Indigenous Arctic People and International Borders & more–10th Oct 2023

Góðan daginn from Keswick Village! This is Rorshok Arctic Update from the 10th of October twenty twenty-three A quick summary of what’s going down North of the Arctic Circle!

Beginning with the legal rights of Indigenous Arctic people, Marc Miller, the Canadian federal immigration minister, announced on Friday the 6th that he is aiming to make it easier for Indigenous people to move across international borders. Indigenous communities worldwide, not just within the Arctic, have native territories that cross international borders, so moving within their own homeland can be legally perilous and full of red tape. A recent example of this comes from a woman in Aklavik, Canada, whose Inupiaq husband has been threatened with deportation after crossing from his community's territory in Alaska into Canada. The US already recognized the right of Indigenous people to cross international borders, but this marks Canada’s first step toward establishing this right.

Speaking of Indigenous legal representation, on Wednesday the 3rd, the Chairship of the Arctic Council in Norway held a meeting with the six Indigenous Peoples’ organizations that participate in the Arctic Council. Following the recent discussions between the Arctic nation-states regarding resuming the committee activity, now the Indigenous groups are meeting to facilitate the resumption of the Arctic Council. This shows the Council’s commitment to including Indigenous input on Arctic Council matters, and hopefully, international cooperation across the Arctic will resume in due course.

Another victory for Indigenous Arctic communities this week. The Canadian government and Qikiqtani Inuit Association announced they have joined together to allocate $30 million Canadian dollars, or $22 million US dollars, for new housing in five communities in the High Arctic Qikiqtani region, Nunavut. On Wednesday the 3rd, Daniel Vandal, the federal Northern Affairs Minister said “Everyone deserves an affordable and safe place to call home.” Indigenous communities in remote Canada have been suffering a shortage of affordable housing for years now since there has been an increase in private landlords who price Indigenous people out. This funding will be a welcome relief to the people of Nunavut.

In other news, on Monday the 2nd, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin presented a new infrastructure plan for the north Russian region of Arkhangelsk. The most impactful announcements are that the seaport of Arkhangelsk will get its capacity tripled by twenty thirty-five and that in Novaya Zemlya a new terminal will be built to process zinc and lead concentrates from the Pavlovskoye mine. These major developments in the Russian Arctic will vastly increase the amount of industry, mining, and shipping in the region over the next few decades.

Russian military tensions with NATO have increased this week. The aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth II has been stationed in northern Norway for two weeks as a part of NATO military exercises in the Arctic in response to Russian military buildup above the Arctic Circle. This week Russian maritime patrol aircraft flew in the vicinity of the aircraft carrier and a group of British and Norwegian F-35s were scrambled to escort the Russian military plane away. Russia responded by saying that there would be an area of military activity on the Norwegian border and warned all non-Russian military to avoid the area from the 7th to the 12th of October.

Moving on, the Arctic political sphere just got a new member. On Saturday the 7th, the Turkish parliament joined the ratification of the 103-year-old Spitsbergen Agreement. This now allows Turkish citizens, businesses, and research institutions to live, study, and engage commercially on the Norwegian Arctic islands. Turkey will be the 47th nation to ratify the agreement. Students will be able to study at the University of Svalbard and a research base is already being planned for construction.

Over in Greenland, a campaign to receive compensation from the Danish government has been launched. In May twenty twenty-two, Danish broadcaster DR revealed that between nineteen ninety-six and nineteen seventy, a Danish government medical campaign fitted forty-five hundred intrauterine devices into girls as young as thirteen without the girls' knowledge or consent to limit the growth of Greenland’s Indigenous population. The women affected are seeking compensation of 300,000 Danish Krone, or around $40,000 US dollars each. The legal representation for the women, Mads Pramming, sent the claim to Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen on Monday the 2nd. As the victims are now at least seventy years old, a swift resolution has been demanded to ensure that the now-women the Danish Empire abused receive justice.

Next up, the shifting Arctic Climate is causing the behaviors of a range of species to alter in unexpected ways. These new behaviors are affecting the whole Arctic ecosystem.

Researchers from The University of Alaska Fairbanks published a new report on Thursday the 5th saying that they have found chum salmon reproducing in the Anaktuvuk and Itkillik rivers. This isn’t the first time the salmon have been found this far north. However, the numbers are increasing quickly in recent years. The biggest change in behavior is that the salmon is no longer spawning their eggs in the exact spot they were born—which is what they normally do. Environmental conditions are changing so rapidly that the places where the salmon were born are becoming inhospitable, and they must move north to find somewhere to spawn successfully.

Another side effect of arctic warming is that different animal species that were once living apart are coming into contact and even breeding.

Polar bears and grizzly bears in North America have been doing just this, first discovered in two thousand and six, the offspring of the two bears are known as either grolar or pizzly bears. In an interview on Monday the 2nd, environmental journalist Gloria Dickie noted that "These two animals that never really ran into each other are now being forced to share closer quarters.” As sea ice melts, polar bears are forced onto land occupied by grizzly bears. Scientists fear this could lead to the polar bear being bred into extinction as they are subsumed by the grizzly bear species.

Another example of new species breeding is with puffins in the European Arctic. The adorable, colorful seabird has several subspecies in Europe. A new genetic analysis by Oliver Kersten from the University of Oslo compared genomes of puffins from the early nineteen hundreds and between twenty twelve - twenty eighteen from two locations. The largest subspecies of Atlantic puffin lives on the Norwegian islands of Svalbard in the high Arctic, and the smallest lives 1,000 kilometers, or 620 miles, south on the island of Røst. The study revealed that modern puffins in Norway are more genetically similar than in the past, meaning the two groups have been breeding with each other. According to the report, climate change has been reducing the amount of food in Svalbard, forcing puffins there to move south and eventually breed with other subspecies of the bird.

Lastly from the 4th to the 10th of October Fat Bear Week took place in Alaska. This week is a celebration of the brown bears of Katmai National Park as they binge before hibernation. The public votes on which bear is the fattest. Record four-time winner Otis was looking unwell earlier in the year but has been getting chunky ready for the public vote. The bears can eat up to forty salmon a day, but Otis was once seen eating forty-two! They will also be eating berries, clams, and even clay to pack on the pounds before they hibernate for the next five to eight months. If you want to look at the bears yourselves, webcams around the park follow all the action. Link in the show notes!

Aaaaand that’s it for this week! Thanks for joining us!

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