The Inuit in Canada have had significant influence in shaping Canada’s first foreign policy on the North as well as subsequent domestic and even international policies that impact the circumpolar region. Inuit in Canada were involved in the many meetings leading up to the formation of the Arctic Council and continue to play a role with the international organization. Thanks to the recent $1 million grant to the International Policy Institute at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies from Carnegie Corporation of New York, Inuit influence in North American policy will be the focus of the 2018–19 Junior Arctic Fellows program.
The donation follows an earlier $1 million Carnegie grant that launched the International Policy Institute at the School as a platform for bringing together academic and business, nonprofit, security, and philanthropic groups located in the Pacific Northwest as a new voice in the global policymaking conversation in D.C. and elsewhere. Themes that the Institute address include the Arctic, cybersecurity, and cross-cultural literacy in religion.
The first Arctic Fellows program ran from Spring Quarter 2016 through Spring Quarter 2017. Twenty-five graduate students, including federally funded Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellows in French and Inuktitut representing the School of Education, Law, Marine and Environmental Affairs, Geography, Museology, and the Jackson School, participated in the program. The Fellows produced two video series: one that focused on Arctic Indigenous Economies in Canada, and a blog series for Arctic in Context, World Policy Institute, New York analyzing the Arctic Council as a unique international body in the twenty-first century. The Arctic Fellows program, led by Nadine Fabbi, Managing Director of the Canadian Studies Center, will focus on the influence of Inuit in Canada on domestic and international relations.