A group of students from Norway were in La Ronge on Thursday as part of a weeklong visit to Canada to discuss northern issues.
The exchange program is organized by the International Centre for Northern Governance and Development at the University of Saskatchewan.
Graduate student Mathias Olson lives in an arctic area of Norway and says the trip has cleared up many misconceptions he had about Canada.
“There are a lot more Indigenous people living here than I knew at first and they have a very advanced system of self governing actually and that is pretty impressive,” he says. “That is something that would be useful to me going back and looking at decisions of self governance that the Sami people, the Indigenous people of Norway, have.”
Olson adds there are some Norwegian ideas, which could be useful in Canada’s north.
“Why not look at other things like agriculture and develop caribou and the more traditional things that the people have been living off of for a long time,” he says.
The Norwegian students also visited the Lac La Ronge Indian Band offices and met with band administrators.