Thank you. I will begin by giving a short background history of myself and the AAC. I will then provide you with a little bit of information on some of the work of the AAC and the connections to our community and the circumpolar regions.
I come from a small community in the northern regions of Yukon Territory. I was raised by my grandfather, Lazarus Charlie, in Old Crow, Yukon. Our community has been quite isolated. To this day, it is isolated. We are a fly-in only community.
When I was growing up, we were raised without any type of plumbing or running water, and the main staple of our diet was the Porcupine caribou herd. We had that for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It provided our clothing. My grandfather was born and raised out on the land, and he worked with archaeologists for many years, helping them to understand the region in Old Crow.
I began my work with the Arctic Council back in 1999. At that time, I worked for a program called the northern contaminants program in Whitehorse. We would be provided the opportunity to attend some meetings of the Arctic monitoring assessment program, which is a working group of the Arctic Council. Basically, that's how we got started with the Arctic Council work here in Canada.
Over the years, we have really tried to connect our communities to the work of the Arctic Council through the working groups. It's been quite a long learning process for us. Our communities are very small and they have to deal with many issues.
One of the highlights of doing this type of work is being able to connect our communities with other circumpolar communities that have similar issues and stories. They have projects they share with us, and the results. Sometimes we try to emulate and connect with these different projects in various regions.
One of the first permanent participants of the Arctic Council to which we did connect was RAIPON. RAIPON is situated in Moscow. There are over 30 indigenous peoples that are part of RAIPON.
When we first made a connection, we were invited to one of their congresses. We brought some of our leaders to Moscow. For many of them, it was the first time they had travelled outside of their region. It really opened our eyes to the importance of making these connections and trying to do work in light of all the changes that are taking place in our region, like climate change.
There's a lot of in-migration of people from different parts of Canada and the world. We see new species coming into our regions, and everything seems to be going a lot faster, yet we are not quite keeping up with some of the changes.