{"id":6853,"date":"2025-07-19T01:13:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T01:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/6853\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T01:13:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T01:13:09","slug":"itk-will-not-attend-meeting-with-premiers-citing-presence-of-fraudulent-collectives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/6853\/","title":{"rendered":"ITK will not attend meeting with premiers, citing presence of \u2018fraudulent collectives\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

National Inuit organization declines invitation for 3-day meeting this week in Huntsville, Ont.<\/p>\n

Inuit Tapariit Kanatami has declined an invitation to attend a meeting between national Indigenous leaders and premiers of Canada\u2019s provinces and territories being held in Huntsville, Ont., this week, saying non-rights-holding groups will also be attending.<\/p>\n

The three-day meeting starts July 21 and includes all 13 provincial and territorial premiers and \u201cfollows a pattern of the Council of the Federation to include organizations that represent fraudulent collectives that falsely claim to represent Inuit,\u201d said an ITK news release issued Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe continue to encourage Canada\u2019s premiers to respect Inuit democratic governance, our constitutional rights and our right to self-determination.\u201d<\/p>\n

The news release does not specify any groups and ITK spokesperson Patricia D\u2019Souza declined to elaborate.<\/p>\n

Instead, she said: \u201cOur position on fraudulent collectives is well-documented.\u201d<\/p>\n

ITK president Natan Obed was not available for an interview.<\/p>\n

This is not the first time ITK, which is the national organization representing Inuit in Canada, has skipped a meeting of the Council of Federation, which is the name of the organization of the heads of Canada\u2019s provincial and territorial governments.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/a><\/p>\n

In 2023, ITK president Natan Obed declined<\/a> the invitation to the meeting in Winnipeg and along with Cassidy Caron, president of the M\u00e9tis National Council, criticized the federation for allowing Congress of Aboriginal Peoples and Native Women\u2019s Association of Canada to attend.<\/p>\n

Those two organizations are once again on the list of invitees for this week\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cITK generally welcomes any opportunity to share Inuit priorities with territorial and provincial leaders, but any such meeting should be done with clear objectives and be respectful of Inuit governance,\u201d Obed said at the time.<\/p>\n

The National Chief of the the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples Brendan Moore called ITK decision \u201cunfortunate,\u201d in an email to Nunatsiaq News on Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe respect their decision and wish them well in their continued efforts,\u201d said Moore.<\/p>\n

Representatives Native Women\u2019s Association of Canada declined to comment.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Over the years, ITK has opposed participation in public or government engagement events with groups it considers illegitimate.<\/p>\n

In 2024, the Northern Lights Business and Cultural Showcase was cancelled<\/a> because of ITK\u2019s concerns about the involvement of the NunatuKavut Community Council, a collective representing approximately 6,000 people in northern Labrador who claim to be Inuit<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"National Inuit organization declines invitation for 3-day meeting this week in Huntsville, Ont. Inuit Tapariit Kanatami has declined…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":["post-6853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}