Nome to host 2030 Inuit Circumpolar Council General Assembly

About 400 Inuit delegates, youth representatives, Elders and observers will come to Nome in 2030 for four days of debate and voting on the council's priorities, the first time the Inuit Circumpolar Council General Assembly has met there since 1995.

Kawerak, Inc., the tribal consortium for the Bering Strait region, and Bering Straits Native Corporation announced Thursday they will co-host the 16th General Assembly. Delegates representing Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Chukotka will vote on priorities including food security, climate change, Arctic sovereignty and language protection.

Frank Katchatag, co-chair of the Kawerak board, said the gathering is a chance to "advance our collective sovereignty, protect our Arctic waters, and assert food security." Bering Straits Native Corporation president Cindy Towarak Massie framed it as Inuit from across the Arctic meeting on their own homelands.

Chukotka is the part that carries weight here. It sits directly across the Bering Strait from Nome, and a 1989 bilateral agreement allows qualifying Indigenous residents to travel without Russian visas to designated districts for up to 90 days. Relatives from Chukotka were among those welcomed at this year's assembly in Iqaluit.

That assembly, held in July in Nunavut, is where the hosting decision was made. Delegates adopted the 2026 Iqaluit Declaration, which guides the council's work through 2030 and states that Inuit "again find ourselves in an unstable geopolitical time," calling on states to allow free movement for Inuit across their homeland. They also elected Aluki Kotierk, who chairs the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, as chair for the next four years.

No venue or hosting cost has been announced.