Living at the Centre of Climate Catastrophe
How Inuit are Fighting Back Against Neo-Colonialism
From Planet 245
by Aqqaluk Lynge
Inuit poet, activist and former politician Aqqaluk Lynge gives an insight into the culture of his people, and why Arctic Indigenous communities are facing new threats from great-power interests. He argues that the election of a green-left government in Greenland offers a chance to resist.
The map of the circumpolar Arctic (below) shows the territories of the Indigenous peoples of the Arctic. As you can see the Inuit occupy vast areas from Greenland to the Canadian Arctic and Northern and Western Alaska, to the Chokotka Peninsula across the Bering Strait in Russia. The Russian-Siberian Arctic alone is resident to over twenty different Indigenous peoples. In Arctic Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula (Russia), the Sami people live as citizens of four countries just as the Inuit are divided between four nation-states.
Sign in to read moreAbout the author
Aqqaluk Lynge is a poet and politician from Greenland and Inuit rights activist. He is a former member of the Greenland Parliament and Government and a two-term President of the Inuit Circumpolar Council.
