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September 5, 2003

Poor Aqpik harvest in Finland

SIKU CIRCUMPOLAR NEWS SERVICE

The Finnish food industry may stop producing some items that contain cloudberries, or aqpiks, this year after a poor harvest has made the berries too expensive.

Cloudberry-pickers were paid a minimum of 10 euros ($14) per kilogram this year.

Cloudberries are difficult to cultivate as the pistil and stamens are usually in different plants. In other words, there must be both types present in each area. Also, insects are required for the pollination, and insects are not active in cold weather.

But some Finnish farms are doing their best to cultivate the berries and bring their price down. A few farms are already growing cloudberry seedlings on marshy fields, and the first harvest should be available for market in a couple of years.

This could guarantee the future supply and stable price of the berries.

Thule pollution limited

Contaminants are present in the waters near the Thule Air Base in northern Greenland but they are limited to a small area, according to a recently published report by the Danish Environmental Research Institute.

The report, which examined 486 samples from the area north of the Dundas peninsula, concluded there is a high level of PCB contamination in clams in the area. In fact, the level of PCB contamination is two to 30 times higher than normal.

However, the study maintains that the impact of the contamination is limited to an area five to 10 kilometres from the base. It says the higher concentrations won't be found in fish or marine mammals that are normally reserved for human consumption.

"Elevated PCB concentrations at Thule Air Base are not likely to affect the concentrations in seals, because their feeding areas are large and because they feed on a variety of species," it says.

Nunatsiavummiut sign land claim deal

SIKU CIRCUMPOLAR NEWS SERVICE

Labrador Inuit signed a $300-million land claim deal last Friday, creating a self-governing region and ending more than 25 years of negotiations.

It is the last land claim agreement to be signed by an Inuit region in Canada. Highlights include:

• $140 million cash to the Labrador Inuit Association.
• $156 million in implementation funds and funding for education, health and social programs.
• Establishment of a 72,500-kilometre Nunatsiavut region where Inuit will have "priority harvesting rights" with 15,800 square kilometres of Inuit-owned lands.
• Creation of the Torngat Mountain National Park Reserve.
• Creation of self-governing authority, the Inuit Central Government, in Hopedale and Nain.

The implementation of the deal will start in early 2004.

Thule case dropped

Thule hunters had to shelve their case against the Danish government this week because their lawyer says he can't afford to go on.

Christian Harlang represented Hingitaq 53, the group of 187 hunters who were displaced to Qaanaaq, Greenland, in 1953 for the construction of the Thule Air Base.

He was representing the hunters in their efforts to settle ownership of the expropriated land and the issue of hunting rights.

But Harlang said he couldn't afford to represent the hunters any longer, pointing out the Crown lawyer received three times as much money for legal expenses than he did.

Hingitaq 53 issued a statement saying it was "intolerable" that their lawyer was given such inadequate resources.

"Of course we don't wish that the Thule case is going to be stopped. But we don't have anything else to do now," Ussarqak Qujaukitsoq, chairman of Hingitaq 53, told Greenland's Atuagagdliutit newspaper. "We cannot afford to keep him, so we had to stop it. And we are very sad about it."

Aqqaluk Lynge, vice-president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, is furious. He plans to ask the executive of the home rule government to ask the Supreme Court for equal treatment for lawyers in the Thule case.

Life of Inuit activist Ingmar Egede celebrated in Nuuk

SIKU CIRCUMPOLAR NEWS

Ingmar Egede, 1930-2003 (FILE PHOTO)

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Ingmar Egede, a former vice-president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, died on Aug. 9 at the age of 73 after a long struggle against cancer.

Egede was a member of ICC's executive council from 1989-92 and vice-president of ICC from 1992-95.

Egede, an educator, psychologist and advocate for indigenous peoples, was involved in promoting education throughout the Arctic. He spearheaded the creation of the International Training Center for Indigenous Peoples, ITCIP, in Greenland.

Egede was also a member of the board of the University of the Arctic.

"To honor his life and his memory we, the Greenlandic society and the world community, will continue the cooperation amongst the indigenous peoples in his name," said the ICC'S vice-president, Aqqaluk Lynge.

Egede died on the United Nation's day for the world's Indigenous Peoples, Aug. 9. His funeral took place last Thursday in Nuuk.

"He was recognized by both Greenlanders and others around the world for his dedication to the rights of indigenous peoples. All those who knew him will mourn him dearly," reads the ITCIP Web site. "The lives of many who did not know him, have been bettered in some way, because of him."

Donations in his memory can be made to ITCIP, P.O. Box 901, 3900 Nuuk, Greenland.

Listening for illegal nuclear tests

The Danish Metereological Institute is now part of an international network that is actively tracing illegal nuclear weapons testing.

The station is located near Qaanaaq in northern Greenland. It uses two kilometers of pipeline in eight star-shaped pipe systems to register low-frequency pressure waves in the atmosphere. By comparing signals from several measuring points, the station can determine the direction of the pressure waves' source.

Data from more than 300 measuring stations is sent to Vienna, Austria where officials can locate the source of atmospheric or underground testing.

ICC and IYI recognize U.N. Indigenous Day

On Aug. 9, in Nuuk, the Inuit Circumpolar Conference and Inuit Youth International heralded the United Nation's Indigenous Day with a festival of traditional activities and music.

Around 200 people attended what ICC called a "family gathering" where the art of sewing and knowledge of kayaking were showcased.

Buses were chartered to bring people from downtown Nuuk to Aanaas House near the Nuuk Airport.

The group Appa' Papii also performed with drums.

Greenpeace on its way to Iceland

SIKU CIRCUMPOLAR NEWS

The Rainbow Warrior, the flagship of the environmental group, Greenpeace, is being sent to Iceland to protest the country's resumption of whaling.

Iceland broke a 17-year moratorium on whaling this month when it started hunting minke whales for "scientific purposes."

The Rainbow Warrior was in the Mediterranean on its way to Greece when it received the call to chart a course to Iceland.

Geld Leipold, head of Greenpeace, who is expected to be on board the Rainbow Warrior, hopes to meet with Árni Matthíasson, Iceland's minister of fisheries.

Matthíasson has said Iceland's "interests are better served with whaling than without it."

U.S. lifts ban on wild meat

Sales of Nunavut meat to the U.S. can resume, now that the U.S. government has partially re-opened its border to Canadian beef producers, as well as to Nunavut caribou and muskox meat producers.

The ban affected two small businesses owned by the government-subsidized Nunavut Development Corporation - Kivalliq Arctic Foods in Rankin Inlet and Kitikmeot Foods in Cambridge Bay. The government estimates the U.S. import ban threatened about $500,000 worth of country food exports.

Premier Paul Okalik met recently with Paul Cellucci, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, to discuss the ban and explain why Nunavut game meat should be treated differently than southern beef.

The U.S. imposed the ban on all Canadian ruminant products and byproducts in May, following the discovery of a case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, on a farm in Alberta.

Because caribou and muskox are both ruminants, that is, animals with multiple stomachs, the export of these meats was included in the ban.

All caribou and muskox processed in Nunavut is harvested from wild populations that are isolated and have no exposure to animals such as cows, goats and sheep.

August 15, 2003

GN seeks feedback on Inuktitut terminology

Nunavut's department of culture, language, elders and youth would like feedback on terms recommended by interpreters and translators, language professionals and elders who met to develop Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun words and expressions used in collecting and reporting on statistics.

The GN would like feedback from language professionals and the public as well as from elder and youth committees. Staff at the GN's language bureau will see how well the terms work in translating actual documents dealing with statistics.

If the recommended terms stand the test, they will be added to Asuilaak, the Nunavut living dictionary (www.asuilaak.ca). The Department of Culture, Language, Elders and Youth will print and distribute glossaries of these terms to the public once they have been finalized.

This was the second terminology workshop held this year. A similar workshop dealing with financial terminology was held in May in Iqaluit. The recommendations of that workshop are still under review. The department will continue to host terminology workshops and has started planning the next one, which will take place sometime in October.

The recommended terminology can be viewed on the governments website at www.gov.nu.ca/Nunavut/stw.html.

August 15, 2003

Bumper Aqpik crop in Norway

Millions of orange cloudberries (aqpiks) are ripening in Norway, and experts say it may be the best cloudberry season in decades.

The berries are considered a delicacy in Norway. Shops in Oslo sell them for as much as $30 a box, but prices may drop this year, given reports of the berries' abundance.

"I've never seen so many cloudberries as I have this year, and I've lived here for 45 years," 70-year old Else Skinnarland, a northern resident, told the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten.

Some berry lovers have reportedly picked up to 20 kg in just one day.

August 15, 2003

Greenland backs down on bird-hunt quotas

The Greenland home rule government has decided to allow hunting of common eider and guillemot during their breeding seasons. This new decision replaces the 2001 Bird Protection Act, which set limits on when the birds can be harvested.

Eiders in West Greenland have declined by about 80 per cent over the past 40 years, while some colonies of guillemots have dropped drastically over the same period.

An awareness campaign called "Tulugaq" was supposed to sensitize Greenlandic hunters and the population at large to the need for hunting regulations.

"Apparently, the campaign hasn't reached either the new government or the fishers' and hunters' organization, KNAPK, as the new government decision to allow hunting of the declining bird species during the breeding season was passed through parliament allegedly as a result of pressure from KNAPK," says the World Wildlife Federation's Arctic Bulletin.

August 15, 2003

Doubt cast on Bering Strait route

The journal Science reports that an archaeological site in Siberia that was thought to be the original jumping off point for North America's first residents heading to Alaska is actually much younger than previously believed.

This new information shakes the theory that the first North Americans migrated over the Bering Strait during the final cold snap of the last great ice age some 17,000 year ago.

Using radiocarbon dating, scientists found that the Ushki site in northeastern Russia, appears to be about 13,000 years old - 4,000 years younger than originally thought.

The new date places the Ushki settlement in the same time period as the Clovis site, an ancient community found in New Mexico. This means it's highly unlikely that people could have travelled the thousands of miles from Siberia in such a short period.

Most scientists have accepted the idea that the first North Americans came across the Bering land bridge, a strip of land that is believed to have linked Russia to the United States between 10,000 to 18,000 years ago.

A relatively new idea is that these first arrivals may have used boats to cross from Europe, entering North America or even from across the Pacific Ocean to North America around 20,000 years ago.

New genetic research also shows that humans have been in America for at least 20,000 years.

August 15, 2003

Iceland to resume whaling this month

Last week, Iceland's minister of fisheries announced that Iceland will begin its scientific hunt of minke whales later this month.

The quota for August and September will be 38 whales. The plan is to hunt a total of 100 minke whales, 100 fin whales and 50 sei whales over the next two years.

The main objective of its hunt is to gain knowledge on the role that minke whales have in the marine ecosystem as well as their interaction with fish stocks.

The head of Ocean Harvest, an organisation working for the sustainable use of whales, Jon Gunnarsson, applauded Iceland's resumption of whaling.

"This is a positive move for nations who are committed to the conservation and sustainable use of whale resources for food. Iceland has always been, and always will be, a whaling nation. The fact that our pause in whaling is now coming to a halt is good," he said.

The Scientific Committee of the IWC agreed that there is a population of about 43,000 minke whales in Icelandic waters, and that a take of 100 animals per year is unlikely to have a significant impact on that population.

Iceland stopped catching minke whales in 1986, when the moratorium on commercial whaling came into force. However, it continued to take fin and sei whales for scientific purposes until 1989.

"There will probably be an outcry by animal rights activists against Iceland, saying that this move will tarnish Iceland's image abroad, that Icelandic trade will suffer and that tourists will stop visiting the country. Experience shows that there is nothing to fear - the outcry will last for only a short period and this will work out fine," said Rune Frøvik, the secretary of the whaling lobby group, High North Alliance.

However, some whale-watching company owners fear that the 65,000 tourists who go whale-watching in Iceland will go elsewhere and the $8 million industry will collapse.

"There is simply no evidence that whaling and whale-watching can co-exist as many politicians have been claiming," one company owner told the Arctic Bulletin of the World Wildlife Federation.

August 15, 2003

Undersea volcanoe towers over Alaska seabed

Scientists surveying deep coral habitat in the Aleutian Chain have discovered and mapped the region's first confirmed undersea volcano, a medium-sized cone, six kilometers across at the base.

The volcano rises more than 600 metres from the ocean floor. The black lava rock of what may become the next Aleutian island reaches relatively close to the surface, and a strong eruption with lots of lava could push above the waves and create a new island.

An Aleut language expert is consulting with native elders for an appropriate name.

August 8, 2003

Heat wave hits circumpolar north

SIKU CIRCUMPOLAR NEWS SERVICE

Residents of northern Norway and Finland have been sweltering this summer during one of the hottest seasons on record.

The Norwegian coastal town of Bergen has had its warmest summer since 1925, with an average July temperature of 18 degrees Celsius. So much warmth built up in Norway during July that more "tropenetter" (tropical nights) are in the cards, says the Aftenposten newspaper.

Norwegians categorize a "tropical night" as one in which the temperature doesn't go below 20 C . There have been 24 of them so far this summer.

Meanwhile, the water in Alta, Norway, a seaside town far above the Arctic Circle, has acquired a bright turquoise colour, similar to the colour usually seen in tropical waters. Researchers attribute the phenomenon to tiny plankton plants that have multiplied in the hot weather.

In Finland, there have been only a couple of cool days since a heat wave began in mid-July. Last week, temperatures rose to more than 30 C in many parts of Finland. July recorded 18 consecutive days of temperatures above 25 C.

The heat wave has had some negative consequences - more than 45 people have died from drowning.

Two weeks ago a tramway driver in the capital city of Helsinki was overcome by the heat, then passed out and collided with a motorcycle. The motorcyclist was killed, and the tram derailed and crashed into the wall of a major downtown department store.

Dr. Juha Alihanka of Helsinki's Sleep Clinic recommended some tricks to help people get to sleep in hot weather:

"I would not consider a couple of cold beers and sex a bad idea," he told the Helsingin Sanomat.

August 8, 2003

Amchitka workers question compensation

In the two years since a U.S. federal compensation program began, more than $19 million has been paid to people who fell ill or died after working in atomic bomb programs on Amchitka Island.

Last week, more than 70 people showed up at a local union hall to question the panel of experts about such topics as workers' compensation, pharmacy bills and the search for records.

Amchitka, a small island near the tip of the Aleutian Chain, was the site of three nuclear tests in the 1960s and 1970s, including the largest underground blast ever conducted in the U.S. After the first test, in 1965, radiation seeped out of the surface and into the ground water. A second explosion, in 1969, was even bigger, though radiation was never measured above ground.

The third test, called Cannikin, required drilling a 10-foot-diameter hole more than a mile deep. Miners were lowered daily to cut through the well casing and create a 52-foot-diameter cavity in the rock. Temperatures "in the hole" ran as high as 120 degrees, the humidity was 100 per cent and fires occasionally ignited.

Over the years, drill operators, miners, cooks and others fell ill or died from a variety of diseases. But not until 2000 were Amchitka employees allowed to participate in an existing federal compensation program for workers at other nuclear sites, the Anchorage Daily News reports.

Certain Amchitka workers automatically qualify for a $150,000 compensation award, plus free medical care. They must have worked on the island between 1965 and 1974 and have developed any of two dozen cancers or lung diseases. The first received checks in early 2002.

Of the 309 Amchitka cases filed, 128 have been approved, according to the Anchorage Daily News.

August 8, 2003

Russian prostitution down in Finland?

Finland's National Bureau of Investigation says Russian-based prostitution has gone down in Lapland.

Two years ago, an estimated 50 to 60 women crossed the border every week to work in the sex trade, and minibuses used to arrive daily with women carrying large numbers of condoms, police say. Now only an estimated 10 to 20 arrive every week to work as prostitutes in Finland's north.

The purchase and sale of sex are not crimes in Finland.

But police in the northern community of Saariselka recently confronted a group of "tourists" from Russia who were selling alcohol, tobacco and sex. According to a local police chief, their activities were so open that a small boy was overheard asking, "What are those people doing in the bush?"

The "tourists" told police that they had come to Finland to pick berries. But one woman had offered to pay a house call and deliver sex services for only 10 euros - about $13.

August 8, 2003

New Web site on Arctic health

A new Arctic Health Web site is available at www.arctichealth.org. The U.S. site provides access to health information from hundreds of local, state, national, and international agencies, as well as from professional societies and universities around the world.

Sponsored by Alaska's National Library of Medicine's Division of Specialized Information Services and maintained by the University of Alaska Anchorage's Health Sciences Information Service, the site provides information on the Arctic environment and health of northern peoples.

August 8, 2003

Greenland star draws 50,000 in Copenhagen

A huge crowd turned out at the Tivoli amusement park in downtown Copenhagen, Denmark, last week for a performance headlining popular Greenlandic singer Julie Berthelsen.

Every year on Aug. 1, the 10,000 Greenlanders who live in Denmark and the many visitors from Greenland who are in Denmark meet at Tivoli for a special "Greenland Day."

Last year, 36,000 people came to Tivoli, but this year's attendance broke records, and Greenlanders who wanted meet their families and friends couldn't even find each other.

That's because not only Greenlanders came out in droves to listen to Greenlandic stars. Berthelsen has become a hot commodity in Denmark ever since she placed in a competition similar to "Canadian Idol."

During the day, a Greenlandic Santa Claus greeted Danish kids and Greenlandic artists sold their handicrafts along one of the promenades. Five restaurants in Tivoli offered Greenlandic food in their menus, and Greenland/Danish musicians performed during the afternoon and evening. There was even an ice sculpture on hand - much to the surprise of visitors from all over the world.

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