Sheila Watt-Cloutier
Centre for International Governance Innovation & Inuit Circumpolar Council – Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada
Sheila Watt-Cloutier is a Canadian Inuit Activist and a Nobel Peace Prize nominee. She is in the business of transforming public opinion into public policy. Experienced in working with global decision-makers for more than a decade, Watt-Cloutier offers a new model for 21st-century leadership. She speaks with passion and urgency on the issues of today — the environment, the economy, foreign policy, global health, and sustainability — not as separate concerns, but as a deeply interconnected whole. At a time when people are seeking solutions, direction, and a sense of hope, this global leader provides a big picture of where we are and where we’re headed.
“Our emotional, spiritual, and cultural well-being and health depend on protecting the land. We cannot find our way with band-aid solutions. For Inuit, the environment is everything.”
Sheila has been alerting the world that the Inuit will not become a footnote to the onslaught of globalization. She has been working through the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and on December 7, 2005, she filed a climate change-related petition with to the Commission as an urgent message from the Inuit “sentinels” to the rest of the world on global warming’s already dangerous impacts. She testified before the Commission during their extraordinary first hearing on the links between climate change and human rights.
Born in Kuujjuaq, Nunavik (northern Quebec), Sheila Watt-Cloutier was raised traditionally in her early years before attending school in southern Canada and in Churchill, Manitoba. She is the past Chair of Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC), the organization that represents internationally the 155,000 Inuit of Canada, Greenland, Alaska, and Chukotka in the Far East of the Federation of Russia.
Youth are central to her mission. She contributed significantly to “Silatunirmut: The Pathway to Wisdom,” the 1992 report of the review of educational programming in Nunavik, and she co-wrote, produced and co-directed the acclaimed youth awareness video “Capturing Spirit: The Inuit Journey.”
“The pandemic has given a pause, a time to reflect on new possibilities. It is a time to shift from apathy to empathy and see how we are all inter-connected. What happens in the Arctic affects us all.”
As a political spokesperson she was Corporate Secretary of Makivik Corporation, from 1995 to 1998. Defending the rights of Inuit has been at the forefront of Watt-Cloutier’s mandate. She was instrumental as a spokesperson for a coalition of northern Indigenous Peoples in the global negotiations that led to the 2001 Stockholm Convention banning the generation and use of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) that contaminate the arctic food web. In 2002, Ms. Watt-Cloutier was elected international Chair of ICC where she contributed to ICC Canada’s Institution-Building for Northern Russian Indigenous Peoples’ Project, which focused on economic development and training in remote northern communities.
Ms. Watt-Cloutier received the inaugural Global Environment Award from the World Association of Non-Governmental Organizations in recognition for her POPs work. She is the recipient of the 2004 Aboriginal Achievement Award for Environment. In 2005, she was honored with the United Nations Champion of the Earth Award and the Sophie prize in Norway. Later in the year, she was presented with the inaugural Northern Medal by the outgoing Governor General of Canada, Adrienne Clarkson.
In February, 2007, she was publicly nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by members of the Norwegian parliament, including the former Minister of the Environment.
“I do nothing more than remind the world that the Arctic is not a barren land devoid of life but a rich and majestic land that has supported our resilient culture for millennia. Even though small in number and living far from the corridors of power, it appears that the wisdom of the land strikes a universal chord on a planet where many are searching for sustainability.”
Publications: The Right to Be Cold: One Woman’s Story of Protecting Her Culture, the Arctic and the Whole Planet; The Inuit Journey Towards a POPs-Free World; Don’t Abandon the Arctic to Climate Change
Article: Earth Justice
Video 1) Acceptance Speech for the 2015 Right Livelihood Award
Video 2) Human Trauma and Climate Trauma As One
