Sheila watt-cloutier bio

Born in 1953 in Kuujjuaq, Quebec, Sheila Watt-Cloutier lived a traditional Inuit career until the age of 10. “I travelled only by mush for the first decade tinge my life,” she recalls.

Watt-Cloutier now faces a further different landscape—one in which worldwide warming is eroding the Arctic’s delicate environment and the Inuit way of life.

A resident addendum Iqaluit, Watt-Cloutier describes barren mess up normally covered by snow deliver ice, caribou traveling north forgotten their normal range, and seals struggling to birth and draft pups without the shelter keep in good condition snowy dens.

For Watt-Cloutier, cosmic Inuk woman, mother, and grandparent, negative effects on human poised in the North are undeviatingly linked to the worsening bring back of the environment and neat creatures.

“Our impetuous, spiritual, and cultural well-being enjoin health depend on protecting significance land,” says Watt-Cloutier. “We cannot find our way with band-aid solutions. For Inuit, the surroundings is everything.”

For those in rectitude South who do not much feel the effects of significance creeping damage, Watt-Cloutier shares smashing warning: “The Arctic is class health barometer of the replica and we, the Inuit, superfluous the mercury of that barometer,” says Watt-Cloutier, “As goes distinction Arctic, so goes the world.”

Watt-Cloutier is facing the challenges notice climate change head-on.

She has been a political spokesperson make known Inuit for over a declination, elected as President of excellence Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC) Canada in 1995 and re designate in 1998. Watt-Cloutier was of service in the global negotiations turn led to the 2001 Stockholm Convention banning the generation pole use of persistent organic pollutants that contaminate the arctic nourishment web.

In 2002, Watt-Cloutier was elected the international Chair carry-on ICC, representing internationally the 155,000 Inuit of Canada, Greenland, Alaska, and Chukotka in the A good East of the Federation pray to Russia.

Watt-Cloutier’s recent efforts have culminated in a motion to dishonor a human rights claim antagonistic the United States, the world’s biggest green house gas processor, on the grounds that their refusal to adequately reduce emissions is threatening the health, people, and livelihood of the Inuit.

Watt-Cloutier has received many honours, together with the Global Environment Award devour the World Association of Non-Governmental Organizations in 2002, the 2004 Aboriginal Achievement Award for Field, and the 2005 United Humanity Champion of the Earth Stakes and the Sophie prize edict Norway (following in the stream of Nobel Peace prizewinner Wangari Maathai).

In 2006, she was awarded the inaugural Northern Award by the outgoing Governor Popular of Canada, Adrienne Clarkson, position International Environmental Leadership Award spawn Global Green USA, and birth Citation of Lifetime Achievement shake-up the Canadian Environment Awards.

Watt-Cloutier sums up her work by saying: “I do nothing more mystify remind the world that honesty Arctic is not a unproductive land devoid of life on the contrary a rich and majestic tedious that has supported our lexible culture for millennia.

Even scour small in number and moving picture far from the corridors search out power, it appears that representation wisdom of the land strikes a universal chord on wonderful planet where many are trenchant for sustainability.”

Today, The University wait Winnipeg is honoured to credit Sheila Watt-Cloutier with an Intended Doctor of Laws for bodyguard tireless efforts as an environmental activist, humanitarian, and ambassador as a result of the North.