September 28, 2001

ICC Canada plans for 2002 Kuujjuaq conference

Kuujjuaq building $8 million convention centre for 2002 ICC bash

JANE GEORGE
Nunatsiaq News

NAIN, LABRADOR — The Canadian directors of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference got a preview of next summer’s pan-Arctic gathering in Kuujjuaq at their meeting in Nain, Labrador, last week.

Every four years the ICC, which represents 150,000 Inuit in Russia, Alaska, Canada and Greenland, holds a general meeting that brings hundreds of delegates, guests and performers from around the circumpolar world to the host community.

Next summer’s ICC Kuujjuaq meeting is scheduled for August 10-17.

Canada’s Governor General, Adrienne Clarkson, has agreed to be the ICC meeting’s patron.

At ICC’s brief annual general meeting, held last Thursday evening in Nain, a delegation flew in from Kuujjuaq to share details of their plans for the bash.

Johnny Adams, head of the Kativik Regional Government, which is coordinating the event, told the ICC board about the $8 million convention centre that’s expected to be ready by next June.

This centre will be the main site for the meeting, which is slated for August 10 to 17. The meeting’s theme is "Inuit Voice Enlightening the World."

Kuujjuaq’s annual music festival, the Akpiq Jam, will also coincide with the ICC meeting. Performers from Russia, Alaska, Canada and Greenland will join the Akpiq Jam’s regular line-up.

After the Kuujjuaq meeting, ICC Canada is expected to host the ICC’s main office for the next four years, maintaining offices in Ottawa and Iqaluit.

The president of the ICC is usually elected from the country that plans to host the ICC.

In 1995, however, when Greenland was poised to take over the ICC leadership, Rosemarie Kuptana from Canada grabbed the presidency from Aqqaluk Lynge.

When Kuptana later resigned in disgrace, Lynge took over. He will remain as ICC president until the end of the Kuujjuaq meeting, when an election for the next leader of ICC will take place.

At the Nain gathering, Canadian ICC president Sheila Watt-Cloutier also outlined ICC’s future activities. She said ICC will continue to lobby against environmental contaminants, as well as raise awareness about the impact of climate change on the North.

A book on contaminants, called, "The Story of POPs," is also in the works. Watt-Cloutier said McGill University Press plans to publish it.

Over the coming year, ICC will pull out of its development work in

Belize, Watt-Cloutier said.

The Canadian International Development Agency has a new $10 million fund to support indigenous partnerships, which ICC hopes will include Russian indigenous peoples.

ICC already benefits financially from international development projects, and its report says "this revenue would be hard to replace."

"We benefit politically on the international stage by being seen as outgoing and committed to problem solving," reads the report. "On the other hand, this work, except for our Russian project, takes us well out of the Arctic."

Money from administering development projects provides about half of ICC Canada’s $2 million-plus budget.