Nobel Peace Prize nominee Sheila Watt-Cloutier addresses Dawson

Nobel Peace Prize nominee and Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier was an Earth Week keynote speaker on April 20. Her talk passionately unpacked the deep interconnection of today’s most pressing issues. From climate change to its impacts on Inuit life and communities around the world, Sheila shed light on colonialism’s long-lasting and ongoing effects on the environment, the economy, foreign policy, and global health, before paving the way forward.

“The time of the pandemic as well as the recovery of children from residential schools has opened up the hearts and minds of many Canadians, and softened the hardened hearts and minds that we’ve had towards one another, towards our environment and wildlife,” said Sheila, adding that now is the time for personal transformation.

For the past 27 years, Sheila’s work has been connecting climate change to human rights, humanizing the discourse that so often centres on economics and wildlife and overlooks the critical effects that human communities are facing as well.

In 2007, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her advocacy work in showing the impact of global climate change on human rights — especially in the Arctic, where it is felt more immediately and more dramatically than anywhere else in the world.

The melting of the glaciers has disrupted hundreds of years of Indigenous wisdom and connection to the land. Sheila advanced that preserving and mobilizing Inuit knowledge would inherently preserve the environment, calling these communities “natural conservationists.”

For instance, Sheila explained the cultural and educational component of traditional Inuit foods — a fundamental part of the identity and character-building central to Inuit culture. From the communal value that comes from eating from the same animal to the ceremony when a young man goes on his first hunt, these rituals create powerful life lessons, and foster connections within the community and with the environment and wildlife more broadly.

“The land is our university, it’s our college. When you’re out there on the land and you’re waiting for the snow to fall, the ice to form, the animals to surface, or the winds to die down, you’re learning about yourself. You’re learning patience,” she said.

Sheila advocated for a spiritual and cultural transformation realigning western economic values with those of Indigenous ways of living and imagining a new way forward with conscious intention and empathy. However, to get there, understanding that the existing dependency-producing and self-destructive economic systems are products of colonialism remains a crucial step toward managing the climate crisis and achieving reconciliation.

“Indigenous knowledge is the medicine the world seeks to attain sustainability,” she said. “How deeply affirming would that be for the hunters whose remarkable ingenious knowledge is so undervalued and what better way to reclaim what was taken from us?”

Nearing the end of her presentation, our guest speaker addressed the young students with a compelling message, empowering them in guiding the world forward.

“Raise your voices and put yourself in positions of real power,” said Sheila. “Educate others on these issues and join the movements that really are making a difference because this is your future.”