The Arctic Messenger Gains a Voice - The Changing Arctic Environment: The Arctic Messenger - page 30

isters. This change made ministerial declarations potentially more powerful because a min-
ister of foreign affairs speaks for all ministries within a country 2 . Secondly, a new cat-
egory of representation in all activities of the Arctic Council was created - known as per-
manent participants and composed of the indigenous peoples of the Arctic. These are the
Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON), representing about
250,000 people mainly from Siberia; the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC), representing
about150,000InuitinAlaska,CanadaandGreenland;theSamiCouncil,representingmore
than 100,000 Sami people within Norway, Sweden, Finland and north-western Russia;
the Arctic Athabaskan Council and the Gwich'in Council International, representing about
32,000 people and 9,000 people each in north-western Canada and south-eastern Alaska,
respectively; and the Aleut International Association, representing at least 2,000 people
from the Aleutian Islands. Arctic indigenous peoples' organisations had already been in-
volved in the work of AMAP (since the latter was formed), and for simplicity, I have used
the term permanent participants to refer collectively to these organisations before and after
the creation of the Arctic Council.
This was a very significant step because, in theory, circumpolar indigenous peoples
could now participate at all levels of activity within the Arctic Council. However, although
the permanent participant organisations receive funding to attend meetings of the Arctic
Council and are provided with a secretariat now located in Tromso (Norway), there is
no blanket funding to support their active participation in Arctic Council projects or pro-
grammes. In some cases, a national programme - the purpose of which is closely aligned
to that of an Arctic Council working group (such as exists between the Canadian Northern
Contaminants Programme and AMAP) - may provide some project funding or the work-
ing group secretariat may be able to organise funding. Otherwise, significant funding for
participation in actual Arctic Council work tends to occur only when one or more of the
permanent participants can carry out a component of that work. The latter occurred with
the1997-1998AMAP Assessment Reports andthe2005 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment
Report , where the permanent participants or their representatives prepared or significantly
contributed to entire chapters. These two examples provide powerful glimpses of the con-