Informit article: The cliche of resilience: Governing indigeneity in the arctic

The end of 2016 saw the publication of the Arctic Resilience Report. The report is the final product of the Arctic Resilience Assessment, a project launched by the Swedish Chairmanship of the Arctic Council, which ran from 2011 until 2013, and was preceded by the Arctic Resilience Interim Report of 2013.2 The report was written in response to the large and rapid changes said to be occurring in the Arctic: the environmental, ecological and social changes caused largely by processes occurring outside the Arctic itself – especially climate change, but also migration, resource extraction and other human activities – but which are said to portend large impacts upon the Arctic and communities living there, including, notably, indigenous peoples, whose livelihoods look set to disappear and whose places of abode will become uninhabitable as these changes occur.3 Indeed, these euphemistically described ‘changes’ represent no less than a catastrophe for many indigenous peoples, given the scale of the devastating losses they confront.