Sheila Watt-Cloutier | The Right to Be Cold

May 24, 2022  12:00 - 12:45

(GMT -5:00) Eastern Time

Event URL:  https://www.exploringbytheseat.com/lesson/sheila-watt-cloutier-right-cold/
Hosted by: e

Sheila was born in Kuujjuaq, Nunavik (northern Quebec), and was raised traditionally in her early years before attending school in southern Canada and in Churchill, Manitoba. She is the past Chair of Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC), the organization that represents internationally the 155,000 Inuit of Canada, Greenland, Alaska, and Chukotka in the Far East of the Federation of Russia. In 2005, she filed a climate change-related petition with to the Commission as an urgent message from the Inuit “sentinels” to the rest of the world on global warming’s already dangerous impacts. On March 1, 2007, she testified before the Commission during their extraordinary first hearing on the links between climate change and human rights.
Sheila sums up her work by saying: “I do nothing more than remind the world that the Arctic is not a barren land devoid of life but a rich and majestic land that has supported our resilient culture for millennia. Even though small in number and living far from the corridors of power, it appears that the wisdom of the land strikes a universal chord on a planet where many are searching for sustainability.”
Sheila is the author of The Right to Be Cold: One Woman’s Story of Protecting Her Culture, the Arctic and the Whole Planet (Allen Laine, 2015). Shortlisted for the British Columbia Canadian Non-Fiction Award, The Cohen Shaughnessy Prize for Political writing, the Cobo Emerging Writer Prize and the CBC Canada Reads competition.