INUIT SHEILA WATT-CLOUTIER FILES FIRST INTERNATIONAL LEGAL ACTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE
In her capacity as the elected Chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), Watt-Cloutier, born in Kuujjuak, Nunavik, petitioned the Washington, DC-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) seeking protection from violations of the human rights of Inuit resulting from the US’ greenhouse gas emissions. Her petition drew upon the knowledge of hunters and elders, peer-reviewed science, and documented existing, ongoing, and projected destruction of the Arctic environment, as well as the culture and hunting-based economy of the Inuit. The petition followed her speech at the 11th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (November 29–December 9, 2005). “Our way of life is dependent on the natural environment and animals. Climate change is destroying our environment and eroding our culture. But we refuse to disappear. We will not become a footnote to globalization.”
Source: “Inuit seek us attention to global warming,” cultural survival, https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/inuit-seek-us-attention-global-warming
Photo: TheSilentphotographer, 3/29/2009. Permissive use under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/