Inuit Circumpolar Council gets new Alaska president and vice president

The Inuit Circumpolar Council’s Alaska branch has new leadership, the organization announced on Tuesday.

Marie KasaNnaaluk Greene, a former chief executive of NANA Regional Corp., is the new president, and Nicole Kannik Paniġiuq “Kanayurak” Wojciechowski is the new vice president, the organization said.

The ICC represents Inuit people in Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Russia’s Chukotka region at the Arctic Council, which includes eight countries that work on Arctic issues together.

Greene is from Deering and, in addition to her work at NANA, has served on several boards and was recently elected to the Kotzebue Tribal Council. Wojciechowski, from Utqiagvik, is the deputy director of wildlife management for the North Slope Borough and has focused on combining Indigenous knowledge with Western science to ensure sustainable harvests of fish and wildlife, ICC-Alaska said in its statement.

Both Greene and Wojciechowski have several years of experience working with ICC. They succeed Jimmy Stotts, a longtime leader of the organization in Alaska, and of the Alaska branch, and Vera Kingeekuk Metcalf, who has served as ICC-Alaska’s vice president while also serving on the organization’s executive committee.

Stotts, from Utqiagvik, has been involved with ICC for decades and first represented Alaska on the international council in 1980. Metcalf, from the village of Savoonga on St. Lawrence Island, is director of the Alaska Eskimo Walrus Commission.

As in Alaska, the other three branches have their own leadership, all of which are united through an international structure.

The Alaska branch represents Inupiat and Yup’ik people of northern and western Alaska.

Dalee Sambo Dorough of Alaska recently ended her four-year term as the ICC’s international chair, passing on that role at the organization’s July general assembly to Sara Olsvig of Greenland.

ICC is one of the six permanent participants at the eight-nation Arctic Council. The permanent participants represent Indigenous peoples whose homelands cross borders. It also has formal status with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the International Maritime Organization.

Among the ICC’s international work is a focus on elevating Indigenous knowledge. The ICC recently released a set of protocols to guide scientists’’ and industries’ engagement with Inuit communities.

ICC-Alaska has also placed a strong focus on food sovereignty and security, which is one of six priorities in the organization’s 2018-2022 strategic plan.

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