Greenland hunters want more money for sealskin
Greenlandic hunters who make a living from selling sealskins will soon earn even more money for their pelts.
In December, KNAPK (Greenland’s hunters and fishermen’s association) and Greenland Skin Buyers agreed on new, higher prices for sealskin.
As of Jan. 1., a top-quality dried sealskin will sell for 440 Kroner ($88), a second-grade skin will command 300 Kroner ($60), while a fresh skin will go for 205 Kroner ($41).
Sealskin prices will rise again when KNAPK’s request for a subsidy of up to $12 per skin is approved.
Michael Kollgaard Nielsen, director of the Great Greenland fur company, said his company needs about 90,000 skins this year. Last year, Great Greenland bought 86,000 sealskins.
Finland hosts conference on gender equality and women in the Arctic
A conference on women in the Arctic will take place from Aug. 4 to 6 in Saariselkä, a tundra resort village in northern Finland.
The Arctic Council, the Nordic Council of Ministers and Finland, the Arctic Council’s host nation, are organizing the conference, called Taking Wing.
The conference will look at women and work as well as human rights issues in the Arctic from a woman’s point of view.
The gathering is limited to 200 participants, including representatives of the Arctic Council member states, permanent participants and observers or of indigenous people’s organizations, national and regional governments and research institutions.
For more information on how to participate or submit papers, visit www.arctic-council.org/ or contact conference coordinator Laura Tohka by e-mail: laura.tohka@uta.fi or, in Nunavut, call Mary Ellen Thomas, manager of the Nunavut Research Institute, at (867) 979-4681, before Feb. 15.
Housing crisis growing in Greenland
According to the Greenlandic radio network KNR, the long waiting list for housing in Greenland is getting even longer.
There are now 4,250 people waiting for housing in Greenland municipalities, some of whom will wait for more than 10 years before finding a place to live.
The number of people waiting for housing has gone up by 465 since last year. About half of those on the list were born between 1967 and 1983. When younger Greenlanders start to look for housing, the INI [the Greenland Housing Company] expects the need for housing to rise even further.
In Nuuk alone, some 2,000 people are waiting for housing, while Sisimiut’s list has more than 500 names.
Even the smaller municipalities have waiting lists for housing. In Narsaq, there are 122 names on waiting the list, while in the eastern Greenland community of Tasiilaq, about 100 people are still waiting for housing.
Barrow welcomes back the sun
This week, the residents of Barrow, Alaska, greeted the sun’s return after after 66 days. To honour the occasion, tacos at Pepe’s North of the Border restaurant, normally $3 to $3.50, sold for $1.02 from noon to 2 p.m.
Children at the Ipalook Elementary School drew suns and wrote about the sunrise, while the three- to four-year-olds had a "Welcome Back to the Sun" luau, principal Glenn Olson told the Anchorage Daily News.
The sun actually rose for an hour and 15 minutes, setting at 2:17 p.m. On May 10, the sun will rise again and won’t set until Aug. 2.
"By the end of the month, we hit 14 minutes of daily gain," said Donavon Price, head of the National Weather Service’s station at Barrow. "It will be a 10-minute gain for most of the rest of the time until we’re nearing the point in May where it’s up all the time."
ICC president appoints goodwill ambassador
Aqqaluk Lynge, president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, has appointed a former member of Danish parliament, Ellen Kristensen of Greenland to serve as a goodwill ambassador for ICC.
Kristensen will represent ICC’s interests in the Danish government and lobby various political parties in Danish Parliament.
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