Several high-profile northerners speaking in Ottawa this week say people living in Canada's North must set the tone in discussions and decisions being made about the Arctic.

More than 200 delegates are at the 2030 North conference, preparing the groundwork for a comprehensive northern strategy and plan for the future.

The conference began Tuesday with remarks from speakers such as Inuit environmental activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier and former N.W.T. premier Stephen Kakfwi, who both said Arctic residents need to promote co-operation and collaboration — not aggression and confrontation — with other Arctic nations.

Kakfwi said northerners must also take on a bigger role in the North, taking full control of the region's natural resources.

"We cannot let Ottawa be in charge anymore, and we need Canada to reshape its thinking and its attitude and to do it quickly," he said.

Northern residents have to be fully involved in issues ranging from Arctic sovereignty to oil and gas exploration, said Ed Schultz, executive director of the Council of Yukon First Nations.

Cultivate relationships with northerners

"Anybody's claim to the North, whether it's in the subarctic zone or in the High Arctic, is only through one venue and that's through the people who live there," he said.

"If you can't cultivate a good and meaningful relationship with those people, then you have nothing."

Schultz added that taking control of the North also means ensuring the federal government lives up to its commitments to Inuit and First Nations groups in land claims and treaties.

The speakers' remarks come less than a month after a Senate committee report concluded that the federal government should let people living north of 60 take an active role in forming policy for the North.

This week's conference, which runs through Thursday, is organized by the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee, the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies and Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami.

Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami president Mary Simon said the conference aims to act on recent talk about Arctic sovereignty and climate change.

"One of the main goals is to try to move the policy discussions forward, so that we can start tackling some of the issues that have been, you know, discussed in a more concrete way," she told CBC News.

In her keynote address, Watt-Cloutier laid out a number of statements as a foundation for a northern strategy, including calls for:

• A holistic approach that includes the wisdom of northern elders and traditional cultures.
• Climate change to be "considered as a human rights issue."
• A slowdown to climate change as the best strategy for asserting Canada's Arctic sovereignty. "Keeping the ice intact is the best defence against international shipping," Watt-Cloutier's summary of statements says.
• The federal government to develop a new, detailed Arctic foreign policy.

With files from Patricia Bell