Mobilizing Indigenous Knowledge for Emergency Management in the Arctic

Running from March 19th – 20th 2025, ICC worked collectively and in cooperation with its fellow Permanent Participants (PP) and built on the intent laid out within ICC’s Arctic Council Position Paper (2024). Assembled session attendees discussed and provided input on what the mobilizing of Indigenous Knowledge (IK) means in an Arctic emergency management context.

The IKMS was broken up over two days, with two 45-minute sessions per day. The session was organized around four time slots that allowed for a progressing discussion: introduction and contextual framing; breakout sessions; plenary presentations on discussion; and plenary discussion and next steps.

The four thematic breakout sessions focused on the following themes:

• United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) implementation within the EPPR and broader Arctic emergency management space

• Mental Health and psychosocial impacts on Volunteer Search and Rescue

• Indigenous Data Governance and Sovereignty implications in Emergency Management

• Case study and overview of the Inuvialuit Settlement Region’s Cruise Ship Management Plan

ICC was thankful to work closely with both the Saami Council on Mental Health and psychosocial impacts, and the Arctic Athabaskan Council on UNDRIP implementation, both organizations taking the lead in their respective breakout sessions.

Conference goers heard that a focus on implementing UNDRIP and factoring in mental health support before, during, and after emergency situations was critical to supporting emergency management and response situations. Further, the holding of Indigenous sharing circles to inform that support, along with the continued development of networks within existing emergency management structures are key deliverables to action when seeking to mobilize Indigenous Knowledge. While ongoing funding needs to be sought, session participants, including Permanent Participants, Arctic State delegations and EPPR representatives, saw the value in continuing and expanding the IKMS format.

The thematic focus of the IKMS on emergency management allowed for greater collaboration with Arctic Council partners and stakeholders responsible for the Agreement on Cooperation on Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue in the Arctic (Arctic SAR Agreement) and the Agreement on Cooperation on Marine Oil Pollution Preparedness and Response in the Arctic (MOSPA) implementation. This helped ensure that IK was being discussed and shared as a key knowledge system to expand upon within the EPPR space, and in the Arctic Council more broadly.

Indigenous Knowledge Mobilization remains an ongoing project within EPPR, and ICC thanks their Permanent Participant colleagues, EPPR, Arctic States and the conference attendees present for this good discussion and opportunities to move the work detailed in this report forward. ICC and EPPR look forward to working with them to ensure the mobilization of Indigenous Knowledge is a top priority across the Arctic Council. This report is presented as a tool to help lead that effort.