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TechnoratiFor centuries, the Inuit have lived in harmony with possibly the harshest climate on the planet. Thanks to climate change, they are losing their traditional way of life as rapidly as the polar ice caps are melting. While this drama may seen remote and unimportant to those who defend what they believe to be their God-given right to burn fossil fuels, what befalls the Inuit may soon befall all of us. In simple terms, they are the canaries in the coal mine of climate change.
This was the profoundly moving message that 2007 Nobel Peace Prize nominee and Arctic activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier gave to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities Sustainable Communities Conference in Ottawa recently.
The Arctic is the planet's stabilizer. The white polar ice caps reflect much of the radiation they receive from the sun. As the ice caps melt, the open water absorbs rather than reflects the sunlight, accelerating the predicted rate of climate change and ultimately impacting the entire planet.
Until recently, scientists were predicting an ice-free summer for the Arctic as soon as 2040. Because of the significantly accelerated warming, NASA scientists are now predicting that the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free as early as 2012. That's a problem that the Canadian government may not be ready to address. It's coming nonetheless.
While we still think of climate change in terms of environmental and health impacts, for Watt-Cloutier it's a human rights issue.
"Canada has lost its ability to lead by abandoning Kyoto - the only international agreement we have ever had on climate change, however flawed it may be," said Watt-Cloutier, "Principals and ethics matter in a world that often teeters on chaos. We have a responsibility to act. By not acting, we have failed that responsibility."
The Inuit are a very old people with a population of only 150,000 souls. They have survived and thrived over many thousands of years because of their remarkable ability to adapt and live in balance with the harsh northern climate. Over the centuries, they have developed an economy that cares for the planet and for their people, and in doing so have enabled both to thrive.
"We have integrated this idea of balance into all of our planning processes," said Watt-Cloutier. "We are asked, 'Wouldn't it be better for indigenous people to simply abandon their lifestyle and adopt a 21st-century lifestyle?' " But the idea of cultural and economic assimilation is not an acceptable one to the gentle Inuit people, she told a spellbound audience of the nation's municipal leaders.
"The solution for our communities is finding a balance," said Watt-Cloutier. "Our influence springs from our ethical authority. We must do the right thing."
Rather than abandoning the life of the hunter-gatherer for more conventional employment, Watt-Cloutier advocates training the Inuit young people to do both.
"Why not a career as a huntergatherer-engineer?" she asks. "If you are connected to the cycles of nature, then you are connected to your food source.
Watt-Cloutier's message is that we have to adapt to sustainable food production. For the Inuit people, taking the best of their traditions and blending it with the best of the new technologies is the key to survival. She believes that taking this approach will empower the people in marginalized communities where passive dependency has had disastrous results. According to her predictions, the destruction of the ancient ways of the Inuit people mirrors a much larger catastrophe.
Climate change is seen as a financial opportunity in the North, says Watt-Cloutier, but as the Northwest Passage is opened, Canada will want to defend its sovereignty.
"Instead of seeing the Northwest Passage as an opportunity, we must recognize that an ice-free passage is an environmental disaster," she said. For Canada, it will mean a buildup of our armed forces and potential conflict with other Arctic nations.
What we have is a small opportunity that is disappearing almost as rapidly as the Arctic ice. Rather than defending our sovereignty with military icebreakers and troops, her elegant solution is to defend our sovereignty by supporting the human rights of the indigenous peoples of the North. Instead of a regime where conflict and strife reign, protecting the fragile climate of the North presents us with an opportunity to preserve one of the last pristine places on Earth where no war has ever taken place.
For Watt-Cloutier, protection of the Arctic is a shining example of how the nations can come together at the very top of the world. In order to accomplish this, we must give up our simple- minded notion that uncontrolled economic development will lead to a better world. The opportunity is ours, the motivation is upon us now, and the rewards are not for us but for our children and grandchildren. What is required is the courage to be exceptional: to go beyond what is politically or economically acceptable. The measure of our success will not be in development or commercial products of any kind. Rather, it will be in the preservation of the most delicate, the most rare and most tenuous of existences: the canaries of the Great White North.
Suzanne Elston is an Ontario author and broadcaster whose work has been featured on CTV (Canada AM), TVOntario (More to Life) and Great Lakes Radio.
© 2008 Osprey Media
10 Comments so far
Show AllThe Inuit were a magnificent breed of people.
They learned how to live with nature, how to survive, where survial is almost impossible. Unless one has been, to say Thule, Greenland and stayed there for a year, they have no conseption of what it is like.
It is almost unbelievable and to think how ancient people, with no metal tools, using only their minds and what was availabe for their existance, drift wood, rocks, seal bones, ice and snow, yet they learned how to build shelters, hunt for food and keep from starving and freezing.
There are no farmlands, no home grown crops, just what nature provided, which was primaroly ice, snow, blizzards and bitterly cold temperatures. They have a saying, "The only thing left of a seal or walrus kill, was its final breath." They wasted nothing. They were a truly amazing race. They made beautiful fur clothing and art works. They lived in peace and harmony with one another, and with nature.
However, after the white man and the good "Christian" preachers arrived and taught them our ways, ___ they did change. They learned the sins of greed, jealousy, drunkenness and anger with others. It is rare indeed, to find any of the original Inuits.
I always find it amazing that, on a progressive website like this, an article on some additional blowhard entering the presidential race will generate hundreds of comments, while articles like this spawn less than ten. Progressives aren't supposed to be as short-sighted and instant-gratification-oriented as the rest of society, are we? Where is the discussion on these long-term problems that could mean life or death for the planet? Thanks to those who did post, pointing out the many sides of this important topic.
I don't anything about these people but my understand was that they live in houses and use snowmobiles, not igloos and dogsleds.....
To the extent that they retain the old ways, they will be able to survive when the planet tanks, at least more than most other people....
Even if there is no ice, they will find a way, or perish. This is true for us too.
A college student of mine from Dominica just gave a presentation on her home island in the Caribbean. Half Carib Native and half English, she showed us that over 90% of that place's forests are still standing---why? Because when the Spanish psychopaths with Columbus landed, the Caribs and other Native peoples fled up into the mountain jungles and it saved them from slavery and death; so, since then and still today, the Caribs and other peoples there work hard to keep those forests protected from so-called "Development," exactly because of the DEBT THEY FEEL THEY OWE. Now think of all that colonial "civilization" took from the Americas, and what do we give back? Contempt. Exxon wants its oil-spill damages revoked by the courts. Drill Alaska for the soccer moms driving around in little houses! LET NOT ONE THING IN OUR MIDST BE SACRED.
"For centuries, the Inuit have lived in harmony with possibly the harshest climate on the planet."
**not true unless you believe unnecessary slaughter is harmonious.
The Inuit resorted to infanticide and slaughtering native species to sustain an unrealistic lifestyle, because they are not true natives of the climate. Anyone who thinks they are can test this theory out for me--have a new born inuit attempt to survive with only the skin on their backs like the newborn bears and wolves and seals. if they can survive, then they are true natives. If they die from exposure then they arent meant for the climate.
Its common sense.
The Inuit had or still hold a damaging religious belief that every seal they killed was the same seal--which turns members of other species into objects.
They also believe in a variation of Manifest Destiny--they believe the Creator gave them the the right to kill and slaughter any species they wish. For whaling, for the fur industry, for aquariums.
This lack of respect for Nature and its inhabitants beyond selfish concerns is further proven by the fact that the Inuit have been known to sell hunting rights to non Inuit for trophy hunting, in addition to supporting the fur industry.
They exploited the natives of the region just like any human group.
The Inuit travel to whaling conferences and do use Western technology. It makes it inconsistent to the extremes for them to say its ok for them to keep some traditions, while abandoning others.
And yes--non natives should stop hunting too. That's a given. But to suggest that the Inuit live in harmony with their alien environment is simply BS.
The "noble savage" is a myth created by european colonialists.
Every human is the same--capable of good or bad.
Further arguments on this can be found here:
http://animalvegfaq.tripod.com
The true canaries in the coal mine are those species that live in the Arctic by biological destiny--unlike the Inuit, they have no choices.
And painting global warming as a human rights issue will have no further impact than painting it as an animal rights nature's rights issue.
"Many a day now I've been counting
all the garbage in her crystal fountains.
My heart is pounding, my anger's mounting:
the Earth was made for you and me...
The Earth is my Earth, the Earth is your Earth,
she is the mother who gave us our birth.
From the highest mountain to the deepest ocean
the Earth was made for you and me."
"Why not a career as a huntergatherer-engineer?" she asks.
She believes that taking this approach will empower the people in marginalized communities where passive dependency has had disastrous results.
"People of the Deer" illustrates very simply how such dependency creates problems. A handful of Ihalmiut grew dependent on a tiny trading post a man opened to trade with them. They became dependent on the food they could get in exchange for fox pelts and their strategies for food independence fell by the wayside, so when the trader decided to fold up, some of the Ihalmiut didn't survive.
After reading plenty of articles in the progressive press one can come to a reasonable conclusion that local food security and independence should become public policy everywhere. It's reasonable to extend that to the other staples - land, water, shelter, education, healthcare, transport.
About the hunter-gatherer-engineer, well people who subsist, farmers, craftsmen, anyone who lives on any frontier, are all very good engineers out of necessity. Liberals/urbans/elites are learning to appreciate them, now that the liberal sky is falling, this after decades of dispensing contempt and ridicule on top of exploitation.
we must give up our simple- minded notion that uncontrolled economic development will lead to a better world
People are going to make mistakes of course, so we have to tolerate those. But we need to stop tolerating mistakes in the public institutions. Public policy can be formulated in a process that injects reason, applies lessons learned, consolidates wisdom, and purges stupidity. Western liberalism has been a real culivator of royal stupidity and it's time to take an axe to that aspect of western liberalism. We have to start demanding reason in the public institutions. This is why progressives want to purge the capitalists from Washington, cage them, treat them like their behavior demands. And their liberal enablers will have to adopt a new philosophy.
This is important, there are many bad things which will occur because of global warming and the ensuing climate change. However, the one MAJOR thing that WILL occur, overshadows all of the rest. It will not just be the Arctic's Inuit who will suffer, it will be almost all forms of life on this planet.
The Arctic tundra is thawing, the billions of tons of methane gas, which have been locked up in that soil for over 50 million years, is going to bloom or burst out into our atmosphere. That has occured at least twice in the history of Earth and each time it did, almost all life here, down to the bacterial level was eradicated.
Those are not my opinions, a highly respected geologist, a man who has spent his entire adult life studying our enviroment has written about the issue and he states that when the methane does burst out, the party will definently be over and that event may occur with no warning, anytime in the next 50 years. __Anytime__, perhaps in five to ten years, perhaps later. It is definently going to happen, unless we stop burning fossil fuels. Will we do that? ___ Not likely.
So if you have children and love them, be nice to them, for they don't have a prayer.
Any who doubt that, __ Google Arctic methane gas__ then scroll down to the arcticle titled,
_____"Arctic Methane Gas, A Ticking Time Bomb".___ There are several other excellent articles there to study also. It is without question, the most serious problem humanity faces. And it is not just the Arctic methane which will burst loose, there is a lot more in our ocean's beds, which is already escaping into our atmosphere because of warmer ocean waters in many areas.
Just like in the coal mine, it will be the poor slobs at the bottom who die while at the surface the rich mine owners and their government collaborators will stall, dodge, make promises they won't keep, and continue to pocket the obscene profits of their war on the planet. True, they will be the last to go, but their wealth and power will eventually be no match for Mother Earth's revenge.
Sheila Watt-Cloutier is right, global warming is a human rights issue. Global warming is driven by the profit motive and a global economic system that has consistently excluded the poor and indigenous.
While little regard has been given to the people and environment of
the North, the impending collapse of the High Arctic and the destruction of the Inuit culture has primarily been caused, not by direct exploitation of the north, but rather centuries of exploitation of resources, peoples and cultures of the South.
Exploitation will, none the less destroy, the North just because they were there. The poor and indigenous of the South will soon follow, then even the rich and powerful. Unless like Cloutier says, we begin to support the human rights of the indigenous peoples of the North, (and the South), we are all at risk. The Inuit are indeed "The Canary in the Coal Mine".