Daniel MacIsaac
Northern News Services

Inuvik ( Mar 03/00) - A group of Russian aboriginals leaders representing 11 different indigenous groups passed through Inuvik as part of their three-week Canadian tour last Monday.

Wendy Ellis, the Russian project facilitator with the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, acted as host and guide to the visitors. She said the tour was the culmination of a three-year initiative designed to expose Russian aboriginal groups to methods of organizing self-government structures and land claims as well as with basic human rights.

"One component of the project was government to government -- working out how to develop the policies," she said, "and the second was to organize for aboriginal representatives from Russia's north and northeast to come over here and see for themselves how things work."

Ellis said the trip, which included stops in Ottawa, Toronto, Niagara Falls, Calgary, Yellowknife and Montreal, was organized by both the circumpolar conference and the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, and funded by the Canadian International Development Agency.

"Our goal was to help build their capacity to strengthen their institutions and organizations," she said.

"We're also helping by providing them with equipment, and this group will pick up in Moscow on their way back home with computers, fax machines and Internet software, so that they'll be able to establish offices and, where possible, Internet communications among themselves."

Among the 13 Russian delegates was Alexander Omrypkir, president of the Association of the Indigenous Peoples of Chukotka, based in Anadyr. To an extent, Omrypkir played down the Russian aboriginal groups' ambitions in areas like self-government and resource management.

"We're not asking for a separate political process," he said. "Our country is multinational and we're not looking for economic privileges or special treatment based on our ethnic differences."

Omrypkir did express concern, however, over areas such as language and cultural preservation and employment -- areas he said receive little support in a Russia currently struggling through its own ongoing economic crisis.

"(The federal government) is busy with its own problems," he said, "and even if they're not busy, they'll come up with excuses to deal with their own problems ... the problem in Russia is that there is just not enough money in the budget to help with our problems."

Commenting on last year's relief efforts by the circumpolar conference to provide aid to three Russian aboriginal communities, Omrypkir said the effect would have been greater had more local expertise been call upon, but that the effort was nonetheless appreciated.

"It was a freebie, and anyone likes a freebie," he said, "but joking aside, the people of Kumchatka were in terrible need and the relief was a great help."

Ellis said that while the Russians' visit marks the end of the three-year project, CIDA will continue to monitor the situation and encourage communities to organize at the grassroots level.