By Dana Gabriel

The U.S. and Canada share similar goals and concerns in the Arctic and are further building up their military presence in the region. With a strategic framework in place, both countries are working towards establishing a North American Arctic foreign policy. At times, Canadian and Russian rhetoric in regards to Arctic sovereignty has been reminiscent of the Cold War era. Rising tensions could further escalate the militarization of the far north. While the process to resolve territorial disputes and the scramble to secure resources has thus far been peaceful, the Arctic still remains a potential flashpoint for conflict.

By Andrew Gavin Marshall - December 18, 2012

Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper once said, “You won’t recognize Canada when I get through with it.” With multiple “free trade” agreements under way, expanded corporate rights, expropriation of vast amounts of natural resources, Canada is becoming one of the world’s foremost corporate colonies, unrecognizable from what Canadians once imagined our nation to be.

This is, for me, what it is like to have been the son of a mother who took her own life when I was very young...While I can remember everything that happened, I have spent a lifetime trying to understand why it happened. And I am no longer sure that that is the point.

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"Sadly, every person you ask from the Northern Inuit regions knows someone who has killed themselves...People you know your whole life. You grow and laugh with them and then they are not there anymore because they decide to take their own lives. The numbers are an epidemic, if these numbers existed in southern Canada, it would be a national emergency and there would be measures to address it."

- Terry Audla, President of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the National Inuit Organization in Canada

Video by the Center for American Progress courtesy of Counterpunch.

By Krystalline Kraus - May 11, 2012

Regardless of the money to be made, the climate change in the circumpolar region has had and will continue to have devastating effects on the Indigenous peoples and their traditional territories. This is as true as climate change's potential for destruction to Caribbean, African and Pacific island nations. In all cases, the negative impacts will be felt the hardest by populations that are Indigenous, non-white or from developing nations.

By Krystalline Kraus - rabble.ca

When Canadians consider the impact of climate change...we think the effects of global warming will mostly affect the northern part of our country, which is home to many isolated First Nation communities...[T]he refrain is that the land "up there" is barren and uninhabitable, that there is no one important or influential enough to care about anyway, so who cares if global warming impacts them as long it doesn't affect the micro climates around Vancouver, Ottawa or Toronto?

Friday, September 30, 2011 - Common Dreams

Two ice shelves that existed before Canada was settled by Europeans diminished significantly this northern summer, one nearly disappearing altogether, Canadian scientists say in newly published research...The loss is important as a marker of global warming, returning the Canadian Arctic to conditions that date back thousands of years, scientists say.

By Krystalline Kraus - July 25, 2011

The Dene First Nation...passed a resolution supporting British Columbia's Yinka Deneerent in their opposition to Enbridge's proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline and supporting the right for Indigenous decision making power over their territory..."More than 50 per cent of the proposed Enbridge pipeline and tanker route passes through the territories of First Nations that have banned this development according to their traditional laws. These Nations now have the support of Dene from northern Alberta to the Arctic coast."

By Krystalline Kraus - September 15, 2010

Bill 191 (Far North Act) will go for its third reading in Ontario Parliament Thursday and if passed, could radically change the government's relationship with First Nations.

With the melting of the polar ice cap and the opening of the fabled Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans for the first time in recorded history, the scramble for the Arctic - reported to contain 30 percent of the world's undiscovered natural gas and 13 percent of undiscovered oil according to last year's US Geological Society - is underway in earnest. The military value of the navigability of the passage is of an even greater and more pressing significance...

By Krystalline Kraus - June 16, 2010

A personal plea to help save the arctic -- my homeland -- and the link between arctic rights and indigenous rights.

By David Adam - Tuesday 9 December 2008

At a high-level academic conference on global warming at Exeter University this summer, climate scientist Kevin Anderson stood before his expert audience and contemplated a strange feeling. He wanted to be wrong...Anderson, an expert at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at Manchester University, was about to send the gloomiest dispatch yet from the frontline of the war against climate change.

NONDALTON, Alaska -- The gold mine proposed for this stunning open country might be the largest in North America. It would involve building the biggest dam in the world at the headwaters of the world's largest sockeye salmon fishery, which it would risk obliterating.

By Jonathan Amos | Science reporter, BBC News, San Francisco

[T]he ice-albedo feedback effect [is when] open water [absorbs] more solar radiation [than ice], which in turn leads to additional warming and further melting.

"The loss this year will precondition the ice for the same thing to happen again next year, only worse. In the end, it will just melt away quite suddenly."

The beauty of the NWT’s Upper Thelon is safe...for now. Chuck Strahl, the minister of Indian and northern affairs Canada (INAC), formally accepted the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board (Review Board) recommendation that exploration work proposed by UR-Energy be rejected without an environmental impact review.