Inuit visionaries such as Mayor Eben Hopson of the North Slope Borough, Alaska, were among those that never let go of the idea. When, in 1975, the World Council of Indigenous Peoples held its founding conference in Port Alberni, British Columbia, he had his special assistant, Billy Neakoq, deliver an invitation to a pan-Eskimo gathering to be held some time in the near future.

Planning, fundraising, and focussed attention to this goal began in earnest. A grant submission made to an American foundation in 1975 contains the following:

We Eskimo are an international community sharing common language, culture, and a common land along the Arctic coast of Siberia, Alaska, Canada and Greenland. Although not a nation-state, as a people, we do constitute a nation.

Inuit from Canada, Greenland, and Alaska discussed their common vision when Eben Hopson hosted the first ever the Inuit Circumpolar Conference in June of 1977.

At that historic and celebratory meeting, political resolutions were passed, poetry was read, and songs were sung. All 54 delegates (18 from each country) agreed to found an organization to carry on the task of working together on an international basis. The celebratory mood in 1977 was only dampened by the absence of Inuit from the former Soviet Union, whose arrival would have to wait several years.