The Race for the Arctic Is Undermining Indigenous Rights
The Arctic region is becoming a theater for competition between states over its resources and geopolitical advantages. This is having a deeply harmful impact on the indigenous peoples of the Arctic, whose way of life doesn’t fit in with state borders.
Sámi people herd reindeer in Lapland, Finland. (In Pictures Ltd. / Corbis via Getty Images)
The Russian attack on Ukraine has had major consequences thousands of miles from the battlefields. Since Russia launched its invasion in 2022, the state that contains around half of the total landmass above the Arctic Circle has been effectively excluded from the field of transnational Arctic cooperation.
Regardless of the merits of temporarily cutting Russia off, it is the Arctic’s indigenous peoples — with longer histories in the region than the states within whose borders they now find themselves — who have suffered most from the decision and from the broader Arctic fallout of the conflict.
During that time, they have been recruited for war, seen connections across state borders severed, and suffered from a “pause” of the Arctic Council, an international forum where they had fought for representation.
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