EXCERPT

FOR CENTURIES, EUROPEANS SCRAMBLED to discover and claim new lands, but until a few years ago, there seemed to be no cause for quarrels in the Arctic. Then the Arctic ice began to recede, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas started a race to claim the seabed, and the prospect of Arctic oil and gas in an energy-starved world made the Arctic the final frontier for national expansion. For southerners, whose interest in the Arctic rarely extended beyond a visit to an Inuit art gallery and a warm urban viewing of “The Fast Runner,” the prospect of an Arctic free-for-all presented both an unnerving threat to our ill-defended northern border and the ultimate test of national machismo.

Over a twenty year period, as most Canadians were ignoring the Arctic, the Arctic had emerged as the geographic centre of a remarkable exercise in practical cooperation and international collaboration. Far from being the stage for an impressive international ice war, the Arctic had evolved into one of the world’s best examples of the capacity of nations to put people and the landscape ahead of national advantage and economic opportunity. In the Arctic, perhaps better than any place on earth, national governments have allowed Indigenous aspirations to over-ride the wishes of the dominant society, placed ecological protection above commercial profit, and created institutions which spanned national, geographic and cultural boundaries, drawing the region together as never before in its history. Years before people began obsessing about Russian submarines and Danish advances on Hans Island, promoters of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy, the Arctic Council and the University of the Arctic had stitched together a political and administrative trans-border network that promised to make the Far North a place of co-operation, rather than a resource and strategic battleground. The lack of southern interest, ironically, had created openings that northern and Indigenous politicians had exploited with creativity and success. The result was that despite the huge stakes in the Arctic, the potential for actual conflict between states is remote—something that stands in contrast to most regions of the world.

Canada can take only partial credit for this. The transformation began in the former Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s, where political upheaval of global significance created the platform of Circumpolar cooperation. Initial steps were very tentative – a Canada-USSR Arctic Science Program in the 1980s, a 1986 visit to Siberia by David Crombie, Canada’s Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, and a growing number of official meetings and discussions on shared northern issues. This is not, however, a tale with the usual actors – national politicians, generals or even celebrity diplomats. Bono has not shown much interest in the High Arctic and, thankfully, Paris Hilton’s desperate attempts at rehabilitation have never drawn her to Inuvik or Tromso. New players – Indigenous organizations, scientists, educators and sub-national governments – have shaped the North into a region with a powerful sense of collective identity. Far from instigating Circumpolar cooperation, national governments found themselves racing to catch up with a unique experiment in international collaboration.

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