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Sunday 05.02.2012

Inuit should look to new markets for seal products

Faced with a ban in the European Union, Nunavut Premier Eva Aariak says now that the ban is official, Inuit must find new ways to promote their seal pelts and other products.

The European Union's new ban on the import of seal products should move Inuit sealers in Canada to consider new markets, including here at home, said Nunavut's premier.

Eva Aariak said she is not pleased with the EU's move Monday to approve the ban, which applies to fur pelts, meat, and other products and processed goods derived from seals.

The ban, which will take effect in all 27 EU countries in October, does provide a limited exemption for products coming from Inuit traditional hunts in Canada, Russia, Greenland and Alaska.

But Inuit sealers in Canada, including those in Nunavut, have said the ban itself would seriously harm their industry regardless of whether or not exemptions exist.

Aariak told CBC News now that the ban is official, Inuit must find new ways to promote their seal pelts and other products, such as by developing markets elsewhere.

"We shouldn't stop our fight in supporting the selling of seal pelts and seal hunting in our territory," Aariak told CBC News on Monday.

"We need to start looking at other opportunities, even looking at other countries, as well as looking at our own country in selling seal products."

Aariak pointed out that Canada could be a good market, given its winter climate.

"[The] Canadian climate is very cold in the winter time, no matter where you are — in varying degrees, of course — so I'm sure there would be, you know, an opportunity to … look into that," she said.

Paul Kaludjak, president of Inuit land-claims organization Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., said Inuit from around the circumpolar world will work together, through the Inuit Circumpolar Council, to make their views known.

"We always pull together and make sure that we make people aware [of] who we are and what kind of tradition we have," Kaludjak said.

"No doubt through ICC we will lobby through that way as well, to make sure that people are aware that we don't agree with these bans and that they affect us negatively."