Simeonie Tuckatuck, 58, who has been living homeless in Montreal for three years, panhandles indoors at the Promenades Cathédrale near the McGill metro station in Montreal. Photo by Dario Ayala / Material republished with the express permission of: Montreal Gazette, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.

At any given time there are 150 to 200 Nunavik Inuit in Montreal accompanying a loved one receiving medical care. The lack of basic services in their northern communities forces a vast number of Inuit to fly south to receive treatment in the city. Once they arrive, many Inuit opt to stay in Montreal in an effort to avoid negative social situations at home.

After decades of horrific government programs targeted at altering the Inuit’s way of life, social and economic issues have inevitably arisen in formerly prosperous communities. Devastating repercussions stemming from residential schools, widespread sled dog slaughter, forced sedentism, and seal bans have shaken communities. For many, mental health has been severely affected; addiction, domestic violence, and alcohol abuse are symptomatic of the hardships experienced by many. Already difficult social situations are exacerbated by lack of adequate modern housing—almost half of families live in overcrowded or deteriorating homes.

Both positive and negative forces have led many Nunavik Inuit to seek new lifestyles in Montreal, be it for opportunities in education and employment, or to escape overcrowded or abusive homes. However, many find themselves in vulnerable situations in a new city vastly different from home, which has led to a disproportionate number of Inuit represented in the Montreal homeless community.

49% of Nunavik Inuit live in crowded homes. The housing crisis in Nunavik exacerbates health concerns and creates tension in families where abuse and addiction may already be a problem.

55% have a food insecure household. Fly-in only communities pay an exorbitant amount for imported food, and it is becoming harder to rely on traditional food sources.

39% have a regular family doctor. Most communities only have access to an outpost nurse, and hospitals and doctors’ offices often care for multiple communities at once.

446 sexual assaults were reported in 2017, almost 4% of the population. Many women report situations of domestic violence and sexual abuse to be the main reason they decide to migrate south.

60% of Nunavik residents flew to Montreal for health care-related reasons. About 8,000 people travelled south for things like cancer treatments, CAT scans, or surgeries that are simply not available in Nunavik.

10% of the Indigenous people in Montreal are Inuit. But Inuit people make up 45 percent of the Indigenous homeless population in the city. A disproportionate number of Inuit slip into homelessness after landing in Montreal.

71% of homeless Inuit said they would return home if housing conditions improved.

Lorraine Loranger in Victoria, B.C.

Half of the children in Canada’s foster system are Indigenous. For Inuit children, government care often means being relocated hundreds of kilometres south in total isolation from their family and culture. Siblings are separated, and contact to their communities and families in the north is limited.

Allies in the south can help magnify Inuit voices, and increase nation-wide awareness of the issues facing geographically separate communities. Lorraine Loranger is one such ally who has dedicated the last three years of her retired life to walking 8,000 kilometres across Canada telling the stories of our country’s Inuit. As a social worker in Nunavik, in northern Quebec, Loranger bore witness to the situation facing many families across Inuit Nunangat—Inuit regions in Canada, such as Nunavut. She is calling for culturally appropriate solutions, increased government support in the form of community-based safe houses or women’s shelters, and access to proper dignified housing for all Inuit.

In order to understand the issue, we must look to the past. Inuit lived nomadic, self-sufficient lifestyles for thousands of years. But, in the 1950s and 1960s, the Canadian government aggressively encouraged their settlement in permanent communities, promising housing, education, and health care as incentives. The Inuit slowly settled into sedentary lifestyles only to find government support aiding their transition fell radically short. Beyond issues of food security, housing has been lamented against as one of the most urgent crises facing northerners. Poorly constructed homes unfit for winter conditions are overcrowded and often dilapidated. It is common for families of 15 to 20 spanning four generations to live together in small three-bedroom homes. This can create unhealthy situations for many children, who are often removed by child services and sent into the foster system if the situation isn’t rectified.

These federal malpractices are what Loranger is fighting to change. She founded an organization, No Child Should Have to Take the Long Way Home, to support her 8,000-kilometre trek, which began on April 9, 2016, in Victoria B.C. She is currently in central Ontario with 2,418 kilometres left to go before completing her journey in late October in Ingonish, N.S. Along the way, she is working in partnership with Inuit associations, such as Saturviit, an Inuit women’s non-profit, to stimulate action to improve government funding in Inuit Nunangat.

“They lack access to justice,” she says of the families she worked with. “The children are being taken, and apprehended from their homes, and sent all over Canada.” Cramped conditions and a long history of systemic abuses exacerbate health concerns and domestic disputes for many families, necessitating child services involvement. However, once a child is removed from their family, it is almost impossible to bring them home. “They hardly ever come back,” says Loranger, “because the judge will say to [the parent], you have exactly one year from today to correct the situation… now nobody can correct the situation in a home where there are 20 other individuals.” Instead, families experience devastating losses of their children, and are often helpless to improve the situation with no means of accessing appropriate housing.

Children may also experience a great deal of instability after being removed from their homes. Loranger noticed the incredibly high rate in which children from the villages she serviced were being bounced around from placement to placement in the foster system. “When I worked there they had 96 kids [in the system] and out of 96 kids, 41 had been moved from 20 times to 56 times, all the other kids had been moved more than once.” It is facts such as these that Loranger uses as fuel on her mission.

She refers to her 8,000-kilometre trek across Canada as a “walk to talk, not a walk to walk.” It is not a continuous path from coast to coast; rather she is walking the distance while giving lectures in various communities as opportunities arise. Adding new companions this year, Loranger is now accompanied by her two Inuit marionettes, which she built with the help of some friends she met during her travels. “It’s going to bring more visibility to the project,” she remarks. The marionette duo is a fun tool that Loranger uses during her lectures to help highlight the Inuit perspective in her message.

Loranger’s speaking engagements serve a dual purpose: to raise awareness to the social issues facing Canada’s Inuit population, and to stimulate government action through citizen engagement. Last year, for example, she wrote letters to 300 of the people she met along her journey, “I asked them to write to their MPs about the situations that needed to be addressed in the north,” she explains, “such as housing, such as women’s shelters, such as protection of children in their own communities rather than outside their communities.” Putting pressure on members of parliament to bring Inuit issues forward to Prime Minister Trudeau is how Loranger is working to stimulate change in northern territories.

Her walk is coming to an end later this year, but Loranger has no intention of stopping her advocacy work. “I’ll continue working on the project, but I’ll be doing it sitting in a chair,” she says, “there has to be a lot more fundraising, so I’ll be organizing campaigns for the next few years.” In addition to fundraising, Loranger plans to write a book about her travels. In the end, she says, “It’s all to generate hope for the Inuit.”

QAVAVAU MANUMIE, ARNINIQ INUUSIQ (BREATH OF LIFE), 2017 STONECUT AND STENCIL 62 X 79 CM · REPRODUCED WITH THE PERMISSION OF DORSET FINE ARTS

Alexia Galloway-Alainga pushes in a pair of earbuds to tune out the clatter of cutlery and coffee cups hitting cafeteria tables at Ottawa’s Carleton University. She looks straight into her smartphone camera, wearing a slight smile, and begins speaking: Sanngijuq, she says slowly, the last syllable coming from the back of her throat. The Inuktitut phrase means “he/she is strong.” Pijunnarniq, she continues, translating as she goes—“to be able.” Then Galloway-Alainga uploads the video to her Instagram feed.

The 20-year-old Inuk woman follows the social media feeds of the Qikiqtani Inuit Association (QIA) based in her hometown of Iqaluit. A few times a week, the QIA posts Inuktitut words and phrases on Facebook and Twitter, so people can learn as they go. Galloway-Alainga’s followers comment under her posts, offering advice and encouragement. Qinuisaarniq means patience, she reads in another post. “Qinui-saa-rniq,” offers one follower. “Long A sound and not the N. Keep it up!!”

Moving to Ottawa from Nunavut invoked a desire to speak Inuktitut—a language Galloway-Alainga grew up with but never spoke fluently. Many of her Inuit relatives do. “So I find it very important to try and learn just so I can communicate with them,” she says.

While English remains a broadly used means of communication across Nunavut, the inability to speak Inuktitut poses a hurdle for youth like Galloway-Alainga, who equate those language skills with success and well-being in their homeland. The social work student aspires to work in territorial or Indigenous politics. But she also wonders, “Am I Inuk enough?”

***

Galloway-Alainga has seen other Inuit grapple with the same question. On September 17, 2015, Labrador-raised, Iqaluit-based, and not-quite-bilingual Natan Obed ran to serve as president of Canada’s national Inuit association, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK). He went on to win the election, but not before his language and identity were scrutinized by other Inuit leaders.

“There are ancient words given to us to live by,” Cathy Towtongie, president of Nunavut’s land claim organization, told Obed that day in 2015. “What do you recall in your Inuit identity that you have not lost while you went through the western education system?”

“I recognize that not being fluent in Inuktitut is a liability,” Obed responded, noting he has a strong skill set to make up for it, including his experience in Indigenous governance and socioeconomic development. “What most people who don’t have the language struggle with is that they’re not as Inuk as those who speak the language,” Obed told the board members. “The fact that I don’t have Inuktitut is only one small part of who I am.”

In fact, Obed’s fluency in Inuktitut—or lack thereof—tells a much larger story about Inuit in Canada. The legacy of Canada’s residential school system is one of loss—children were sent away from their communities with a goal to withdraw them from their “savage” surroundings, as former prime minister Sir John A. Macdonald once described it. In that sense, Inuit, living in isolated, northern regions, were able to safeguard many parts of that culture. Obed’s family wasn’t so fortunate: His father spent many years of his youth in a residential school where he lost most of his language. In turn, he never spoke Inuktitut to his children.

Still, Inuktut, a term that encompasses all the country’s Inuit dialects, remains the second most spoken Indigenous language among Canada’s Indigenous groups, only after Algonquian languages. Sixty-four percent of Inuit say they can carry a conversation in their mother tongue, and that percentage is much higher in parts of Nunavut and the Nunavik region of northern Quebec.

It’s a point of pride among Inuit. But it also places undue pressure on those who haven’t mastered the language. It challenges Inuit identity and divides communities, in a time when Indigenous language reclamation is synonymous with reconciliation.

***

Inuit identity isn’t just questioned in the North; it extends to many urban centres, where Inuit communities are small but tightly knit. Ottawa is often considered the unofficial southern capital of Nunavut, with an estimated population of 2,500 Inuit, and is home to a number of Inuit organizations and services. Lynda Brown is the manager of youth programming at one of them, the Ottawa Inuit Children’s Centre, which offers culturally relevant child care and community programs. She’s called Ottawa home most of her life; she was born in Iqaluit to an Inuk mom and white dad, though her family moved south to Edmonton when she was six. Her mom wanted to make sure her children’s English was strong, so she stopped speaking Inuktitut at home. Brown didn’t think much of it until her mid-20s.

“I remember when I first started learning [Inuktitut] and some people not being so encouraging with my pronunciation,” Brown recalls. It was the late 1990s, and Brown was working the reception desk at Tungasuvvingat Inuit, a centre for Inuit-focused health and cultural services. She answered a phone call from an elder, who was speaking Inuktitut. When Brown responded in English, she said the woman went on a tirade about not getting served in her first language. “Why are there qallunaat working there?” the woman demanded, using an Inuit term to describe white people. “Well actually, I’m Inuk,” Brown replied, and broke into tears. The incident turned her off Inuktitut for a period. When she decided to give it another try, she opted to learn Inuktitut through song at the early childhood program where she worked. Singing masked her accent, and she was encouraged by the children’s voices accompanying hers. Brown spent years learning to work her tongue around the song called “Quviasuliqpunga,” or “I Will Be Happy,” until an Inuktitut-speaking co-worker congratulated her on how much her pronunciation had improved.

Even for those who are willing and able to learn, Inuktitut-language training and courses aren’t always accessible. It varies across the Inuit Nunangat, the Inuit regions of Canada. In the best-case scenario, classes are taught in Inuktitut from kindergarten until Grade 3, as is the case in Nunavik and roughly half the communities in Nunavut. But try as it may, the Government of Nunavut hasn’t been able to increase the presence of Inuktut in its schools since the Inuit territory was created in 1999.

That concerns Ian Martin, an associate professor in the Department of English at York University’s Glendon College who’s studied language in the territory since its inception. The use of Inuktut in Nunavut homes dropped from 76 percent in 1996 to only 61 percent in 2011. If current trends hold, he predicts that Inuktut will be spoken by just four percent of Inuit in Nunavut by 2051. He’s further incensed by amendments made last year to the territory’s Education Act, which had proposed delaying plans to introduce bilingual English-Inuktut education up until Grade 9—a goal the government once set for 2020 and has now pushed to 2030. “If we can’t use the school system as a place where language is strong… why bother having a Nunavut?” he asks.

Language instruction options aren’t much greater for adult learners, but they exist. Following the creation of Nunavut, educator Leena Evic founded Pirurvik Centre, an Iqaluit-based centre for Inuit language, culture, and well-being. The centre’s first language students were non-Inuit government officials contracted to take the class, but Evic gradually saw the need to develop a program for Inuit who wanted to learn Inuktitut as a second language. That required a re-think of how the language was taught; even Inuit who speak only a handful of words in Inuktitut tend to be familiar with certain elements of the language that newcomers are not.

“Inuit already have our own way of teaching and learning. We try to come from that perspective,” Evic explains. “If I’m taught to make an amautik—a traditional Inuit woman’s parka with a wide hood used for carrying babies—my teacher won’t start with little pieces. She’ll show me the whole product first and that’s how I start learning.” The course uses the tupiq, or “tent,” as a metaphor: Attavik is the beginners’ level, where you look for the best ground to pitch a tent, and then kajusivik ensures the learning builds on a strong foundation. Naarivik, the course’s advanced level, takes on cultural issues and traditional knowledge, imparting what Evic calls “authentic vocabulary.”

Teaching Inuktitut as a second language to Inuit is still a relatively new concept. But Evic, who’s counted Obed among her students, says the program is helping address the rapid level of Inuktut loss in Nunavut. “We must always take into account how our language looks 20 years from now, what state it is in—in that time. And because it is at stake presently, we need to ensure we address its importance right now. All Inuit should be given the opportunity to continue to learn in their own language formally.”

That, however, will require a greater commitment on the part of the federal government, whose funding dedicated to the instruction and promotion of Indigenous languages pales in comparison to how it funds its two official languages, English and French. (Inuktut is an official language of Nunavut, though only at a territorial level.) The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report notes that Canada spends about $14 million each year for the preservation and revitalization of the country’s 90 Indigenous languages, compared to the $348 million earmarked for official minority language communities. In its most recent federal budget, the Trudeau government has committed more money to Indigenous languages—$89 million over three years, money meant to help implement an Indigenous Languages Act his government has yet to produce.

Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami has taken a more Inuit-focused lead on language revitalization; the national organization oversees Atausiq Inuktut Titirausiq, a group exploring a unified writing system for Inuktut. While a number of Inuit regions favour the use of syllabics, a writing system developed by English missionaries in the late 19th century, the group has recommended a shift to Roman orthography for all written Inuktut. The proposed changes have created conflict in certain regions, where Inuit worry those changes will erase the unique character of regional dialects. But proponents of a universal writing system, like Brown, believe it will help preserve Inuit language in the long term by creating standardized learning materials across the Inuit Nunangat. The process makes her optimistic that the Inuit language will flourish throughout the lifetime of her Ottawa-raised children and, she hopes, into her future grandchildren’s generation.

***

For many years, Brown used the expression Qanuippit? when she greeted other Inuit. “How are you?” she thought she was asking. An elder finally explained to her that the expression directly translates to English as: “Are you feeling better after being sick?” It was adapted as the common western greeting, typically asked without much concern for an honest response. There’s no such greeting in Inuit culture, Brown learned: “Inuit just smile at each other instead.” But that’s besides the point; Brown thinks the many Inuit who’ve responded “I’m fine” to her question over the years are part of a supportive network of Inuktut speakers who have made it possible for her language skills to grow.

“For those who are trying—keep trying. You’re going to make mistakes,” Brown says. “No one picks up anything with the snap of a finger. And for those who speak the language and hear people who are learning, be really conscious about how you correct them. Because how you correct them can either empower them to go further or impede them. If I listened to that first lady who made me cry on the phone, I wouldn’t have learned any more.”

More than two years into his leadership at ITK, Obed has pushed Inuit to move beyond what he calls a “hurtful and divisive debate” over language and identity, and instead focus that energy on building stronger, healthier Inuit communities and regions. “There are so many things that bind us,” he says in an interview from his Ottawa office. “No matter who you talk to, all Inuit want culture and language, we want to be able to express ourselves in our language.”

A scroll through Facebook or Twitter in November would have brought many Nunavummiut to the Qikiqtani Inuit Association’s latest Word of the Day: katimmajuuk, which means “together,” illustrated by a Saimaiyu Akesuk print of two geese with necks intertwined. It seems to drive Obed’s point home. But for many Inuit, language learning will be a lifelong endeavour. Since we first chatted last spring, Galloway-Alainga hasn’t kept up her own Inuktitut Instagram feed, though she gets a chance to practise the language on her visits home over the holidays. In Iqaluit, her grandmother has adopted a baby who is being raised in Inuktitut, and she hopes to be able to converse with the child on her visits North. “I want to be part of the generation that keeps our culture and keeps our language alive, because that’s very important to who we are as Inuit,” she says. “That’s very important to Nunavut.”

Photo by Aimo Paniloo.

Imagine a teenager, face smeared in soot and red and white paint, summoning the crowd to its feet. This was the breathtaking scene at Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory’s pep rally in the 1990s.

Pep rallies, stirring and spirited as they are, don’t immediately evoke images of overtly political, much less radical, acts. But for Williamson Bathory, a celebrated Inuit performance artist, any space with an audience can be transformed.

With a roaring energy, she would perform uaajeerneq, a Greenlandic mask dance that invokes the power of storytelling, before a field of football players and fellow classmates. It was “in-your-face racism” meets uaajeerneq, an unnerving and moving performance, with its heavy use of sweeping movements and contorted expressions that seem to channel the unhinged— and comical—side of humanity. For Williamson Bathory, dancing became a way to “level the playing field.”

In her hands, uaajeerneq knows no boundaries: It embodies the frustrations, hopes, and ambitions that preoccupy Indigenous communities. Though her days performing at pep rallies are over, she continues to elevate all these raw emotions into national consciousness.

From appearing in “Retribution,” a music video by award-winning Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq, to running workshops at schools on sexual health and the environment, Williamson Bathory commands any stage with her liberating interpretation of uaajeerneq.

In “Retribution,” Tagaq and Williamson Bathory’s performance grapples with humanity’s contentious relationship with the environment, reckons with the road to reconciliation, slays stereotypes, and brings focus to the unsolved cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

The privilege of having a broad, increasingly visible platform to share her work has connected her to the works of other emerging artists on the cusp of “getting to know themselves,” Williamson Bathory says.

In Timiga, Nunalu Sikulu (My body, the land and the ice), a glacially paced video that both meditates on the silent beauty of the Arctic and upends stereotypes, Williamson Bathory gives a new layer of meaning to the body-positive movement by baring it all. Nudity for Inuit in Greenland—and many elders in Nunavut—wasn’t shameful, but was embraced with a healthy sense of humour and pride. In fact, when she started having children, Williamson Bathory’s mother said, “Welcome to your accordion years.” Only in recent years have the Inuit grown shy about their body.

Revealing every scar, every fold is a political act, an act of decolonization, Williamson Bathory says: “It’s an uncovering to help with the hurt so many Inuit feel about their bodies— an offering of healing.”

That’s just one of the many lessons her parents imparted. Williamson Bathory’s upbringing involved plenty of exposure to her Inuit roots.

Photos by Jamie Griffiths.

And though her ancestors hailed from Greenland, she can trace her lineage to a physical map of Canada. Random fate and artificial lines, which were drawn to carve out the country into discrete provinces and territories, played a part in bringing Williamson Bathory’s parents together.

On a whim, her mother, living in Greenland, ended up in Canada to chase the opportunity to connect with other First Nations students. “[My mother] felt that Greenland was very focused on its relationship with Denmark. She wanted to be in touch with other Indigenous people in the world,” she says. “She pointed at a map of Canada and found Saskatoon.”

With a little digging, her mother, studying to become a teacher at the time, discovered that the University of Saskatchewan had a program designed to prepare its First Nations students to tackle the challenges facing the next generation. That prompted her to transfer, where she ended up meeting Williamson Bathory’s late father.

Her father may have been English, but the entire family spoke Inuktitut at home. Still, Williamson Bathory believes that art can be a path to reclaiming tradition for those who can’t speak their mother tongue. “What we find is if you are a young person who may not speak Inuktitut fluently,” Williamson Bathory says, “it is through music, through creative ideas, that you get excited to learn more.”

For Williamson Bathory, it was through her mother, along with Maariu Olsen, an influential performance artist, that she learned uaajeerneq, when she was 13 years old.

The success Williamson Bathory enjoys now is the product of years of grit and persistence on the front lines, engaging her community through art. After years as a volunteer-run operation, Qaggiavuut Arts Society in Iqaluit, Nunavut—where Williamson Bathory is the program manager—is making strides to realize its dream of creating a hub for artists to collaborate and pass down their craft to the next generation.

Last year, Qaggiavuut secured a total of $1 million in funding through a series of grants, which enabled it to rent out space for an office and community programming. The plan is to have a dedicated building to run its mandate out of. Until then, much of the art that emerges comes from “people’s living rooms, overcrowded houses, shacks heated by oil stoves,” she says.

Still, with a jump-start in funding, Williamson Bathory can simultaneously devote more time to her art and activism to tell the stories of her community.

“To be able to tell our own stories, with our own bodies is an incredible feeling of purpose,” Williamson Bathory says. “It’s really important for young people to see that. I don’t see myself as someone who is dictating an agenda. I really feel like I’m a part of a movement.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Williamson Bathory attended high school in the 1980s, not the ’90s. Since publication, her title has also changed at Qaggiavut Arts Society. The story has since been updated. This regrets the errors.

Shirley Moorehouse’s Pure Energy. Photo courtesy of Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada.

In The Hunter, a digital photograph by Michelle Baikie and part of Newfoundland and Labrador’s SakKijâjuk: Inuit Fine Art and Craft exhibit on Nunatsiavut art, Baikie uses the purple hues of thermal imaging to depict the central role of cold in her culture’s geography—bringing the landscape’s typically invisible qualities to the foreground.

Michelle Baikie’s digital image, The Hunter, can be seen at the exhibit.

SakKijâjuk is a Labrador Inuit term that means “to be visible,” and in the exhibit—hosted by The Rooms, the province’s largest art gallery—visibility takes on multiple meanings. In its largest sense, SakKijâjuk is about belatedly recognizing the cultural production of a group that, due to their exclusion from the Indian Act in 1951, has been doubly othered by the Canadian government.

Though the Northern Labrador region is largely overlooked in conversations about our country’s art, creativity is inextricable from survival in Nunatsiavut, which consequently has the highest concentration of artists in the province. “Inuit people have always had to be innovative, because they live in a place where you have to make everything yourself,” says exhibit curator Heather Igloliorte. “They’re always creating.”

The exhibit at St. John’s The Rooms.

SakKijâjuk features work from artists such as Nellie Winters, who crafts inukaluk figurines from natural materials such as grass, bone, and moose hair; mixedmedia sculptor Billy Gauthier, who was named the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council’s Emerging Artist of the Year in 2011; and Heather Campbell, whose paintings aim to challenge the viewer’s preconceived notions of Inuit art.

Photo courtesy of IsumaTV

When climate change first started showing up in the news, people feared Canada’s North would literally melt away. As scientists debate and differing opinions—and confusion—abound, that initial panic seems to have ebbed. Amongst nearly everybody, of course, but the Inuit. After a lifetime of observation and generations of knowledge, Inuit elders say the melt is already happening. Their insight may be one of Canada’s greatest untapped resources, providing untold first-hand insight into the Inuit people’s traditional world and its changing climate. So why is no one listening?

From the age of five, Inuit children go outside to meet the morning. They look at where the wind is coming from and how cold it is; their parents quiz them on their observations. In the North’s extreme weather, life is inextricably linked to the environment—and that environment is changing. Leanna Ellsworth, Policy Advisor on Climate Change for Canada’s Inuit Circumpolar Council, says the warmer temperatures affect infrastructure built on permafrost, animal migration routes, abundance and, therefore, food supply. All bad, but nothing compared to the elders’ most surprising observation: The sun has moved.

Past the Arctic Circle, residents lose the sun for a few months during the deep of winter, says Igloolik-based Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk. That’s normal. What’s not, however, is where the sun reappears. For his film, Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change, Kunuk interviewed elders from four communities, hundreds of kilometres apart, who all drew the same comparison to their childhood observations: Now when the sun returns in the spring, it has shifted right, across the horizon, as far as 20 km. “We were wondering what happened,” says Kunuk, “and the elders thought, ‘our world tilted off its axis.’”

The Inuit’s observations were met with some skepticism in the scientific world, admits Co-Director Ian Mauro, the only non-Inuit researcher working on Kunuk’s film and also a Canada Research Chair in Human Dimensions of Environmental Change at Mount Allison University. “In fact,” he says, “Many scientists disregarded them.” Not willing to discount the elders’ observations so easily, however, Mauro kept asking for more scientific opinions.

As it turns out, the sun hadn’t moved – but there was something wonky going on that scientists had missed. It’s called the Novaya Zemlya effect: a mirage is created on the horizon as hot atmospheric air meets the cold surface air, creating the appearance of a shift. This effect is exacerbated by climate change and thus, the sun’s altered course acts as a visible indicator. “Once the scientific community started to understand this seemingly complex story,” says Mauro, “many realized this indigenous knowledge is very effective to helping the world understand what environmental changes are taking place in the Arctic.” Let’s hope they spread the word.

A bowhead whale caught by Igloolik, Nunavut, hunters. Photo by Ansgar Walk.

Whale hunting is a fundamental practice in the North and should be celebrated, not restricted…

Gabriel Nirlungayuk can’t pinpoint when Inuit first began hunting bowheads. “Whaling, from an Inuit perspective, has been ongoing since time immemorial,” says the director of wildlife and environment for the land-claims group Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. But he knows one thing: It wasn’t always so heavily regulated.

Currently, Nunavummiut are permitted to harvest three bowhead whales per year. The territory’s 25 communities and two outpost camps compete each year—and the stakes are high. Whaling is an indispensable way of life for Nunavut’s predominantly coastal communities. In August, thanks to healthier bowhead whale numbers and favourable conditions, hunters in Iqaluit caught their first bowhead whale in more than a century.

Nothing on the 14-metre mammal was wasted. Everything—bones, blubber, skin, and meat—is used, and distributed throughout the community and beyond. “Within Inuit culture, the celebration of sharing the meat is one that is special to individuals who are harvesting,” says Nirlungayuk, “They’re not just hunting for themselves; they’re hunting for their family and extended family.” Inuit are working with government and the scientific community to establish a new quota that won’t threaten the whale population, he adds. “We know we could hunt more,” says Nirlungayuk. “We’re taking it slow.”

…But conservation methods must ensure the health of the Arctic whale population.

Whale hunting in the North has long been controversial. Governments and biologists carefully monitor whale numbers, with conservation officers enforcing quotas, licences, and inspections before and after hunts. Some conservation groups, such as Sea Shepherd, say it’s still not enough. “I do not believe in cultural justifications for slaughtering wildlife if other redress is available for survival,” says Sea Shepherd’s Capt. Paul Watson.

More moderate groups, such as the World Society for the Protection of Animals, believe subsistence hunts should become more humane, cautioning any form of whaling has the potential for severe negative impacts for animal welfare. “WSPA urges all whalers, including aboriginal subsistence whalers, to consider the increasing and irrefutable scientific evidence that all whaling causes immense and prolonged suffering,” says Joanna Toole, the oceans campaign coordinator for WSPA.

Bowheads have been precariously close to extinction: the zealous commercial whaling that ended decades before put the bowhead whale on the endangered species list in the 1980s, and they were only downgraded to “special concern” in 2009. However, numbers are on the incline off the coast of Nunavut and in the Hudson Bay. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans revised its estimates from hundreds to thousands in 2008 and continues to survey the population. As the whale population strengthens, so too does the Inuit argument for putting conservation and culture on equal footing.

Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami leader Mary Simon

In today’s episode of Listen to This, associate editor Nick Taylor-Vaisey brings us the second in his three part series of interviews with Canada’s top aboriginal leaders. In Podcast #017, Nick talked with Clément Chartier, president of the Metis National Council.

Today, Nick talks — by a crackly phone connection — with Mary Simon, leader of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the national organization of Inuit people, about the issues that are most pressing for the approximately 55,000 Inuit people that ITK represents, including education, mental health, the massive threat of climate change, a landmark lawsuit against the European Union’s ban on seal products, and more.

G8 Leaders meet in L'Aquila, Italy, July 8, 2009.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced on January 26 that he was going to use Canada’s Group of Eight presidency to push for an annual G8 summit agenda focused on women’s and children’s health. Former UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa Stephen Lewis said it best when he called the announcement an act of “chutzpah.”

First of all, Canada lacks credibility on this issue internationally, having consistently failed to meet our own humanitarian aid targets for decades. Secondly, and even more galling, we lack credibility in our own backyard. Consider that aboriginal infant mortality is markedly higher than the general population—Inuit infants are three times less likely to make it to their first birthdays. Among 17 peer countries, one study found, Canada is tied for second-last place when it comes to infant mortality (only the U.S. level is higher). Consider this is the same government that cut funding to the Court Challenges Program, the legal fund that since 1978 had supported legal challenges by minorities, including women. And the same government that heavily cut funding to Status of Women Canada, closing many of its offices across the country. The same government whose pay-equity legislation disappointingly maintains the status quo by encouraging public employers to consider “market demand” when determining wages (the same demand that caused the inequity in the first place). And this is the government that replaced a popular national childcare program with clumsy $100-per-month cash payments to parents. The resulting system isn’t just functionally inept, it’s ideologically offensive: it needlessly tops up budgets for families who can already afford quality childcare, and squeezes the ones who can’t. Since $100 won’t realistically cover the actual cost of quality childcare, the options become choosing not to work—the Ozzie-and-Harriet fantasy that social conservatives prefer, which is only available, of course, to two-parent families with one earning a sufficient living—or covering the difference between the government’s payment and the actual cost.

In other words, the prime minister’s call for the G8 to boost human rights and development for women and children around the world fits both dictionary definitions of chutzpah: unbelievable impertinence and worthy audacity. No one doubts that urgent action is needed to prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths among women and children worldwide, and if the G8 and G20 listen to the PM when they meet in Muskoka and Toronto in June—and more importantly, take real action that will save real lives— then it will be a great accomplishment, domestic criticisms aside.

But given the G8’s stunningly poor record on exactly these issues, there’s no reason to expect that’s how it will go. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development recently announced that the collective aid pledges the G8 nations made at their 2005 Gleneagles summit remain unmet five years later—by the outrageous margin of more than $20 billion. If the prime minister really wants to make a splash at this year’s summit, he should leave his platitudinous speech at home and show up with a signed cheque instead.