Arctic Peoples

The Arctic Leaders summit at K’atlodeeche took place on the traditional land of the Dene people. The Dene call their traditional area Denendeh. The chief of K’atlodeeche, Roy Fabian, explained the meanings of ‘Dene’ and ‘Denendeh’.

“Dene means two things: ‘De’ meaning river or the radiance of the sun, and ‘Ne’ meaning earth; we believe we’re from mother earth. Our elders taught that to be Dene people, you cannot break your ties with her. We call our land Denendeh. That doesn’t mean Dene land, it means Dene with the land. In our language there’s no such thing as ownership. We need to re-educate our young people to change what’s going on in mother earth. There must be a big paradigm shift. Ninety percent of our people think they own the land, but that’s a ludicrous idea. As Dene people, the land owns us.”

by Clive Tesar

Representatives of Permanent Participant organizations made a solid impact at recent climate change negotiations in Montreal, Canada. A space was set aside by the Government of Canada for one day during the negotiations to highlight the concerns of Arctic Peoples. As “Arctic Day” started, the room was packed with people eager to see the traditional drumming and dancing of the Inuvialuit from northern Canada, members of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference. The room remained full throughout the day, as people streamed in to see the various cultural performances, including dancers and singers from the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North, drummers from the Arctic Athabaskan Council , and even an Inuit fashion show.The cultural events helped to draw people to the messages that the political Leaders had to deliver. The Leaders used speeches, as well as videos, and collections of traditional knowledge to drive across their point that climate change is already affecting the Indigenous Peoples of the Arctic, and threatens to have even stronger impacts if countries do not take firm and immediate actions to slow the rate of warming in the Arctic.
Read the rest of this entry »