Delegates of Arctic Economic Council Set Stage for Future. In a historic move at their annual meeting, the delegates of the Arctic Economic Council (AEC) adopted foundational documents that set the stage for engagement with the AEC and provide strategic direction for the organization.  Russian News Agency

 

Canadian Parliament Held Emergency Debate on Suicides in Indigenous Community. Members of Canada's House of Commons held an emergency debate Tuesday to discuss the suicide crisis in a remote indigenous community in northern Ontario as well as other aboriginal communities across the country. "This isn't just particularly about Attawapiskat, it's about who we are as Canadians and our whole nation," MP Charlie Angus, the spokesman on indigenous issues for the center-left New Democratic Party, told the Commons. Alaska Dispatch News

 

The Canadian First Nation Suicide Epidemic Has Been Generations in the Making. The Attawapiskat First Nation, or the people of the parting rocks, as they are known in their indigenous Swampy Cree language, number roughly 2,000 souls. They live on a small Indian reserve 600 miles north of the Canadian capital of Ottawa, at the mouth of James Bay's Attawapiskat River. This subarctic First Nation declared a state of emergency after 11 community members tried to take their own lives Saturday night.  Since last September, more than 100 Attawapiskat people have attempted suicide in what local MP Charlie Angus has described as a " rolling nightmare" of a winter. The ghastly toll reveals a grim reality with which a nation in the midst of a process of truth and reconciliation now must reckon. The Guardian

 

In an Empty Arctic, How to Get the Job Done? With a Drone. When the weather is bad and civilization distant, the best way to count sea lions-or survey fires or oil spills-may be an unmanned aircraft. It's hard to say what the 2,000-pound bull  Steller sea lion hauled out on a rocky shore in the far western Aleutians thought about the strange object hovering 150 feet above him. An odd bird? The world's largest mosquito? Whatever it was, he paid it no mind-and that's just what the people who were piloting the small drone, an APH-22 hexacopter, had hoped for. National Geographic

 

Uncharted Arctic Waters: A New Opportunity for Exploitation, or Conservation? When thick sheets of sea ice began melting in the Arctic waters around Svalbard, Norway, a few years ago, a new expanse of sparkling blue sea opened up. As climate change continues to drive ice melt here on the previously untouched waters of the North Barents Sea, what many ocean conservationists consider to be unwelcome guests are starting to arrive in droves: trawling vessels. And this trend toward more open sea and more ship traffic could have a harmful affect on the North Barents Sea ecosystem, according to Greenpeace. The conservation group is so worried about the detrimental effects of bottom trawling in the waters near Svalbard that they launched their own investigation into commercial fishing practices in the region. National Geographic