06 APR 1979

 

Hopson Leads Alaskan Delegation

to Greenland Home Rule Inauguration

Mayor Eben Hopson will lead a ten-person delegation to Godthaab, Greenland on April 25th to attend the inauguration of Greenland’s home rule government on May 1, 1979.

Mayor Hopson has been invited to participate in the inaugural as Chairman of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference. In addition to addressing Greenland’s new Landsting or Greenland Assembly, Hopson will convene a meeting between the Inuit Circumpolar Conference Executive Committee and leaders of Greenland’s “Landsting” or parliamentary leadership, headed by Lars Chemnitz, who was elected to the new Landsting in home rule elections held throughout Greenland last Tuesday. Chemnitz toured North Slope Borough villages and the Prudhoe Bay oil field as Mayor Hopson’s guest last spring, as head of Greenland’s old provincial “land council.”

Accompanying Hopson to Greenland will be State Representative Phillip Guy, (D-Kwethluk) and former State Senator Willie Hensley, Kotzebue. Hopson will also be accompanied by his wife, Rebecca, staff aides Jon Buchholdt and Emily Nusunginya; NSB Legal Consultant Charles Cranston; and the Rev. Charles White, former pastor of Barrow’s Utkeagvik Presbyterian Church, now an NSB consultant on circumpolar affairs.

While in Greenland, Hopson will meet with the Inuit Circumpolar Conference’s Executive Committee and Greenlandic community leaders about Greenland’s official participation in the Inuit Circumpolar Conference.

Hopson is traveling to Greenland at a time when Danish foreign service officers are visiting Alaskan communities to build upon the new Alaska-Denmark bottom fisheries agreement recently negotiated by the Hammond administration. Because Greenland’s home rule agreement breaks new ground in accommodation of Native American coastal fishing rights, Greenland’s participation in the new Alaska-Denmark fisheries cooperation will be discussed.

For further information, refer to Greenland articles, pp. 13-17, March 1979 issue of the Arctic Coastal Zone Management Newsletter.