Dispute over unrecognized Inuit group halts major conference for Canadian North

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. — A 16-year-old biennial event aimed at fostering business in the country’s eastern Arctic and northern regions has been cancelled indefinitely as a dispute unfolds between Inuit and a Labrador group claiming to share their heritage.

The Northern Lights Business and Cultural Showcase is one of the largest trade shows in the country, introducing businesspeople in the rest of Canada to those in Labrador, Nunavik and Nunavut, said Julianne Griffin, chief executive of the Labrador North Chamber of Commerce.

She said the event had to be paused, however, after Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the organization representing Inuit in Canada, said it would ask its members not to participate if the NunatuKavut Community Council in Labrador was invited.

“We know that discussions need to take place between the right people at the right tables,” Griffin said in an interview Thursday. “We can only hope for the discussions to take place very soon and a resolution to come forward with those important conversations.”

The NunatuKavut Community Council, formerly the Labrador Métis Nation and the Labrador Métis Association, represents some 6,000 self-identifying Inuit in south and central Labrador. The council isn’t recognized as Inuit by any other federally recognized, rights-holding Inuit collective.

Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, known as ITK, has said the council is a “shape-shifting non-Indigenous organization” falsely taking resources from recognized Indigenous Peoples.

The Northern Lights conference is hosted by the Labrador North and Baffin regional chambers of commerce. Griffin said that after ITK sent them a letter saying it would pull out of the event if the NunatuKavut council was included, the Baffin chamber also said it could not participate.

Without a partner, Labrador North was forced to call off the 2025 conference, set to take place in Montreal in February, and pause all future events.

NunatuKavut council president Todd Russell said he was “extremely disappointed” the showcase was cancelled, and he invited ITK president Natan Obed and Johannes Lampe, president of Labrador’s Inuit Nunatsiavut government, to a discussion.

“Senseless boycotts and other exclusionary practices harm us all,” Russell wrote in a news release Wednesday. “It is only through communication and a willingness to solve problems, real or imaginary, will we be able to move forward.”

The Nunatsiavut government also does not recognize the NunatuKavut Community Council as Indigenous or Inuit.

“The Nunatsiavut government has been fully transparent about its position regarding the NCC, and it should not have come as a surprise to organizers of Northern Lights that none of Canada’s Inuit regions would participate in the 2025 event,” Lampe said in a news release Thursday.

“We would welcome the opportunity to be involved in an Indigenous and northern conference/showcase that does not include organizations claiming to be Indigenous when they are not recognized or accepted as such.”

Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami did not respond to a request for comment.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 29, 2024.

The Canadian Press