Indigenous peoples as political actors within the Arctic Council : A case study

Abstract: Indigenous peoples as political actors in the Arctic Council is an understudied subject.Indigenous peoples have a unique status as Permanent Participants to the Arctic Council,enabling them to affect the policy-making and decisions made within the Council. There areconcerns, however, to the level of Indigenous peoples’ inclusion. Research shows that theworking relationships between the eight Arctic member states of the Council and thePermanent Participants creates dependency, among other things because the PermanentParticipants rely on funding from the member states. This in turn questions the status of thePermanent Participants, and whether they are included into the Arctic Council as independentpolitical actors. This paper aims to build upon research done by Michaela Louise Coote andMonica Tennberg, researchers whom both have contributed to this field of research.