organization A non-governmental organization (NGO) is an independent, typically nonprofit organization that operates outside government control, though it may get a significant percentage of its funding from government or corporate sources. NGOs often focus ...
(NGO) and Indigenous Peoples' Organization (IPO) representing the 180,000
Inuit Inuit (singular: Inuk) are a group of culturally and historically similar Indigenous peoples traditionally inhabiting the Arctic and Subarctic regions of North America and Russia, including Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwe ...
and Yupik (sometimes referred to as
Eskimo ''Eskimo'' () is a controversial Endonym and exonym, exonym that refers to two closely related Indigenous peoples: Inuit (including the Alaska Native Iñupiat, the Canadian Inuit, and the Greenlandic Inuit) and the Yupik peoples, Yupik (or Sibe ...
) people living in
Alaska Alaska ( ) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is also considered to be the north ...
(United States), Canada,
Greenland Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. It is by far the largest geographically of three constituent parts of the kingdom; the other two are metropolitan Denmark and the Faroe Islands. Citizens of Greenlan ...
(
Kingdom of Denmark The Danish Realm, officially the Kingdom of Denmark, or simply Denmark, is a sovereign state consisting of a collection of constituent territories united by the Constitution of Denmark, Constitutional Act, which applies to the entire territor ...
), and the Chukchi Peninsula (
Chukotka Autonomous Okrug Chukotka ( ; ), officially the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, is the easternmost federal subjects of Russia, federal subject of Russia. It is an Autonomous okrugs of Russia, autonomous okrug situated in the Russian Far East, and shares a border wi ...
, Russia). ICC was accredited by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and was granted special consultative status (category II) at the
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...
in 1983. The Conference, which first met in June 1977 in Barrow, Alaska (now Utqiaġvik), initially represented indigenous
circumpolar peoples Circumpolar peoples and Arctic peoples are umbrella terms for the various indigenous peoples of the Arctic region. Approximately four million people are resident in the Arctic, among which 10 percent are indigenous peoples belonging to a vast nu ...
from Canada, Alaska and Greenland. In 1980 the charter and by-laws of ICC were adopted. The Conference agreed to replace the term Eskimo with the term Inuit. This has not however met with widespread acceptance by some groups, most pre-eminently the Yupik (see Background section below). The goals of the Conference are to strengthen ties between Arctic people and to promote human, cultural, political and environmental rights and polities at the international level. ICC holds a General Assembly every four years. ICC is one of the six
Arctic The Arctic (; . ) is the polar regions of Earth, polar region of Earth that surrounds the North Pole, lying within the Arctic Circle. The Arctic region, from the IERS Reference Meridian travelling east, consists of parts of northern Norway ( ...
indigenous communities to have the status of Permanent Participant on the
Arctic Council The Arctic Council is a high-level intergovernmental forum that addresses issues faced by the Arctic governments and the indigenous people of the Arctic region. At present, eight countries exercise sovereignty over the lands within the Arctic ...
.


Background

The Inuit population includes the following groups and regions: *Canada:
Inuit Nunangat Inuit Nunangat (; ), formerly Inuit Nunaat (), is the homeland of the Inuit in Canada. This Arctic homeland consists of four Northern Canada, northern Canadian regions called the Inuvialuit Settlement Region (, home of the Inuvialuit and th ...
: Central Inuit (
Nunavut Nunavut is the largest and northernmost Provinces and territories of Canada#Territories, territory of Canada. It was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the ''Nunavut Act'' and the Nunavut Land Claims Agr ...
),
Inuvialuit The Inuvialuit (sing. Inuvialuk; ''the real people'') or Western Canadian Inuit are Inuit who live in the western Canadian Arctic region. They, like all other Inuit, are descendants of the Thule who migrated eastward from Alaska. Their homelan ...
(
Inuvialuit Settlement Region The Inuvialuit Settlement Region, abbreviated as ISR (; ), located in Canada's western Arctic, was designated in 1984 in the Inuvialuit Final Agreement by the Government of Canada for the Inuvialuit (''the real people''). It spans , including ...
,
Northwest Territories The Northwest Territories is a federal Provinces and territories of Canada, territory of Canada. At a land area of approximately and a 2021 census population of 41,070, it is the second-largest and the most populous of Provinces and territorie ...
), Nunavimmiut (
Nunavik Nunavik (; ; ) is an area in Canada which comprises the northern third of the province of Quebec, part of the Nord-du-Québec region and nearly coterminous with Kativik. Covering a land area of north of the 55th parallel, it is the homelan ...
, Nord-du-Québec), and Nunatsiavummiut or Labradormiut (
Nunatsiavut Nunatsiavut (; ) is an autonomous area claimed by the Inuit in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. The settlement area includes territory in Labrador extending to the Quebec border. In 2002, the Labrador Inuit Association submitted a proposal for ...
,
Labrador Labrador () is a geographic and cultural region within the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is the primarily continental portion of the province and constitutes 71% of the province's area but is home to only 6% of its populatio ...
) *United States (
Alaska Alaska ( ) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is also considered to be the north ...
):
Iñupiat The Inupiat (singular: Iñupiaq), also known as Alaskan Inuit, are a group of Alaska Natives whose traditional territory roughly spans northeast from Norton Sound on the Bering Sea to the northernmost part of the Canada–United States borde ...
, Yup'ik (Central Yup’ik & Cup’ik), and
Siberian Yupik Siberian Yupiks, or Yuits (), are a Yupik peoples, Yupik people who reside along the coast of the Chukchi Peninsula in the far Russian Far East, northeast of the Russia, Russian Federation and on St. Lawrence Island in Alaska. They speak Si ...
( St. Lawrence Island Yupik) *Greenland: Greenlandic Inuit:
Kalaallit Kalaallit are a Greenlandic Inuit ethnic group, being the largest group in Greenland, concentrated in the west. It is also a contemporary term in the Greenlandic language for the Indigenous of Greenland ().Hessel, 8 The Kalaallit (singular: ) a ...
,
Inughuit The Inughuit (singular: Inughuaq), Inuhuit, or Smith Sound Inuit, historically called Arctic Highlanders or Polar Eskimos, are an ethnic subgroup of the Greenlandic Inuit. They are the northernmost group of Inuit and the northernmost people in No ...
, and Tunumiit *Russia:
Siberian Yupik Siberian Yupiks, or Yuits (), are a Yupik peoples, Yupik people who reside along the coast of the Chukchi Peninsula in the far Russian Far East, northeast of the Russia, Russian Federation and on St. Lawrence Island in Alaska. They speak Si ...
( Chukchi Peninsula, Chukotka) All of these peoples are sometimes collectively referred to by the
exonym An endonym (also known as autonym ) is a common, name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used inside a particular group or linguistic community to identify or designate them ...
, Eskimo, the use of which is frowned upon by many of the Inuit, especially in eastern Canada. ICC uses the term ''Inuit'' to refer to them all, which has its own problems. One of those is administrative: an Inuk in the United States could be considered " Native American," " Alaskan Native" or " Aboriginal American." The Yupik of both Alaska and Russia generally prefer being called Yupik. Inuit is currently used in Alaska but it is not a word in the Yupik languages, nor a word which they traditionally used to describe themselves. Eskimo, which was formerly used in Alaska is generally dying out.


Structure and functions

The main goals of the organization are to strengthen unity among Inuit, to promote their
human Humans (''Homo sapiens'') or modern humans are the most common and widespread species of primate, and the last surviving species of the genus ''Homo''. They are Hominidae, great apes characterized by their Prehistory of nakedness and clothing ...
( Indigenous and
Linguistic Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
) rights and interests, and to ensure the development of Inuit culture. Structurally, the organization is made up of four separate offices in each of the four Inuit homelands, chartered individually under their national rules. The Presidents of ICC Chukotka, ICC Alaska, ICC Canada, and ICC Greenland, along with one Executive Council Member elected from each of the nations, make up the eight-member ICC Executive Council. The Executive Council is presided over by an International Chair (formerly International President—the title was changed in 2002). ICC holds a General Assembly every four years, bringing together Inuit from across the northern circumpolar region to discuss issues of international importance to their communities, provide direction for the work of the organization over the next four years, and divide responsibility for issue areas between the national offices. Assembly delegates appoint an international chair from the General Assembly host-country, along with the members of the Executive Council, and develop
policies Policy is a deliberate system of guidelines to guide decisions and achieve rational outcomes. A policy is a statement of intent and is implemented as a procedure or protocol. Policies are generally adopted by a governance body within an orga ...
and resolutions for the coming term. The General Assembly, and thus the International Chair position, rotates between the four Inuit nations quadrennially at the General Assemblies. At the 2002 General Assembly in Kuujjuaq, Nunavik, Canada, the Chair passed from Greenland, where it had been held for the previous seven years by Aqqaluk Lynge, now a member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, to Canada, where Sheila Watt-Cloutier, formerly the President of ICC Canada, took the position. In 2006, the Chair passed to ICC Alaska at the General Assembly in Barrow, and was then occupied by Patricia L. Cochran, formerly executive director of the Alaska Native Science Commission. At that Assembly, ICC also voted to change its name to Inuit Circumpolar Council as there has been perennial confusion over an organizational name that sounds more like a past meeting.


Leadership

The leadership of the ICC was initially organized with one president and three regional vice presidents. A fourth vice-president was added when Russia/Chukotka joined the ICC. The president later came to be unknown as chairperson or international chairperson.


See also

*
Saami Council The Saami Council is a voluntary, non-governmental organization of the Sámi people made up of nine Sámi member organizations from Finland, Norway, Russia, and Sweden. Since the founding of the Nordic Saami Council in 1956, among the first indi ...
* West Nordic Council * Arctic cooperation and politics * United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues * International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples * Working Group on Indigenous Populations * Indigenous and Tribal Populations Convention, 1957 * Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 *
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples File:2007 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples voting map.svg , , , The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP or DOTROIP) is a legally non-binding United Nations resolution passed by the United Nations in 2007 ...


References


External links


Inuit Circumpolar Council, AlaskaInuit Circumpolar Council, CanadaInuit Circumpolar Council, GreenlandInuit Circumpolar Council, Chukotka
{{Aboriginal Orgs Canada Native American rights organizations Alaska Native organizations Governance of the Arctic Indigenous organizations in Russia Indigenous rights organizations in Canada Circumpolar Conference Organisations based in Greenland Organizations established in 1977 Yupik peoples