About Us
The WAGE Circumpolar Partnership (WAGE: Wealth of the Arctic Group of Experts) grew out of the convergence of academics and members of Indigenous and governmental organizations who wanted to respond to calls voiced at the Arctic Council and other organizations for states to tackle the inequalities particularly affecting Indigenous Peoples and launch a fundamental transformation in the distribution of wealth produced in the Arctic.
From the outset of the group's discussions, partners from both the research community and the community of practitioners clearly identified the need to understand the factors associated with these inequalities and the desire to combat them. They adhere to the priorities expressed in the Arctic and Northern Policy Framework, such as the fight against inequality as a priority for action, and see research and international collaboration as a way to clarify and inform public policies.
The Partnership intends to answer the following general questions: How can we explain the fact that so much wealth for the world economy is produced in the Arctic while so much inequality exists there? How is the distribution of wealth in the Arctic characterized? What are the dynamics involved in the distribution of wealth? What approaches tend to favour a fairer distribution of wealth in these northern societies?
To this end, the Partnership has the following objectives:
- To DESCRIBE the current state of the inequalities, as well as the factors and practices associated with them;
- To understand and EXPLAIN recent trends affecting inequalities; and
- To alter these trends in order to help bring about a future in the Arctic where inequalities would be reduced by IMAGINING, through knowledge mobilization, changes to institutional processes and controls that participate in the social production of inequalities.
The WAGE Circumpolar Partnership is supported with a partnership grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
The WAGE Circumpolar Partnership can also count on financial support from Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada
The WAGE Circumpolar Partnership is a major research initiative of the Louis-Edmond-Hamelin Chair affiliated with the University of the Arctic
