The Indigenous People of the North live in an apparently contradictory situation. Given their isolation from traditional trade routes and the harshness of the climate of the regions they live in, they never developed statal organisations, let alone imperial ones, and their land was often subject to territorial conquest by more powerful neighbours. But, at the same time, territorial conquest rarely led to non-Arctic colonisation: conquered lands were usually settled by other Arctic natives – as in the case of the Thule culture, which moved to the regions previously inhabited by the Dorset one between the 13th and the 16th century.
Only more recently some areas have been settled by non-Arctic natives, usually because of job opportunities in port cities or around raw material deposits, military needs or simply deportations. Turning Arctic regions into settlement colonies has always been very hard, and even the Norse, who came from notoriously cold climates, had to abandon their Greenlandic settlements between 1350 and 1500 for causes which haven’t been fully established yet, but which should be at least partly related to the beginning of the Little Ice Age in the late Middle Ages.
The Yakuts (or Sakha), who originated from the Baikal and the Aral Sea regions and moved into their current homeland as a result of migrations and pressures from the growing Mongol Empire, were one of the few examples of successful settlement of non-Arctic peoples in an Arctic region. The Dolgans are the result of the Turkification of some local Tungusic peoples by the upcoming Yakuts.
Nor did political divisions has necessarily implied a breakout of cross-border interactions between members of the same ethnic group. Most borders used to be open in the past, except for those located in particularly sensitive areas: the Hadrian’s Wall, the Limes Germanicus and the Great China Wall, therefore, are more the exception than the rule. Border fences and controls started to become commonplace only in very recent times, with many authors, such as John Maynard Keynes, identifying the early 20th century and in particular World War I as the turning point.
This applied even more for the Arctic, which was a borderland in itself and where the few territorial disputes – such as the one between Canada and Alaska during the 19th Century – were always peaceful and summed up to a different interpretation of the treaties signed by the disputing countries. Hard borders became commonplace in the Arctic region only between the Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War.
As a result, the Arctic Indigenous People have a long history of cross-border cooperation and are often still a plurality in many of their traditional lands. As expert community suggests, the highest percentage of indigenous people is reached in Greenland and some regions of the Canadian Arctic (especially Nunavut), where they amount to over 75 per cent of the local population; while in the Sakha Republic, some southern parts of Northern Quebec and the Northwest Territories and some coastal regions of Alaska their share ranges between 50 and 75 per cent. At the same time, many of them are split among neighbouring countries, and the list of the minor Arctic indigenous ethnic groups or families who are currently divided among different nations includes:
The consciousness of their ethnic ties, which occasionally turn into family ties, and the challenges posed by modern life, potential cultural assimilation, climate change and environmental issues led to the development of an increasingly flourishing inter-ethnic cooperation among these peoples, which started in the 50’s and which enjoyed an acceleration after the end of the Cold War.
Most of the aforementioned indigenous peoples cooperate through international organisations grouping single ethnic groups, such as the Sami and the Inuit, or ethnic families as in the case of the Athabaskans. The Dolgans are a peculiar case among these indigenous peoples, since their main channel for international relations is not any of the pan-Turkic international organisations, which are mostly absent from the Arctic, but the Russian Association of the Indigenous People of the North (RAIPON), where they are grouped with other indigenous people of the Russian Arctic such as the Nenets and the Evenki (or Tungus).
In a contest where minor indigenous peoples are often spread among different nations, or are too small to make their voices heard, but may still have common challenges and the desire to keep alive cross-border ethnic or even family ties, inter-indigenous cooperation is very important.
One of the first instances of pan-indigenous transnational cooperation in the Arctic occurred among the Saami, who established the Saami Council in 1956 after a conference held three years earlier in the Swedish town of Jokkmokk. Their example was subsequently followed by the Inuit of North America, which set up the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) in 1977 in order to represent the interests of the Inuit and Yupik people, then collectively known under the “Eskimo” exonym.
Both institutions were rather effective in ensuring some important conquests by the people they represented, such as the institution of the Sami Parliaments and of the Territory of Nunavut in Canada; but, given the reality of the Cold War, their representation was limited to the indigenous peoples west of the Iron Curtain, excluding therefore the Russian Sami and the Siberian Yupik.
Inter-indigenous cooperation with and within the Soviet Union started to develop only towards the end of the Cold War. In March 1990, indeed, 26 minor indigenous peoples of the Russian Arctic, Siberia and the Russian Far East created the Congress of the Peoples of the North of the Soviet Union. The association was renamed Russian Association of the Indigenous People of the North (RAIPON) in 1993, and it now represents the 40 peoples currently included in the Unified List of the Minor Indigenous People of the North, Siberia and the Russian Far East. In the same year, the Chukotka Eskimo Society “Yupik” was founded in Providenija, a remote village on the Russian shores of the Bering Strait. The society would have joined the ICC two years later. Likewise, the Saami Council was enlarged to include also the ethnic Sami on the eastern side of the former Iron Curtain.
The ICC, the RAIPON and the Saami Council were included in the Indigenous People’s Secretariat (IPS), established in 1994 under the terms of the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (de facto the precursor of the Arctic Council), and got the status of permanent participants of the Arctic Council since its institution two years later. As per the Arctic Council’s website, “such status can be awarded to indigenous organisations representing either a single ethnic group (or family, as in the case of the Athabaskans) spread among different nations or more than one ethnic group living within a single nation, while “Permanent Participants have full consultation rights in connection with the Council’s negotiations and decisions”.
In the following years, they would have been followed by the Aleut International Association (AIA), the Gwich’in International Council and the Arctic Athabaskan Council (AAC). They were created in 1998, 1999 and 2000 respectively. The first represents the Aleuts of the Aleutian Islands of Alaska and the Commodore Islands east of the Kamchatka Peninsula. They also got the status of permanent participants in the Arctic Council.
The international nature of many of the aforementioned associations allowed them to start projects with a cross-border outreach. The AIA, for instance, carried out a solid waste management project on both sides of the Aleutian Islands, a remote and scarcely populated archipelago located like an arch between the Alaska and the Kamchatka Peninsulas and currently divided between Russia (the Commander Islands) and the United States (the islands from Attu eastwards).
As put by the AIA website, after all, “poor economies of scale and high transportation costs, together with related issues of expensive infrastructure, difficult operation and maintenance, and complex socioeconomic issues mean conventional solutions are often not successful”, adding that “unlined, unsegregated, sprawling landfills with open burning are common in rural Alaska and Canada communities without road access. Remote communities in Greenland and Russia face similar issues. Additionally, due to cost and convenience, some rural households in Lapland resort to home barrel-burning and illegal dumping”. The project aims to share resources, case studies and best practices around the Arctic in order to improve the effectiveness of waste management in remote Arctic communities.
The participation to the Arctic Council allowed these associations to cooperate also with one another in projects of pan-Arctic interest. A main example is the Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment (PAME), which is one of the six working groups of the Arctic Council and which is composed by representatives of both the member states and the permanent participants, namely the indigenous associations. Started in 1991 and currently based in Akureyri, Iceland, it is focused on sustainable development and the protection of the marine environment of the Arctic, with a particular focus on Arctic shipping, on which are dedicated 13 projects out of the total 36.
Another interesting case is the Salmon Project, carried out by the AIA, the AAC, the RAIPON and the Saami Council since 2013. The project started with the study of salmon migration patterns and harvesting techniques in three river systems – the Yukon/Kuskokwim drainage systems, located between Canada and Alaska, the Kamchatka River in Eastern Siberia and the Deatnu/Teno River drainage in the Norwegian and Finnish Lapland –, and is based on sharing traditional knowledge, with the ultimate aim of ensuring a sustainable exploitation of this fishing resource and the adaptation of these indigenous peoples to any issue which can affect its population. Salmon is a main food source for the people of the Arctic, to the point that many of them are defined as “salmon people”, and any change in its population would then greatly affect their diet.
International cooperation has been important not only to carry out projects in areas of shared interest, but also to re-establish long-lost family connections. An interesting case study is the reinstatement of the relations between the indigenous people of the Diomede Islands after the end of the Cold War. Their local populations, made of Inupiat (a sub-ethnos of the Inuit people), kept very strong ties with one another and often intermarried even after the 1867 Alaska Purchase, when the two islands were divided between the USA – which got Little Diomede Island – and Russia – which kept Big Diomede. The very narrow strait between the two islands, which is covered by a thick layer of ice in winter, helped to keep these relations alive.
In the 1920s, there were approximately a dozen people living in the Russian side, and most of them were part of a family nucleus head by a man called Agayeghaq. In 1948, the population increased to around 25-30 people; but, at that point, the beginning of the Cold War led to a relocation programme of the local Inuit. The island was to become a military base, due to its strategic position, and its local inhabitants were resettled first in Naukan, on the Russian mainland, and then in other locations in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. Crossing the strait was no longer possible, and the century-long ties between these two sister populations seemed to have been broken forever by the post-WWII geopolitical reality.
In May 1988, during a general thaw in the relations between Washington and Moscow, direct flights between Alaska and Chukotka were introduced, allowing some people to visit some long-lost cousins on the other side of the border, and on 23rd September 1989 an agreement was signed between Russia and the United States to allow residents of both Alaska and the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug to visit the prospicient region, provided that they were members of an indigenous population and had relatives (blood relatives, members of the same tribe, native people who have similar language and cultural heritage) on the other side of the border.
Such agreement, nevertheless, hasn’t been ratified by the US side for a long time, and therefore it came into force only on 23rd July 2015. But this delay didn’t prevent the (US) National Park Service to create the Shared Beringian Heritage Program, set up in 1991 thanks to the commitment of the then-US President George H.W. Bush and his Soviet counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev. Thanks to this programme, the indigenous people of Little Diomede Island managed to gather more than $83,000 in order to organise a family reunion with their long-lost Russian relatives, which was finally held on Little Diomede Island between 23rd July and 1st August 2017.
As a whole, despite growing tensions elsewhere, Russia and the other Arctic countries enjoyed a positive cooperation in the Arctic in the period between the end of the Cold War and 2022. This benefited also the minor indigenous people, which were able to share practices and to re-establish ties which the reality of the Cold War seemed to have broken forever.
The Arctic Council was hailed as “a testament of positive cooperation between Russia and the Western countries” even in 2021, when the change in the White House led to a dramatic increase in the tensions between Russia and the so-called “Collective West” which would have ultimately led to the current situation, while the then-Vice-President of the ICC Lisa Koperqualuk praised the Russian-Canadian cooperation in the Arctic in the institution building for the Minor Indigenous People of the Arctic and for the cooperation agreement between the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, the local association of the indigenous people and the ICC signed in 2001.
The contrast with the Cold War, when cross-border relations between minor indigenous people were mostly absent and Washington and Moscow could sign an agreement for the protection of the polar bears at most, was self-evident, and this led many observers to think that the Arctic was really exceptional, like the exploration of the outer space.
As known, the 24th February 2022 triggered the greatest crisis between Russia and the West since the Cuban Missile Crisis at least. This is not the first time Russia finds itself at loggerheads with the so-called “Collective West” after the end of the Cold War, in particular after the Arab Springs and the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis; but, as we have seen, this affected only marginally both the cooperation among the Arctic countries and the cross-border ties between the minor indigenous populations of Russia and their ethnic brethren in any Western country, including those living in the most virulently anti-Russian ones such as Canada.
However, in the immediate aftermath of the launch of the Special Military Operation, the dominant idea among most Western governments was that any form of cooperation with Russia was morally wrong and that the interruption of relations must be used as a tool to apply pressure to the Russian people and their government.
This great freeze affected pan-Arctic relations as well: on 3rd March 2022, seven of the eight member states of the Arctic Council announced a boycott of all meetings in Russia, which then held the rotating presidency of the Council itself, and stopped their involvement in the Arctic Council without formally leaving it. The indigenous peoples’ associations had usually more moderate positions than their governments in the weeks immediately before the landmark 24th February, also because they feared that a further growth of the tensions over Ukraine would have led to a break up of relations which took long years to be created.
On a press release issued on 14th February, for instance, the AAC’s international chair Chief Gary Harrison stated that “our relationship with the Russian Federation, as with all our regional partners, is one of diplomatic cooperation that took years to build. We fear this could be greatly disrupted if the resistance to finding a solution over the conflict in Ukraine continues”.
Likewise, his Canadian counterpart Chief Bill Erasmus stated that “the loss of human life, the economic and environmental costs should a war commence, is troubling. We do not support or endorse any war and urge all parties to seek a diplomatic solution”. But the ongoing disputes in Ukraine were way beyond the outreach of any indigenous leader; and, while no Arctic indigenous association was consulted in the ultimate decision to suspend cooperation with Russia, they had no alternative but to follow up once the decision was taken.
The reality created by the ongoing confrontation between Russia and the Western countries, after all, makes the international cooperation among the minor indigenous peoples very difficult regardless of the stances on the Ukrainian crisis of the indigenous associations and representatives. On 27th February 2024, the Russian section of the Saami Council issued a statement where it denounced the difficulty in carrying out projects and paying salaries due to the sanctions against Russian banks, while at the same time stating their desire to keep relations with the Sami west of the border.
Unfortunately, their request was not going to be fulfilled, and on 10th April the Sami Council put on hold cooperation with the Russian side. After then, inter-indigenous cooperation in the Arctic involving Russia went close to nil: Gunn-Britt Rieder of the Sami Council of Norway claims that they have no contact with the Russian Sami anymore, while the Alaskan Edward Alexander of the Gwich’in Council International said “we did not shut down and the projects were not put on hold, except for everything that was interactive between the US and Russia. That stopped completely”.
Only the ICC claims to have maintained relations with the other side of the new Iron Curtain: as put by the President of ICC Canada Lisa Koperqualuk in 2023, “we agree, as Inuit, to that pause [of Russian-involved Arctic Council activities]… but that didn’t prevent us from continuing a relationship with ICC Chukotka”.
Is it possible that inter-indigenous cooperation involving Russia will be fully reinstated? The short answer is that this is related to the Arctic Council resuming work, and that this depends in turn to some kind of settlement of the Ukrainian conflict; but the actual answer is more complex. In the immediate aftermath of the 24th February, the seven Western members of the Arctic Council discussed about keeping limited cooperation without involving Russia, or even establishing a parallel forum which excludes it. But the role played by Moscow in the Arctic shows the great limits of this approach.
Russia accounts not only for just below 50 per cent of the Arctic territory, but also for nearly 70 per cent of the economic activity in the region. Any discussion about topics such as environmental protection and the exploitation of natural resources for both subsistence and commercial reason is deemed to fail without Russian involvement. Russia, in the meanwhile, has stopped its contributions to the Arctic Council in February 2024 as a response to the ongoing boycott, while strengthening its cooperation on the Arctic with non-Western nation, most prominently China.
In the latest months, there have been some positive developments on pan-Arctic cooperation. In March 2024 there was a virtual simulation on an oil spill on the coast of Norway, with Russia simulating sending two vessels to the exercise, and the Chair of the Arctic Council’s Emergency Prevention working group Ole Kristjan Bjerkemo stated that “we had good communication (during the oil spill exercise) with all states, including Russia”. And, six months later, cooperation with Russia resumed in six working groups of the Arctic Council.
According to the Academic Director of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) Andrei Kortunov, there are reasons to be moderately optimistic about a full resumption of contacts within the Arctic Council, and such resumption will inevitably affect inter-indigenous cooperation as well, since they would have the opportunity to start cooperating again within the working groups; but, even if inter-indigenous cooperation involving Russia will be fully reinstated, its future is now somehow related to the relations among their home countries in other parts of the world.
The Arctic is no more just a borderland relevant mostly for scientists, environmentalists and indigenous peoples, but a theatre of great power competition as well, and the Arctic exceptionalism is fading away like the Arctic Ice Cap.
Giuseppe Cappelluti
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