Irina is a representative of the Selkup indigenous people from Siberia. She graduated from the Pedagogical University in Tomsk in 1998, and after that, she worked as an English language teacher. After several years she was elected a president of the Tomsk Regional Association of Indigenous Peoples and vice-president of RAIPON. Later she graduated from the Small Business Accounting School in Moscow and completed an internship at the University of Saskatchewan (Canada). She also studied Indigenous Rights and Strategic Planning at the Centre for the Support of Indigenous Peoples of the North (CSIPN/RITC) in Moscow and the Conflict Prevention course at the UNDP Training Center in Geneva. Because of the pressure from Russian authorities, she with her family applied for political asylum in the US in 2016.
International Committee
of Indigenous Peoples of Russia