It was the first international legal action on climate change. based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights detailing the harm her people are experiencing as a result of climate change caused by increasing greenhouse gas emissions. In 2005 she joined with 62 other members of the Inuit community to file a legal petition to the Washington D.C.
Sheila Watt-Cloutier has actively collaborated on research and consultations on climate change in the Arctic.
In 1995 she was elected to the Makivik Corporation and the Inuit Circumpolar Council and went on to help spearhead the United Nations global work to ban the production of persistent organic pollutants (POPs), playing an instrumental role in the negotiations leading to the 2001 Stockholm Convention on POPs. The historical traumas experienced by her people fuelled her advocacy work. In the early 1970s she returned to the north, where she would later contribute to efforts to revamp the education system for Inuit youth through her work with the newly formed Kativik School Board. Watt-Cloutier was born in Kuujjuaq, and traveled exclusively by dogsled until the age of 10, when she was sent away to school, first to Nova Scotia, then Churchill, Manitoba to the residential school and Ottawa. Reporting credit: Sarah Kennedy/ChavoBart Digital Media.Sheila Watt-Cloutier is a dedicated environmental, cultural and human rights advocate renowned for her commitment to protecting the Arctic and Inuit culture. She says her community and the world are losing a vital source of wisdom as the Arctic melts. “Developing the patience, the courage, how not to be impulsive, how to develop your sound judgment, and ultimately how to become wise people – you learn that when you’re out there in nature in that cold,” Watt-Cloutier says. She says hunting and fishing on the ice is more than a way to get food. But they now sometimes have to find new paths, which costs time and money. She says people have traveled the same routes across the ice for many years to reach good hunting spots. “We have loss of lives, in fact, and loss of sleds and snowmobiles through that thinning ice,” Watt-Cloutier says. But as Arctic sea ice weakens, hunting for seals and other animals is becoming more dangerous. She says hunting and fishing are important parts of Inuit culture.
In her book “ The Right to Be Cold,” Watt-Cloutier explains how global warming threatens this traditional lifestyle.
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