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As race for oil-rich Arctic heats up, Inuit stake their claim, too

Indigenous to the region, the Inuit want a 'meaningful voice' in the territory dispute.

Source:  Copyright 2007, Christian Science Monitor
Date:  September 25, 2007
Byline:  Colin Woodard
Original URL


Even from the fishing village of Ilulissat – the largest settlement in Greenland north of the Arctic Circle – this polar region looks like an unlikely place to squabble over: dangerous-looking rocks and stark, treeless peninsulas jut out from the edge of the Greenland ice cap, which spits ever-greater quantities of icebergs into a frigid sea.

But since August, when a Russian submarine placed a flag on the seabed at the North Pole, the Arctic has been high on the world's diplomatic agenda. Five nations are now racing to claim new territory in the central Arctic Ocean, where climate change is expected to open up valuable new shipping routes, oil fields, and mineral deposits.

The region's indigenous people, the Inuit, want a say in how territorial claims unfold.

"We must develop, for the sake of my people and the world at large, a formal international process focusing on the Arctic that includes indigenous people having meaningful voices," Aqqaluk Lynge, president of the Greenland chapter of the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) told an international gathering of politicians, scientists, and religious figures here earlier this month. "Or [else] ...

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Copyright 2007, Christian Science Monitor



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