CONFERENCE INTERNATIONALE SUR LARCTIQUE

ENJEUX ET EQUATIONS GEOPOLITIQUES AU 21E SIECLE

23 Rencontres Jacques Cartier - Lyon, 22-23 novembre 2010

http://canadatogether.hypotheses.org/arctic2010/

 

 

Canadian Arctic Security and Climate Change: Where Does Traditional Security Fit?

 

Heather N. Nicol, Department of Geography, Trent University, Peterborough Ontario

 

While Lakenbauers[1] analysis of the indigenization of Arctic security arrangements through the implementation and expansion of the Canadian Rangers program identifies the changing context of security activities over time (and the relatively modest contribution the program makes in expanding the definition of security beyond the conventional notion as that of traditional security delivered by the state, to the state, and for the state, within the Canadian Arctic), one thing remains clear: a desire for traditional military protection, focused upon the pillars national security and sovereignty, still explain the establishment and expansion of the Arctic Ranger program since WWII. While indigenization of military security through the Rangers program was designed in some ways to deliver a new type of traditional security, ostensibly because the military could not feasibly station large numbers of regular soldiers in the North,[2] the implementation of a Rangers force as the main security unit within the Canadian North has not resulted in an inherent shift to a more individualistic, sensitive and comprehensive human security. Rather, it has been a reason why some elements of Canadian society demand a larger and more visible traditional military presence.

 

In terms of non-traditional military activity, however, Lakenbauer suggests, that by 1987, the growth of the Canadian Rangers program reflected the way in which definitions of security in the North had broadened, because of the specific nature of Northern security environments. He notes that In essence, the Rangers became a different form of defence against help ( which might result in U.S. challenges to Canadian sovereignty in the North). They allowed Northerners to show the flag and assert sovereignty without becoming overwhelmed by the southern military machine.[3] This made possible the expansion of the concept of security in the Canadian North from that pre-occupied with military threat, to one which also reflected that fact that security and sovereignty had become intertwined with broader themes of militarization and indigenous survival. The Rangers fit in with a new security discourse that no longer allowed military considerations to be intrinsically divorced from domestic socio-economic, cultural and environmental health[4]

 

It is this burgeoning definition of a broader human security which was privileged to a greater degree during the 1990s and early 2000s, and which was consistent with a new understanding of the North which was developing through the Arctic Councils various Committees, treaties and social fora. By 2003, emerging land claims, indigenous development projects, and the development of increasing conduits for indigenous participation in regional decision-making, suggested that the new human security discourse bore fruit for indigenous Northerners. This human security agenda had by then become normative within circumpolar discourses, both academic[5] and political[6] and seemed to herald a new dawn for the North.

 

Indeed, intergovernmental cooperation across the borders, initially for environmental reasons, had taken the issue beyond security policy to the political agenda of the circumpolar states themselves.[7] A number of agreements and developments in the late 1980s and 1990s, which included the signing of the Roveneimi Agreement, along with the creation of the Arctic Environmental Program Strategy (AEPS) and the subsequent Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP).[8]

The momentum created by the establishment of the AEPS consensus and working cooperation, subsequently to lead to the political and diplomatic impetus for the Arctic Council in 1993. Under the auspices of the Arctic Council, The AEPS Task Force on Sustainable Development was transformed into a Working Group on Sustainable Development (SDWG), and the Arctic Council itself assumed a new role in overseeing and continuing the work of the AEPS. It facilitated a consensus on environmental strategies, forged by the AEPS that ultimately led to the establishment of an Arctic Council.[9] This international co-operation, to which the eight major Arctic countries subscribed (Canada, US, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Sweden and Russia) was seen as a benchmark for a new era. The concept of human security, broadly defined, seemed to infuse the work of the Council[10], and there were hopes that it would eventually tackle more than environmental issues resulting from the globalization of environmental pollutants, and threats to Arctic ecosystems, the health of human populations, and more recently, climate change.

 

It is in this context that the impact of the geopolitical affects of climate change within the Canadian North, or even the circumpolar North more broadly, can be understood. While the North has always served as a romantic frontier for southern Canadians, it has remained sparsely inhabited, mainly by indigenous peoples whose claim to this homeland has been made by multiple centuries, if not millennia, of occupation. And although the romantic notion of empty land and colonial frontier is wildly inaccurate, such perceptions remain strong among Canadians living outside of the North, and condition the way in which southerners perceive, and ultimately define sovereignty for the North. Thus, todays strong discursive focus on enhancing Canadas military capabilities in the North, because of new threats posed by global warming remain out of step with the real factors of climate-change generated insecurity relating to Inuit and indigenous political marginalization, unemployment, socio-economic development, access to health and education, substance abuse, housing crisis and unprecedented levels of youth suicide. These are the real security threats to the Canadian North, defined in terms of human well-being and individual impact, and they will be made all the worse by deteriorating environments and landscape.

 

Moreover, as the potential for greater crisis deepens with environmental change prompted by a warming climate, most southern Canadians fret about the national security crisis which may be brought on by delineation of maritime boundaries in the North, rather than substantive issues of a broader human security which require more that rhetorical action. The potential melting of Canadas Arctic waters, and even the prolongation of the ice free season (increased transit), has been perceived as a very present threat to Canadas sovereignty in the North, rather than the survival of its indigenous peoples and their quality of life.. The issue of heightened shipping (and shipping disasters), regional access to terrorists, challenges to the internal water status of the Northwest passage, and the erosion of Canadas potential claims to much of the High Arctic maritime space take precedent in the news, in political discussions at the highest level, and within the international context. . The Arctic Rush of the news journal and media accounts threatens to eclipse the emergent human security agenda, the latter being a human security defined by regional actors by themselves and for themselves.

 

This human security agenda has evolved with reference both to international and regionalized events.[11] At the local and regional level it is driven by developments in indigenous governance, which by very definition is concerned with maintaining the conditions for indigenous lifestyle across the North, in the face of increasing encroachment from the South. But, geopolitics of the circumpolar North, which now drives the response to climate change and new security agendas, can also be understood in regionalized terms. Heininen, for example, discusses the proliferation on non-state actors within the broader circumpolar North, as the rising star of civil society within the politics of the region.[12] This is because there is an increasingly blurred line between environmental politics, economic development and security itself, which is reflected in the structure of regional governance. In many areas, thus regional structure incorporates new forms of both self-governance and regional governance, federal governance and community actors. In Alaska, this resulted in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement, Greenland home rule, and self-government, while North Europe saw the Finnmark Act passed in 2003 [13] In Canada, the recent land claim process has seen a resulting landscape of more autonomous indigenous control, also with new forms of regulation and control.

 

Thus a common trend within the North is the development of new forms of indigenous governance to give indigenous peoples greater local control over regional processes.

And while there is certainly room for diverse opinion about environmental quality and economic development, there is more of a feeling today, throughout the North, that the co-management and co-partnership agreements which have been worked out between economic drivers and indigenous communities and governments are effective. The evolution of co-management boards in Canada, for example, has thus been accompanied by a greater propensity for government agencies to insist upon local consultation, as well as the development of agencies such as the Traditional Knowledge and Cumulative Impact Monitoring Program, to foster the incorporation of traditional knowledge within consultant-style western science models of environmental impact. In Norway, the Finnmark Act seeks to manage lands and resources in Finnmark County, the ancestral home of Saami fishers, farmers and reindeer herdersThe Finnmark Act of 2005 is an historic law that recognizes the Saami as an indigenous people with substantive rights. [14]

 

Caulfield[15] observes that recent land claims settlements in North America, and specifically in the Canadian North, have placed millions of square kilometers in the hands of for-profit and non-profit entities controlled by indigenous peoples. These corporations, he notes, control vast resources, and they interact actively with both public and private resource governance institutions.[16]

 

This observation is one of the most important to be made about the landscape of economic development within the contemporary North.Caulfield suggests that while development of non-renewable resources such as oil and gas, gold, lead, zinc, and diamonds have profoundly impacted the histories and livelihoods of Arctic peoples, it is also the context within which exploration and resource development occurs which is crucial: Early development was often associated with colonization and exploitation, where Arctic residents, who lacked recognized rights to resources, benefited little but paid substantial costs in terms of environmental impacts and loss of power. This means that with growing attention given to indigenous land claims, resource rights, and self-determination, some Arctic peoples are now finding ways to engage productively in non renewable resource extraction[17]. And so it is important to understand that self-governance and more explicit control of rights to land ownership or use are central to the new landscape of mega-project development within the Canadian North.

 

Yet the new powers which indigenous peoples have discovered vis--vis the state have not yet translated into effective agency for participating in national debates on climate change and achieving greater degrees of human security. This has been a real weakness of the resilience of the state-centred approach to Northern Governance. All these agreements involving indigenous peoples contain tools to manage resource development and mitigate climate change, and yet, as Penikett suggests, the relative disconnect between indigenous interest and government response means that Inuit and other Northern peoples are more limited in their ability to respond to new human security issues brought to bear by climate change, as well as less likely to be included within international discussions and negotiations which influence their region.[18]

 

Canada is a case in point, At the same time that Canadas national security is perceived as increasingly threatened by the outcomes of climate change, for example, indigenous peoples are increasingly achieving the terms to create their own systems of management, through comprehensive land settlements, in the North. At the same time, regional organizations such as the ICC, which emerged in the wake of the era of circumpolar cooperation of the 1990s, have found a foothold through the land claim process, regional cooperation, and the Arctic Council forum, to weigh in on sovereignty debates. Nonetheless, concern with the overall effects of climate change within the global system have become subsumed by concerns about the sovereignty-effects of climate change upon Arctic spaces. As such, attention is focused upon how the state-centred system, particularly the littoral states of the circumpolar North, will assert claims to maritime space, and a parallel discourse has emerged concerning how the more broad-based human security focus can co-exist and gain power as an indigenous discourse on sovereignty and rights.

 

Still, no end of articles from all nations proclaim that sovereignty is under fire, within the space of less than a year all major Arctic players, including the U.S., the EU and Canada, have issued statements which re-assert their commitment to a rules-based international order, and a multilateral approach to Arctic issues. But commitment to indigenous definitions of sovereignty and security has also become a point of contention, as the recent fallout surrounding Arctic Five meetings in Chelsea, Quebec, indicate. Here, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton chastised the five Arctic nations for excluding indigenous participants from their deliberations. This U.S. stand on indigenous rights is quite literally, unprecedented. At no time in the past has the role of indigenous peoples as legitimate actors within the international arena been raised, least of all by the U.S. It is an acknowledgement that mobilization of indigenous and international components of Northern society, to facilitate the development of participatory democratic forums on state sovereignty remains a consideration in international circumpolar co-operation.

It is this emerging indigenous discourse which complicates the emerging sovereignty discourse which relies simply upon traditional definition of states, and a traditional role for the military in delivering security. Indeed, streng (forthcoming) argues that, in the European North:

 

the last decades have seen dramatic changes in arctic politics and natural conditions. Due to a set of intermingling political and environmental factors, civil societal organizations are slowly but surely gaining access to areas of the North previously either designated for military purposes only or sealed off from human exploitation by the frosty fences of the sea ice.

 

Moreover, streng suggests that one of the major outcomes of the past few decades has been the distinction between military and political security, as well as a new emphasis on the contextual nature of national security itself. Yet all of this seems to fly in the face of a more popularized understanding of the north where the tenor of Arctic relations seemed more strained than cooperative. This discourse sees an aggressive Russia claiming large areas of the Arctic Ocean as Russian territory, and the Canadian Government vowing to militarize the Arctic and exert territorial claims of their own by building two new military facilities in the Arctic to boost Canada's sovereign claim over the Northwest Passage and signal its long-term commitment to the North,[19] as well as developing a new Canadian Forces training centre in Resolute Bay and to refurbishing an existing deepwater port in Nanisivik., [N]oting in a speech that a convergence of economic, environmental and strategic factors in the region will have critical impacts on the future of the country.[20] Newspapers picked up on Prime Minister Stephen Harpers 2007 plans to militarize the North this as a critical element of Canadian security policy.[21]

This refocus on military security is by no means limited to Canada, as the Bush Declaration of 2007 (formally known as the US Presidential Directive No. 66) shows. Here, the Bush Administration developed its own policy which it released shortly before the Obama administration took power. The media reported this new directive as evidence of renewed competition. In the UK for example, the Guardian reported that the US was staking a claim in the Arctic and that the directive called for "all actions necessary to establish the outer limit of the continental shelf appertaining to the United States, in the Arctic and in other regions, to the fullest extent permitted under international law." It on to note that the US and Canada still have an unresolved boundary in the Beaufort Sea, north of Alaska, an area thought to be rich in oil and natural gas deposits[22] Indeed, The Washington Times saw things in a similar light. It reported that: Facing growing competition for the Arctic, President Bush on Monday issued a directive staking the U.S. claim to be an Arctic nation with rights to its resources and travel lanes.[23]

And if the media identified the US directive as a potential land grab, so did Europe. The EU issued its own policy statement in 2009, and the Canadian Government, not to be outdone, issued its Integrated Northern Strategy in the spring of 2009, listing sovereignty as a high priority issue.

Thus the issue today would seem to be the way in which a discourse on traditional sovereignty and Arctic security, defined in military terms has returned to challenge what was becoming a more broadly-based focus upon human security and indigenous participation and definition of security issues. Yet, while the return to more narrowly defined concepts of security are indicative of the resurgence of the state-centred system in the North, in the final analysis it is difficult to see how the current threat of climate change and melting waters in the North will lead, de facto, to increased competition for territory and resources. Had the late 20th century rounds of international co-operation described earlier not occurred, then perhaps this might be the case. But the renewed emphasis that Arctic nations have placed upon circumpolar organizations such as the Arctic Council, and international maritime rules represented by UNCLOS suggest that multilateral cooperation is the most likely option. However, state-centred cooperation in light of climate change is not the same thing as human security broadly defined. The Ilulissat Declaration is notable in the way in which it excluded indigenous populations[24] while remapping potential post-ice Arctic oceans in state-centred ways, using state-centred mandates. As such it constitutes a growing threat to the inclusion of indigenous peoples in the framing of a new ice- free Arctic Ocean, and this rather than the simplistic notion of state versus state, military versus military, constitutes the real threat to human security definitions within the circumpolar North. One of the potential casualties in this redefinition, or rather narrowing down, of security from a broad human-based understanding to a more narrow military and state-centred approach, may potentially be the power of indigenous populations and regional non-governmental actors, to participate in regional decision-making. The redefinition of climate change as a security issue within the circumpolar North has seen the framework of Northern governance reduced to state-actors and indeed, littoral stakeholders. The broader community of Northern stakeholders has been excluded from the process of decision-making as the constituency of stakeholders narrows to five littoral states.[25]

 

Despite this, I suggest that the concept of competing claims for Arctic space needs to be understood in context of  two very real and significant developments-the UN Law of the Sea, as established by protracted  negotiations over three decades and the newly minted UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The latter (UNDRIP) represents a post-colonial understanding of the importance of self-determination, and has become the document of choice for framing current rounds of territorial competition. Indigenous leaders have signalled their intention to pursue the avenue of indigenous rights throughout the Canadian North, for example. Gaining momentum, as indigenous peoples worldwide cite its provisions, it is
difficult to see how the "Great Game", which will use the LOS as its conduit for territorial claims,  will proceed without acknowledgement of the very real constituency of indigenous rights. Indeed, as streng (forthcoming) has recently argued about the EU's Arctic agenda: "a new era of low politics and civil involvement in regional affairs has
been put in the post-Cold War melting pot of Arctic affairs. Low politics have become part of high politics. The incentives to utilize this fresh political foundation for civil purposes is being strengthened by global climate warming and changes in the sea ice cover of the Arctic Ocean." That is to say that the politics of state have been
complicated by the politics of non-state actors and agencies.[26]

 

One of the significant drivers for early 21st century is thus the relationship between the various national, political and geopolitical frameworks which offer prescriptions for the remapping of Arctic spaces in sovereignty terms. That the sovereignty crisis is a rhetorical response to climate change is clear, but whether existing IR theories can account for the complex ways in which sovereignty challenges and UN Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) responses may affect the broader security is doubtful. This is because of the way in which traditional IR theories understand agency and define actors in state-centred terms. As Zellen[27] has observes, there is a historical propensity for Arctic scholarship to compartmentalize Arctic issues, and to examine them in terms of at isolated scales – either international, national or regional – but not as interconnected events. More specifically, there has long been a propensity to ignore sub-state and regional developments in building an understanding of the international North.

 

Zellens point is that in ignoring the connection between scales of analysis and understanding we lose sight of the fact that although the Inuit, like other indigenous peoples of the North, desire self-determination and respect, their claims are self-consciously pursued within context of the state, and state sovereignty discourses. Inuit in Canada, for example, are not secessionists, even though they attempt to construct regional governments, like Nunavut, to achieve self-determination. This fact, combined with the historical depth of indigenous occupation (occupation of both land and water) in the North, conditions the way in which states exercise sovereignty in the North, as well as defining the role of indigenous peoples in its practice.[28] It is part and parcel of the Canadian justification for asserting sovereignty in the Arctic Archipelago, the Northwest Passage and other coastal waters. More problematic, of course, if the legacy of indigenous rights and representation within the Canadian state.

 

There is, as Broderstad and Dahl[29] suggest, a relationship between the forces of nation-building and self-determination within the North: As an answer to assimilation policies, national minorities and indigenous peoples have taken the concept of nation building for their own use. Nation building then refers to the efforts of indigenous peoples to increase their capacities for self-rule and for self-determined sustainable community and economic development. It also involves building institutions of self-government.[30]

 

Not only has self-determination and devolved governance won recognition in international relations, but most nation states located within the circumpolar region have become committed to the process. Many have signed agreements for self-governance, socio-economic development and political representation with indigenous groups, and are now bound to satisfy the legal obligations they have entered in regarding indigenous territorial rights.

 

At the same time, indigenous responses to climate change and the propensity for competitive regional geopolitics have also developed capacity. The Inuit Leaders Summit on Arctic Sovereignty in 2009 took issue with the Ilulissat Declaration, because it operated without full regard to Inuit concerns. But as Zellen and others suggest, Inuit themselves have worked to address this shortcoming. The 2009 ICC Declaration of Sovereignty delivered in Troms the day before the Arctic Council meetings underscores this fact: In spite of a recognition by the five coastal Arctic states (Norway, Denmark, Canada, USA and Russia) of the need to use international mechanisms and international law to resolve sovereignty disputes,[31] these states, in their discussions of Arctic sovereignty, have not referenced existing international instruments that promote and protect the rights of indigenous peoples. They have also neglected to include Inuit in Arctic sovereignty discussions in a manner comparable to Arctic Council deliberations.[32]

 

Indeed, the the 2009 Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Arctic Sovereignty, acknowledges this the nesting of indigenous rights within the state and the importance of devolutionary land claims and self-determination processes to structure indigenous self-determination principles. The ICC declaration specifies, in greater detail, Inuit understandings of sovereignty. But challenging the idea that both understandings of sovereignty—state and indigenous—are mutually exclusive, but need to be understood reflexively. Zellen suggests that the Inuit Declaration indicated that the Inuit are currently rethinking their stance on sovereignty and independence, while hoping their long, and in so many ways successful partnership with the modern state becomes renewed and their exclusion from the negotiating table at Ilulissat become the exception and not the rule[33]

 

This is also the point which Byers makes: the Canadian state has created a political structure of indigenous governance which fuses, rather than marginalizes, Inuit claims to Arctic maritime space with Canadian sovereign aspirations: the Inuit have been central to Canadas sovereignty claims since 1930.[34] Byers acknowledges, and their claim to occupation of land and sea is historical as well as now quite prescient.

 

What is unresolved still, within this evolving context of indigenous self-governance nested within, and protected by, the framework of the Westphalian state system, however, how will their concerns and rights be incorporated into statist discourses of sovereignty? How effectively will either government make the claim to voice for indigenous concerns? These are the grounds upon which non-state, regional and indigenous actors will find themselves excluded from the UNCLOS process, because of their inherent incompatibility with the UNCLOS its Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) process.[35]

 

This incompatibility is one of the important developments within the Arctic, which has resulted from the context of global warming, a new jockeying for resources and transportation routes, and a new round of vying for maritime space, has been the way in which it has catapulted indigenous interests from the state level to the international arena. But it is surely not a result of lack of the raising of an indigenous voice in international forums, per sea. Within the past decade or two, the formation of the Arctic Council, regional comprehensive land settlements and new political institutions and arrangements have already begun to alter both the discourse and substance of national, international and indigenous claims to the Arctic and the Arctic Ocean. Indeed, Heininen would go so far as to argue that the whole process has brought new actors to the Arctic at the same time as international cooperation is becoming more intensive in northern regionsAll of these raise the possibility of changes in circumpolar geopolitics by the 2010s[36], rather than retrenchment of the international system. But the problem is one of how non-state actors can influence a international system of law like the UNCLOS, which is inherently biased towards the demands of state rather than non-state actors? How can an independent voice be achieved?


All of this seems to suggest that even the current discourses of territorial control in the Arctic which are still largely framed by the interests of national and international actors, must, increasingly, incorporate and accommodate indigenous voices in the future. State-centred discourses of sovereignty and national security identify issues of concern and the framing of maritime claims by Arctic states which beg the issue of the map on the ground—of the way in which indigenous peoples and regionalized interests are already, de facto actors in the geopolitics of the North. Moreover, while there is a tremendous gap between indigenous peoples participation in Arctic governance from an international standpoint, there is an important and new human rights discourse emerging at both the international level which has potential to reshape the contours of Arctic sovereignty claims. Passed in 2007, the UNDRIP has become one of the most important referent documents for indigenous people with respect to Arctic sovereignty within the past two decades. The UNDRIP, for example, enshrines the rights of indigenous peoples in ways which challenge the normative practice of states under the Westphalian system. Article 26 of the UNDRIP declares, for example, that Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired[37]. And, in addition to establishing rights, one of the avowed aims of the UNDRIP is to develop ―strong monitoring mechanisms and enhancing accountability at the international, regional and particularly the national level, regarding the implementation of legal, policy and operational frameworks for the protection of indigenous peoples.[38]

 

This human rights declaration is being been positioned by indigenous groups to effect a counter balance to Law of the Sea discourse. The ICC Declaration of Sovereignty, for example, falls back upon the UNDRIP as instrumental in securing their absolute right to inclusion in Arctic sovereignty discussions: Our rights as an indigenous people include the following rights recognized in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), all of which are relevant to sovereignty and sovereign rights in the Arctic( Point 1.4). In a similar, although not quite identical version of the ICC declaration, as the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), Canadas national Inuit organization, elaborated on this point of human rights: We will exercise our rights of self-determination in the Arctic by building on institutions such as the Inuit Circumpolar Council and the Arctic Council, the Arctic-specific features of international instruments, such as the ice-covered-waters provision of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the Arctic-related work of international mechanisms, such as the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the office of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous Peoples, and the UNDRIP. (Point 3.13).

 

In the final analysis, the real result of the claim game in the Arctic Ocean, for North America and perhaps also for Russia, Greenland, Denmark and North Europe, may be just as much a story of the beginning of accommodation for indigenous actors at state and regional level as it is a manifestation of the proverbial Great Game. The facilitation of UNDRIP is seriously raised by indigenous peoples, and there is hope that it may become part of customary international law, when tested.[39] This is issue which has been driven by the political forces surrounding climate change and the narrowing of broad-based Arctic security initiatives to sovereignty and maritime boundary-making activities, it is clear that the international system will not be able to avoid the issue of indigenous actors and their role in sovereignty claims.

These actors are offering alternative perspectives using the instruments of international law and multilateral initiatives like the UN Declaration on Human Rights, or protocols on climate change. To ignore such actors and their initiatives with respect to climate change, human security and the implementation of sovereignty claims in the Arctic, is clearly unadvised, and yet to accommodate such initiatives will require that we develop broader approaches to international relations, and indeed the definition of security itself.



[1] Lackenbauer, P. Whitney. 2009. The Canadian Rangers: Sovereignty,Security and Stewardship from the Inside Out. In Thawing Ice - Cold War: Canada's Security, Sovereignty, and Environmental Concerns in the Arctic. Robert Huebert, ed.University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. Bison Paper No. 12 pp. 61-79.

[2] Ibid. p. 63

[3] Ibid. p. 68

[4] Ibid.

[5] Heininen, Lassi. and Nicol, Heather N. (2007). The Importance of Northern Dimension

Foreign Policies in the Geopolitics of the Circumpolar North. Geopolitics 12,

133-165.

[6] Keskitalo, E.C.E. Negotiating the North. 2004. Routeledge.

[7] Heinine and Nicol, op. cit.

[8] AMAPhttp://www.amap.no/ . Accessed July 14, 2009

[9] Heininen, Lassi (2004). Circumpolar International Relations and Geopolitics. In Arctic

Human Development Report, pp. 207-225. Akureyri: Stefansson Arctic Institute.

[10] Heininen and Nicol, 2007. op. cit.

[11] Heininen, Lassi (2004). Circumpolar International Relations and Geopolitics. In Arctic

Human Development Report, pp. 207-225. Akureyri: Stefansson Arctic Institute; Heininen and Nicol, 2007.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Penikett, Tony. 2010. At the intersection of indigenous and international treaties Draft paper. www.arcticgovernance.org/.../At+the+intersection+of+indigenous+and+international+treaties,+22.05.2010.pdf. Accessed October 28, 2010.

[14] Penikett, op. cit. p.2

[15] Caulfield, R.A. 2004. Resource Governance. In: AHDR (ed.) Arctic Human Development Report. Stefansson Arctic Institute, Akureyri, p.122.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Penikett, op. cit.

[19] Panetta, op. cit.Alexaner. 2007.  Harper   boosts   Arctic presence  cnews.  Across   Canada

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2007/08/10/4408384-cp.html

Acessed   October 24, 2007

[20] Panetta, op. cit.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Bowcott, Owen. Bush urges US to stake claim to Arctic territory in last-gasp energy 

grab. Thursday 15 January 2009. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jan/15/arctic-bush

Accessed   July  19, 2009

[23]Dinan, Stephen. Bush   stakes   U.S.   claim   in   Arctic:   Seeks   rights   to   waterways   and resources. Tuesday January 13, 2009. Available at:

ttp://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/13/bush-policy-stakes-us-in-arctic. Accessed October 22, 2009.

[24] See Dodds, op. cit.

[25] Dodds, Klauss (2009). Flag Planting and Finger Pointing: The Law of the Sea, the Arctic

and the political geographies of the outer continental shelf. Political Geography 2010.

[26] Heininen 2004, op. cit.

[27] Zellen, Barry. 2009. On Thin Ice: The Inuit, the State and the Challenge of Arctic Sovereignty .Lexington Books.

[28] See Marcus, Alan (1992). Out In the Cold:  The legacy of Canada's Inuit relocation. K0benhavn:

International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs.

and Byers, Michael. 2009. Who Owns the Arctic? Understanding Sovereignty Disputes in the North Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre.

[29] Broderstad, Else Grete and Jens Dahl, 2004. Political Systems. In: AHDR (ed.) Arctic Human Development Report. Stefansson Arctic Institute, Akureyri. p. 85.

[30] Ibid.

[31] Denmark. Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Ilulissat Declaration. Arctic Ocean Conference, Ilulissat, Greenland, 27 – 29 May 2008. Available at

www.oceanlaw.org/downloads/arctic/Ilulissat_Declaration.pdf. Accessed October 22, 2009.

[32] Byers, op. cit.

[33] Zellen, op. cit. p. 179.

[34] Byers, op. cit. p. 119

[35] Dodds, op. cit.

[36] Heininen, 2004 op. cit., p. 222.

[37] United Nations,2007. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Adopted by the General Assembly 13 September 2007. Available at http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/declaration.html. Accessed October 21, 2009. See also United Nations, 2007b. About UNPFII and a brief history of indigenous peoples and the international system. Available at http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/history.html. Accessed October 21, 2009.

[38] Ibid.

[39] Byers, op. cit.