Indigenous Leadership in Arctic Governance: Lessons from the Arctic Council’s Wildland Fires Initiative

Abstract

This article provides an example of how the Arctic Council (AC) has remained resilient and preserved the core norms of Arctic governance during a period of renewed great power competition by harnessing the central role of Indigenous Peoples’ organisations as Permanent Participants (PPs). Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 triggered an unprecedented crisis for the Council: the seven other Arctic states placed the AC on an open-ended ‘pause’, casting doubt on both the Council’s viability and adding fuel to the debate about Arctic Exceptionalism. Drawing on recent diplomatic developments and a case study of the Wildland Fires Initiative (WFI), it explores how Norway and the PPs – the Gwich’in Council International in particular – leveraged existing Council mechanisms in innovative ways between 2023–2025, highlighting how the norms and networks underpinning the Council retained a capacity and desire for action even when intergovernmental diplomacy was constrained. This desire and capacity for action drew from Indigenous leadership and pragmatic issue-focused cooperation, indicating that these factors remain critical to sustaining the AC and preserving the possibility of future collaboration in a more contested international order. The article argues that the Council’s resilience is not a product of insulation from wider geopolitics but rather of its ability to adapt and draw from diverse actors, multi-scalar cooperation, and the enduring relevance of shared environmental stewardship in the Arctic – all important lessons that could be applied in wider global governance.

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