Hunting for Justice

A version of this interview was published in the fourth issue of Sublime, which took as its theme ‘water’.

The American explorer Robert Peary once said of the Inuit: ‘Of what value to the world are these people? They have no culture to speak of, no written language. They value life only as a fox [does,] or a wolf.’ It was a comment of its time – Peary died in 1920 – and seems outrageous to us now, but nonetheless history has found an interesting answer to his question. Today, as global warming confronts us with the greatest challenge humankind has faced since the rise of Fascism, if not (some say) the Black Death, Inuit are playing a crucial role as ‘sentinels of climate change’.

Chief among them is Sheila Watt-Cloutier. Two years ago, she was declared a ‘champion of the earth’ by the United Nations Environment Programme and received the Sophie Prize, the annual $100,000 award given to pioneers in sustainable development. Last year, she was appointed an officer of the Order of Canada, her country’s highest civilian honour. This year, she is reported to be a front-runner to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

The former social worker came to international prominence in the late Nineties when as president of the Canadian chapter of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference she led her community’s effort to secure a global ban of persistent organic pollutants (POPs for short). The niceties of how nature works means that pesticides and other toxins released around the planet have ended up – indeed, become concentrated – in the frozen north, where Inuit mothers were found to be feeding their babies with poisoned breast-milk. When Watt-Cloutier presented a key official with a carving of an Inuit mother and child, it came to represent the conscience of the international negotiations and was set before the chair at every session. The resultant convention was signed, ratified and, in 2004, enforced in all but record time.

How does she account for her singular effectiveness as a campaigner? She represents no more than 155,000 people, after all – whose desire to maintain an ancient hunter-gatherer lifestyle may seem perverse to many people. ‘I don’t work just with people’s heads,’ she explains. ‘I work with their hearts. I try to tell our story in a way that enables people to connect with us and the challenges we face, so that everybody feels a sense of responsibility for one another. I try to give a human face to these concerns.’

She was born in the village of Kuujjuaq, in what was then north-eastern Quebec, in 1953. She is not herself pure Inuit – her father and her maternal grandfather, who both abandoned their families, were white – but she identifies closely with her culture. Her mother was renowned as a spiritual healer, and now her daughter, Sylvia, has won acclaim as a throat singer and drum dancer. She herself ‘lost’ the Inuktitut language when she was sent away to school in Nova Scotia at the age of 10 but has relearned it.

I ask her why she thinks the Inuit have gained a hearing more easily than other small indigenous groups. Is it because people in the West romanticise them? She readily agrees. I had in mind round, smiling faces wreathed in fur in children’s picture books, but she has quite a different take. ‘I think people have a soft spot for these remarkable, resilient people who have managed not only to survive but to thrive in what most people consider a harsh and inhospitable land. We feel nothing but warmth when we talk about our homeland, but other people don’t see it that way.’ Also, she adds, ‘some of our indigenous brethren are seen as warriors, but Inuit are hunters and the hunter is a very gentle soul: very calm, reflective, focused, with a great deal of wisdom. And all these energies transmit themselves to the world.’

‘Focus’ is a word she uses often in our conversation, as she relates her work as a campaigner and negotiator to her ancient Inuit tradition. ‘I’m not just a touchy-feely kind of leader. Politics is another level of hunting, and so I try to be like the hunter who scans the horizon and checks all the conditions to make sure that everything is in his favour, so he can bring home something for his family. With limited resources, you have to be thinking every single day, constantly and critically and strategically. You may only have one bullet.’

The hunting culture, she maintains, is a valuable preparation for life in general. ‘It teaches us very naturally how to be patient, how to be courageous, how to be bold under pressure, how not to be impulsive, how to have sound judgement about everything in your life – and, ultimately, how to be wise.’ She tells me with pride that her nine-year-old grandson killed his first bearded seal last summer, and his first caribou last week.

This is all very disconcerting to an urban eco-sensibility like mine. In Britain, the champions of the environmental movement have long urged us to be ‘friends of the earth’ and embrace ‘green peace’. Two of their most famous battles were to stop the clubbing of seals and the harpooning of whales. Photographs of their adversaries staining the Arctic ice with blood and dyeing the high seas red seemed to epitomise our reckless and ruthless exploitation of the natural world and outraged international opinion.

But though the green movement has done much to exalt the image of indigenous peoples, the admiration is not always mutual. In the 1960s and ’70s, Watt-Cloutier says with obvious anger, its campaigning wiped out the market for seal skins almost overnight. ‘That is still a very raw wound for many Inuit, even now. It devastated not only their self-esteem but also their ability to feed their families at a time when life was very tough.’ Today, she says, the conservationists have made another ‘pretty stark mistake’: to draw attention to the melting of the Arctic, they have listed the polar bear as a threatened species. ‘They thought they were going to make us extremely happy, but again they have created uncertainty and possible loss of income for our hunters.’ Inuit kill the bears for meat and fur, she explains, while rich Americans pay a lot to bag a trophy.

Nonetheless, the Inuits’ greatest concern is climate change. For various reasons the effects of global warming are exaggerated towards the poles, and while in Britain we have merely been remarking on some peculiar weather, within the Arctic Circle seasoned hunters have drowned when ice that should be solid has given way beneath their feet. Torrential rivers flow where there were only streams before, and houses have had to be abandoned as the ground beneath them thaws. ‘I don’t think people realise just how urgent this is,’ Watt-Cloutier says. ‘In the United States and Europe, you need never know that the planet is really struggling. You don’t see the difficulties wildlife is facing. You don’t see how glaciers are melting, how the permafrost is melting. It’s a real challenge for me to try to get the world to understand that things are much worse than you think.’

Another crucial word in her lexicon is ‘balance’. When I ask her whether she believes that technology will save the situation or thinks we must learn to live more modestly, she replies: ‘We’re not asking the world to give up all development, any more than we would ask ourselves to. We have embraced modern technology whenever we can, and it’s going to be part of the solution, I’m sure. But it has to be balanced with awareness of what that development may be doing in the longer term to our children and grandchildren. Business as usual is no longer viable. We must keep trying to find a better way to live.’

It’s apparent that it has not been easy for the Inuit themselves to keep their balance. She talks of the two ‘waves of tumultuous change’ that have broken over her people in her lifetime and ‘wounded their spirit’. The first was their exposure to the modern world. She herself knew only dog sleds and canoes as a child; now she covers thousands of miles by Jumbo jet. Most other societies, she points out, had three or four centuries to adjust to this kind of change, and among her people it has caused ‘incredible trauma’. Inuit have the highest suicide rate in North America, and domestic violence, alcoholism and drug addiction are common.

The second ‘wave of change’ is more literal, as Inuit find their world of snow and ice turning to water.

In 2005, Watt-Cloutier filed an 167-page petition at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, accusing the US of violating Inuit rights (‘the right to use and enjoy property, the right to life, physical integrity and security, and the right to enjoy the benefits of culture’) by failing to take action against climate change. The commission at first dismissed the petition, but finally – the day after Watt-Cloutier was nominated for the Nobel prize – consented to a one-hour hearing in March this year. It has no power to enforce its decisions, but the mere fact that it has given attention to this issue is, she says, an important achievement.

‘Even though our petition is a very strong legal assertion of our rights,’ she explains, ‘the energy behind it is not one of aggression or confrontation. My culture is a sharing culture, and as an Inuk woman my style has never been to strike out at people but more to reach out. This petition is an early warning, a gift to the US and others around the world. It is probably the most caring thing I have ever done. We all want the same thing: to keep the planet intact for our children and grandchildren. And people don’t feel threatened by that, and it opens doors.’

Does she see signs of hope? ‘Yes, very much so’ is her firm reply. ‘The momentum is building among the citizens of America and, in spite of their government, they are taking action. You see it everywhere now when you go there – and in Canada as well.’ But is that momentum building fast enough to avert disaster? ‘Once you get the right people into power,’ she pronounces, ‘I think you will be surprised at the speed with which change occurs. I suspect there will be major changes in the US at the next election.’

Her confidence is extraordinary. When I ask her how she might tackle China, soon to be the world’s biggest producer of greenhouse gases and a state not notably careful about human rights, the self-assurance of her reply is amazing: ‘I haven’t walked through the strategy I will pursue with China – and India, too – but I suspect we will be able to influence them, perhaps even more than the US. It is a very small hunch, but I have always worked from my own gut feelings about people. I’m talking about animals I don’t know very well, but I will try to know them better as I proceed with this. It’s all a matter of the style in which you deal with issues and with people.’

Whether or not she wins the Nobel Peace Prize in October, she herself will not give up. ‘This is my passion in life. This is my way of giving back, for the great blessing of being born into this remarkable culture. Other societies have got it wrong, but we still have it right. We live so close to our ecosystem, as we have done for millennia, that we can offer solutions to a world that has largely become disconnected, from itself, from its neighbours, from the planet. Our culture is not just some folkloric window-dressing. It has a wisdom that can help this world understand what it is doing to itself.

‘We have a remarkable story to tell. We may be one of the last great cultures.’ It is an apt riposte to Robert Peary.

© Sublime 2007

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