Eben Hopson: Founder of ICC Born
Event Date:
Tuesday, November 7, 1922 The son of Al and Maggie Hopson, Eben Hopson was born in Barrow on November 7, 1922. He was the grandson of Alfred Henley Hopson, a whaler from Liverpool, England, who settled in Barrow in 1886.
Hopson called for the creation of an international environmental regime by which all Arctic nations would agree to follow the same rules in the industrial development of the Arctic.
In 1976, Hopson called upon the Inuit (Eskimo) leaders of Greenland, Canada, the U.S., and the U.S.S.R. to form an international organization, called the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), in order to pursue these goals. The first meeting of the ICC hosted by Hopson in 1977 in Barrow was the high point in his career. In five days of prodigious work, the delegates hammered out seventeen resolutions on Inuit land claims, Arctic environmental protections, Arctic health and technology, and Inuit culture and education.
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