Chief Bill Erasmus looks back on 30 years of the Arctic Council in more uncertain times

As the Arctic Council approaches its 30th anniversary, it does so in a far more uncertain political environment than the one in which it was created. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has fractured cooperation among Arctic states, and more recently, tensions over Greenland have unsettled allies after repeated statements from U.S. President Donald Trump about acquiring or annexing the island.

For Chief Bill Erasmus, former national chief of the Dene Nation and international chair of the Arctic Athabaskan Council, those developments form the backdrop to a much longer story — one that stretches back to when he first entered politics in the late 1980s.

Born in 1954 and raised in Yellowknife in Canada’s Northwest Territories, Erasmus was first elected national chief of the Dene Nation in 1987 and went on to serve for nearly three decades in the role. His path into leadership, he said, was not something he initially sought.

“You know, I started as a young teenager sitting in and watching our chiefs and our leaders and getting to know the history and asking questions and doing research and feeling comfortable with issues,” he said. “I didn’t want to be a chief. I was never there to be in charge, but then people asked me to be their leader and so I had to consider.”

By the time Arctic states began negotiating what would become the Arctic Council in the mid-1990s, Erasmus was already a senior Indigenous political leader and among those pushing for permanent Indigenous seats at the table.

From his base in the territorial capital, he has spent decades pushing for Indigenous peoples to be recognized not as stakeholders, but as political actors with a rightful place in the institutions governing the Arctic.

When the Council was created in 1996, it introduced a structure unlike most international forums. Alongside the eight Arctic states, Indigenous organizations were given permanent seats, recognizing that the Arctic is not just a strategic region, but a homeland governed by peoples with their own political systems, treaties and knowledge.

“The fact that you design a body that can have us sitting at the same table, that was a big deal. We’re not just stakeholders, we’re governments, we have treaties,” Erasmus said. “For a long time, decisions were made about us, without us. This was different. We were there. We could speak. We could raise issues that mattered to our people.”

A council of consensus

At the core of the Council’s structure was consensus, a system he said reflected Indigenous governance traditions more than conventional state diplomacy.

“The states don’t make decisions by consensus,” he said. “That’s an Indigenous way of deciding. We talk things through. We keep talking until people understand what’s at stake and what the consequences are. It’s not about outvoting somebody. It’s about finding a way forward together.”

For Erasmus, that approach was not symbolic. It forced governments to listen, and it gave Indigenous organizations real influence over outcomes.

“When you work by consensus, you can’t just ignore people,” he said. “You have to hear what they’re saying. That’s what made the Council different from a lot of other international bodies.”

Cooperation with real consequences

Over time, Erasmus said, the Council proved that this model could produce practical results, not just dialogue. He pointed to the legally binding search and rescue agreement as one of the most important achievements.

“That was very important,” he said. “Because in the Arctic, if something happens, you need cooperation. The distances are huge. The conditions are harsh. No one country can handle everything alone. So having that agreement in place meant we were better prepared to respond when emergencies happened.”

For northern communities, he said, those kinds of agreements were not abstract diplomatic milestones. They were tools that could save lives and strengthen resilience across the region.

“It showed that the Council wasn’t just a place to talk,” he said. “It was a place where you could actually get things done that mattered to people on the ground.”

A global framework for Indigenous rights

Among the Council’s political milestones, Erasmus pointed to its endorsement of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), a landmark international framework recognizing Indigenous peoples’ rights to self-determination, consultation and control over their lands, resources and political futures. The declaration was the result of decades of negotiations at the United Nations, and its adoption marked a turning point in how Indigenous rights were understood in international law.

For Erasmus, the Arctic Council’s endorsement carried particular significance because it connected regional governance in the north to that broader global movement. It signaled that Arctic policy could not be separated from the political rights of the people who live there, and that decisions about development, environment and security had to be grounded in Indigenous consent and participation.

“The Arctic Council has endorsed the United Nations Declaration,” he said. “So that’s significant. It’s really game changing. Because it sets a standard. It says that Indigenous peoples have rights, and those rights have to be respected when decisions are made about our lands and our future.”

In practical terms, he said, the declaration helped shift expectations about how governments engage with Indigenous communities. It reinforced the idea that consultation was not a courtesy but a right, and that Indigenous governments were political actors with authority over their territories.

For Erasmus, the declaration ultimately reaffirmed the Council’s founding premise: that Arctic governance must be shaped not only by states, but by the peoples who live in the region and whose rights are recognized in international law.

Unprecedented situation

That cooperative model now faces its most difficult political test since the Council’s creation. For much of its existence, the Arctic was treated as a region insulated from great-power rivalry, where environmental protection, scientific cooperation and practical agreements could continue even when relations elsewhere deteriorated. That assumption has eroded in recent years.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupted the Council’s normal operations and shattered the idea that the Arctic could remain detached from global conflict. More recently, tensions over Greenland have added a new layer of uncertainty, as statements from US President Donald Trump about acquiring or annexing the island unsettled European allies and raised fundamental questions about sovereignty in the region.

For Erasmus, the significance of those remarks lies not only in their immediate diplomatic impact, but in how sharply they depart from the norms that have guided Arctic cooperation for decades. The Council was built on the premise that disputes would be managed through dialogue and consensus, not pressure or threats.

“The threat of force against Greenland is unheard of,” he said. “It’s unprecedented.”

Even so, he expressed cautious confidence that the situation would ultimately be resolved through diplomacy rather than confrontation.

“I believe at the end of the day the US will back off,” he said. “And we’ll deal with that. But it shows that things have changed. It’s not business as usual anymore.”

That shift, he suggested, makes the Council’s cooperative framework more important, not less. Climate change, infrastructure challenges and social pressures continue to affect northern communities regardless of geopolitical tensions, and the institutions designed to address those issues cannot simply be set aside.

“We still have to work together,” he said. “The issues in the Arctic don’t stop because of politics. The environment is changing. Communities are dealing with real challenges. So cooperation is still necessary.”

Passing the torch

Three decades after the Arctic Council was founded, Erasmus now speaks both as a negotiator and as a witness to its history. He was there at the beginning, pushing for Indigenous organizations to be treated not as observers, but as political actors with a rightful place at the table — as equals. As global powers once again turn their attention north, the anniversary offers a moment not only to look back at what was built, but to consider who will carry it forward.

He said the Council’s structure was never inevitable. It emerged from years of organizing, treaty work and political pressure across the Arctic, as Indigenous leaders worked to ensure their governments were recognized alongside states. He said younger leaders who will carry the work forward need to understand that history.

“It’s important for them to know the historical context,” he said. “You don’t sit at the table overnight. It took years of work, years of negotiations, to get to a place where Indigenous peoples were recognized as partners.”