Ernerk was invited to Siberia to meet with aboriginal and government leaders to discuss how to protect and preserve aboriginal rights, something that so far has not been recognized by the Russian government.

It's a difficult task, said Ernerk, considering how poverty-stricken the people are and how low life-expectancy is. In some parts the average aboriginal man lives only 45 years.

Housing conditions are also extremely poor, towns have only three hours of electricity a day and families have to work hard at such jobs as reindeer herding, fishing and hunting, often with little pay.

"I was really devastated by the whole site of the community because it brought me back to my own days in Repulse Bay, 30, 40 years ago, where we had absolutely nothing," said Ernerk.

"And yet, these people had a lot of spirit. They are living the traditional life everywhere in the three regions we visited."

Looking at the aboriginals of Russia, Ernerk said it would be difficult to distinguish them from Inuit of Nunavut. Their clothing is almost the same with the exception of a few different designs and they enjoy many of the same traditional activities like drum dancing and singing.

"When I was there, I had a feeling it went back 10,000 years and I made a spiritual connection to their people because of the way they act, the way they approached me, the way they smiled and just the way they talked."

Russian aboriginals may look and practice similar traditions as Nunavut aboriginals but they are not quite as unified as Northern Inuit.

"They don't have an aboriginal right." said Ernerk.

While in Russia, he said the Canadian and Russian governments launched the first stage of a program to empower Russian aboriginals and to establish them as a native people.

It's called the Institution Building for Northern Russian Indigenous Peoples' Project.

Funding for the project came from the Canadian International Development Agency with guidance from The Inuit Circumpolar Conference, the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and Russia's State Committee of the Russian Federation on the Development of the North, Russia's DIAND equivalent.

At the end of the three-year project, 30 Russian aboriginals (10 a year) will train inside Canada's aboriginal agencies, including those in Rankin Inlet and Iqaluit. They will follow land claims discussions and sit in on talks concerning the establishment of the Nunavut government.

At the end of the year they go back to their communities and help in establishing their own regional organizations and institutions.

"There's a lot of work to be done to get these institutions in place. It's going to have to be that both the Russian and Canadian governments will have to work really, really hard, cooperatively," Ernerk said.

With the information Canada's delegates provided, Russian officials and aboriginal people can decide on how to go about drawing up a land claim, establishing Inuit institutions and eventually work towards unifying their people.

"We have to keep in mind they are 30 to 35 years behind. We started in the 1970s when we found our rights were being taken away by the Canadian government, so we established our own aboriginal organizations here in Canada and now they work to benefit all the Inuit of Canada," he said.

"Let's hope our visit is going to give them a certain amount of hope as fellow aboriginal people."