SHEILA WATT-CLOUTIER: Thank you very much, Mead. (Speaking in Inuit) I think I have some fellow Inuit in the room, I know I have Dalee Sambo Dorough who's here and some familiar faces. Good to see all new faces as well and in a new forum that I am speaking at here in Anchorage. I come often to Anchorage because of the link and the role that I play as president of ICC or chair of ICC, but when I headed the Canadian branch I used to come here as well, but more frequently so now as I am chair.

And yes, I was raised in Nunavik in the northern part of Quebec, we call Nunavik I'm raised very traditionally traveling only by dog team the first 10 years of my life. And we were very close to our land and our way of life. And I started to learn English when I was six when I started to school, so Inuktitut (sp) is my mother tongue. And when I was sent away for school at a very young age I lost it for some time, but I've gained it all back so I have a fluency in my mother tongue as well.

Today I'm going to speak about some great challenges that are happening here in the arctic. And many of you, of course, are very aware, keenly aware, of what has been happening up here in terms of challenges to our environment, not only in terms of the contaminants that have found their way up into our food chain and into our bodies and into the nursing milk of our mothers with some very worrisome long-term effects. And I was very involved and engaged in the global negotiations that led to the Stockholm Convention at the time because for us it's not just an environmental issue. It's very much a health issue and a cultural survival issue. And so those are very important issues to all of us here in the arctic.

And the arctic, of course, is no longer isolated from the rest of the world. And we know that more and more scientists and policy makers and politicians are looking to the north now and they want to know what's happening here. And they want to know all in the longer term, in particular, what is happening up here. And there are three main reasons why there is such an interest now in the arctic is energy, transportation and environment. And we know these are the key things.

And many of the things that are happening now, of course, are only going to escalate in terms of that attention and that focus to what is happening in the arctic. Some of it will be what people would consider to be beneficial to the arctic, but for some of us who are in the communities it can be, perhaps, one of the biggest intrusions of maybe starting to open up in terms of the opening up of the Northwest Passage, for example. What people will consider to be a very great benefit economically to the world may be much more than that for us in terms of what negative impacts it could have. So we're really keeping our eye on the situation as leaders in our world because it's very important that we have a sense of managing control over these changes that are happening.

And for those of you who don't have a real window into the reality of some of our communities in Alaska, in Canada, in Greenland and in Siberia you will know that the first waves of tumultuous change that has come into our homeland has created this real sense of sometimes turmoil and instability and resulting in alot of self-destructive patterns in the social changes that have occurred. So we need to be on top of these things today and we're certainly being party to everything that happens at the local, regional, national and international level.

Now when we talk about environmental issues in the arctic, we know now that the arctic is considered the health barometer for the planet. We, in fact, are the early warning system. And what happens happens first here and to the planet. And this is certainly the case, as I say, about the climate change and the persistent organic pollutants that end up here.

Now I want to talk a little bit about the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment for those of you who I'm sure you have heard of this, many of you have heard of this, but it is an incredible assessment that was put together and worked with, 300 scientists from 15 countries, and incorporated traditional knowledge into the process as much as it could. And it was a great start. It was ground breaking in many senses because it was not just going to be a scientific piece. We ensured and we wanted to ensure that traditional knowledge was going to be woven into the entire process. And I think we succeeded quite well. Some areas better and in some chapters not as much, but I think it was a really good start.

The other ground breaking way in which this Assessment is different from most is that -- and we insisted this from day one is that it would include culture as well, changes to our culture. Most assessments don't do that. A lot of it focuses, of course, on economy and environment, but not culture and the changes to that. So we were able to inject that important -- those important pieces into that process of the assessment.

It took four years for this assessment to come to be. And we were very involved along with the Gwithcin the Sami, the Athabascans, the Aleut and the indigenous peoples of Russia. We -- and when it was released it really did surprise and shock many people around the world because there has been this void for a long, long time in terms of science in the arctic, especially in terms of the climatic changes that were happening. And so it was quite shocking when everybody read this assessment that came out, you know, about the melting of glaciers and the disappearing of the summer sea ice and distressed polar bears and all that was happening up here. And it really does though, support what we have been observing for many, many years. And that is that the climate is changing very rapidly and at a very alarming rate, and particularly up here.

And while the change is not necessarily uniform throughout and, in fact, it can be up and down in terms we know, the unpredictability now, there are some areas that are warming up a lot quicker than other places. And that is the same, our Inuit hunters and our elders are observing very similar situations throughout the four countries in which we live. That the melting of permafrost, of course, and the beach slumping and the coastal erosion and longer ice -- sea ice free seasons that are happening now, and the melting glaciers that are now creating torrent rivers where there used to be streams. So this reality of what's happening in our communities is extremely stark. And this is not just some small changes that we can adjust to quite easily because now it becomes life and death. And so we've lost -- in my own region in Nunavik where I'm living now have lost lives as a result of it, so it does become a situation where you are looking out your window and really trying to be thinking in very different terms today beyond traditional knowledge.

Our hunters and our elders now often have to say well, in teaching you, my son or my grandson, these are the situations that I can give you that kind of information and that kind of education, however they say now it's not quite the same, so do be cautious about what I am saying because it is not always the case and there's unpredictability in terms of the ice conditions. That what you see on the surface is not necessarily what is under and how the ice is forming because of the warming of the oceans are forming very differently as well. And so those are real realities that even seasoned hunters are falling through the ice. And I have a neighbor across the street who as a result of falling through has lost both his legs because he froze out there. So reading and being able to predict where our traditional knowledge was once our incredible wise guide is not always what it is. It's not that way today as it once way.

And, again, as I say, the scope of the ACIA is unusually broad. As I said it includes the impacts on human health and culture as well as environment, economy and society. And basically there are three things that the ACIA is saying. And that is that climate change is happening in the arctic now. And it is quickly going to get worse. And that climate change in the arctic is globally important. Those are the main -- the three main things.

And I want to quote two things that -- and if you can please remember when I quote them that we Inuit are an ancient people with a hunting culture that's very much based on the sea and the sea ice. And the two quotes, two key conclusions and there are several, but the two that really make a difference for us in terms of having to address this as an urgent -- an issue of immediacy and urgency is this, marine species dependent on sea ice including polar bears, ice living seals, walrus and some marine birds are very likely to decline with some facing extinction.

And second, for Inuit warming is likely to disrupt or even destroy their hunting and food sharing culture as reduced sea ice causes the animals on which they depend to decline, become less accessible, or possibly go extinct. So the scientists usually are very cautious people and that's rightly so, but they're not pulling any punches with the ACIA. This is very real.

And, you know, I always ask the question how would you feel if 300 scientists from around the world based from the very best of universities around the arctic and the world concluded that your age old culture and economy might be doomed and that you might just become a footnote in the history of globalization. That's pretty stark for us to have to face oftentimes. And when people say well, the polar bear is probably going to become extinct, but you know there are times there are people, myself included, and fellow Inuit who wake up in the mornings sometimes and feel like we are endangered in the way that we see ourselves as Inuit. And so those are very real for us.

And because we're in that transitioning culture of the first wave that hit us and dealing with issues of high suicide rates amongst our young people, particularly our young men, it's such a reality for us in terms of how do we deal with these issues. And as we're coming out the other side of modernization we are now realizing as we recognize what has happened in our society of why we have come from such a strong, independent, wise and resilient culture to now become so highly dependent on substances or institutions or processes that we are in a place now that we say now that we're recognizing what's happened and we're really starting to slow down, we realize that we're being poisoned from afar and that our climate is changing so quickly.

The very thing that we're turning to for solutions to address these issues at the community level with our young people is the very thing that seems to be just not in our grasp. It's moving away very quickly. And so it really is a sense of survival, cultural survival, that we feel that this sense of immediacy and urgency to tell the story in that way. And, you know, I have a grandson who's eight who hunts with his young father. And I would want him because of the influences that are happening in our world and our communities to have that strong, resilient culture because our hunting culture is really misunderstood. It's not just the killing of animals, skinning the seal, cutting up the meat, it is so holistic that when you go out there in the land you can't help but be taught the character skills to be patient, to be courageous, how not to be impulsive, how to have sound judgment, how to be creative, how to be wise about anything in your life. And those skills that you learn on the land are so transferrable in the modern world today.

And if they're not taught in an institution, institutional way of life because they have been severed in the institutional way of learning and not reassembled anywhere else, then our young people are in that void where they're not being prepared, not only for the opportunities but the tremendous challenge that our young people are going through in our communities. And so you can see that it's not just about climate. It's this -- this isn't just about contaminants on your plate and that we should just eat chicken and pork. This isn't just about a hunting culture that just should be doing something else. This is really about a people trying to maintain a cultural way of life that offers solutions and answers to the way our young people are coping with stress and with so many things happening. And so it goes beyond that.

And so this is a story about a people that 155,000 of us in the entire world, just a little blip on the radar screen of the global world very much sometimes not even on the radar screen of our own countries. And we are trying to make our mark. We're trying not for the sake of just making it a mark on the world, but for the sake of making sure that our young people are going to move towards embracing their life and moving on to become a young people who will take on the next leg of what needs to get done in a real survival mode, not a self- destructing one.

So we have been working very hard at the ICC level, at the international level, but always very much maintaining that link and that understanding at the community level what is happening. We have worked with United Nations Environment program on the contaminants issue and making this a real human health issue. And I think we succeeded quite well in influencing the world about these things.

We're now working with the United Nations Framework Convention on climate change, the UN FCCC, in ensuring that the objective of the convention is going to address the issue of the arctic. And which it doesn't now in the way that it had been created in the '80s. And I'm going to read you the convention's objective and how it connects to our world at the community level. And I'm quoting this objective here of the UN FCCC. Stabilize green house gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous athropogenic interference with the climate system. Such a level should be achieved within a time frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner. So you can see these words, you would think, are really made there to do just that. They're fine words, but already we're in that dangerous place in the arctic, climate change in terms of what is happening. And already our food production, our hunting, our fishing and gathering is threatened. That's today, not tomorrow. It's today. And so the objective, in fact, of this convention is being breached and it's being breached here and now. So that's the key message that we have been sending to the world on these issues.

Because I'm deeply concerned and I know many people are that with this next wave which is already happening now and I am sure there will be a tipping point fairly soon on these issues, and I'm not scare mongering, I'm being very realistic about what it is that we have been able to see coming in terms of the research and the assessment and the indigenous knowledge that matches all of that, but this is way beyond, way beyond the natural rhythms and cycles of nature. This is way beyond and I truly believe that.

The other thing is that the arctic does not fit within the categories of developed and developing countries in which, for example, the convention is built upon. But instead, the arctic really bridges these categories 'cause we're in both. We're in both. We're in both and Inuit, of course, being in Russia, Greenland, Canada and Alaska, we're in both worlds. And our part now in the arctic is starting to become and understood as -- and becoming a geo-political region in its own right because of so many of these reasons that I talk about.

And so the key point and opportunity that I want to stress is this, let's use this stark and compelling story and situation here in the arctic to really do something effectively to allow countries to look beyond their narrowly focused defined national interest and really create that global perspective on climate change. And when decision makers from around the world and in the arctic when they've never been here before, when they come to the north to see what's happening they really get a sense. They see it. They feel it. It's palpable and they touch climate change.

So I think, you know, I've spoken to many ministers around who have come before who have never been to the arctic before and when they finally come to the arctic to see for themselves they get it. And so I think we all have a responsibility to continuously invite people, policy makers, scientists, others, many others around the world so they could come up to the arctic and get it.

It has to be, greenhouse gases have to be very substantively, significantly reduced if we are to achieve the objective of this convention that is already having this dangerous mark.

We have been working for some time and I have attended -- when I finished the work on the contaminants issue and traveled to many parts of the world where those negotiations were ongoing. We then started to focus in on climate change. Nowhere in the world is climate change so parallel to the contaminants issue as it is in the arctic for a couple of reasons. The contaminants issue is one that the world has come to do the right thing, signed the Stockholm Convention. And as we speak, these contaminants, many of them are being turned off at their source now as we speak, so that's good. However, there are new contaminants that are starting to end up and as we know the flame retardants are now being found at high levels in our polar bear, in our Nunuk (ph), so -- and, again, it's going to end up in our bodies and so on again, so we mustn't be complacent and we mustn't put it on the back burner. We must keep it on the front burner.

And in Russia the stark reality of recent studies on persistent organic pollutants would make anybody in this room just cringe because of the levels that are being found in our fellow Russian indigenous peoples. And so we must continue to press hard on these issues.

But where they're parallel, of course, again as I say, is the fact that we may be turning the taps off at their source, but don't forget contaminants, many of them sit in the bottom of the arctic sink. That's why persistent organic pollutants making their way up here through the weather patterns stay up here because it's cold. They don't go back up into the air because it's too cold. They end up in the bottom of the arctic sink where our marine mammals eat them, we eat the marine mammals, and then of course, higher levels bio- magnify, bio-accumulate, and that's the problem with persistent organic pollutants.

As the oceans warm up, the pollutants that are at the bottom of the sink are going to start to be re-released. And then we're going to just have worse problems again with the persistent organic pollutants, so there's a parallel issue here with contaminants and climate change in the arctic that really doesn't exist in a lot of other places, so we have to keep that in mind.

And also permafrost melting is now releasing already methane which is even worse than Co2, so those kinds of connections we have to keep in mind that in the arctic it's quite different and alarming.

ICC, we've been working on this process for a long time. And as I say I've been part of the UN FCCC meetings starting back in COP9, there's been a Conference of the Parties all the way, now we've just finished COP11, conference of the parties in Montreal. I've been to the one in Milan, Italy which was COP9, Buenos Aires last year and the Montreal this year. What was fun about Montreal is that it was at home. I didn't have to deal with jet lag and all the rest of it and I could really focus on what it is that we needed to do.

You can appreciate that when you have 200 countries with about anywhere from six to 10,000 delegates that you really have to be very focused and strategic in trying to make your mark on how important this is for the arctic and try to get that arctic Inuit human face on the map. Big, big delegations knowing very little. And so we've had to really just try to deal with that because these become convention meetings where people are running around all over the place all about technology and the politics of things, but never about the human face, never about what it's doing at the human level. And so it -- and that picture really gets lost. And so we've had to be very, very focused about these things.

And, again, I say as 155,000 Inuit in the entire world we're the net recipients of these persistent organic pollutants because we're marine mammal eaters where these toxins end up in. And now having climate change be so negatively -- disproportionately negatively impacted because our culture is based on the cold, the snow and the ice. We say well, what are we going to be able to do to put ourselves on the map? We have been thinking very deeply about some of these questions for sometime. And we have because of that connection to our culture and knowing what it is that we could lose, if you think we have problems now you ain't seen nothing yet if we lose our way of life really, really when it comes down to our families and our children and the future.

So, and again, it's just not about hunting as I said earlier. So we have been really exploring what is out there in the world that could really help to put us on the map in terms of making this a human issue. And we've been exploring that for some time, for about over three years now. When I first became chair people asked me well, what really is going to be your priority when you become chair? And I said to put the Inuit human face on the map. And we have been exploring many ways in which we might be able to do that and it's not to say that we've only focused in one way because we do have a political and media strategy behind everything that we do.

We become like the seasoned hunter that has to get up in the morning, check the horizon, the conditions and put everything on his side and be very wise about his judgment of what he's going to do because his family expects him to come home with something. And it's the same as us leaders in the world we put on our suits and our special coats and our briefcases and we go out there in the world trying to be very focused about things and trying to have the wisest of judgment based on our wise culture because our people expect us to come home with something that is going to help to alleviate the challenges that we are having.

So you know, you can't afford to hit and miss all the time. The world is huge. Our resources are limited. Our funding is limited, so we really become that. And I know that Dalee resonates with this because Dalee Sambo Dorough has been working for years on the draft declaration of indigenous rights in Geneva. She just came back last night, you know, very focused about these things. And she is a key player for our people in that issue. And I wanted to take the opportunity while you're here and the people are here to thank you for that incredible work that you're doing, Dalee, on all of our behalf. You've just been instrumental.

And so, we're so few, as I say, in number of people who can really just go out there and do that. And we really appreciate one another when we can.

So for more than two years of preparation on December 7th we had been preparing a way in which to do this as I say. And I'm leading up to the big step that we took. We had been talking about this being a human rights issue, that the global warming climate changes in themselves is a human issue, and that countries like the United States that are so powerful, so -- have the potential and the ability to make world changes at many, many levels was the only country that was not signing on to the Kyoto, along with a few other countries, but being a powerful country that was emitting 25 percent of the greenhouse gases around the world. And the challenges that we had with United States when we were doing the work on the ACIA, we realize we were going to have to shift into a stronger strategy to get them on board, to influence and to assert more influence on the United States to come on board so that they could see that what needs to get done.

So we started to find ways in which we could do that, not aggressively, not anti-anything, but to say how can we get the United States on board to look at these issues? So after two years of looking at ways in which we could do that and working through with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that's based in Washington, D.C. we launched our petition which is 167 page climate change based petition in Montreal on December the 7th, just before Christmas. And this petition, of course, is on our web site.

And just so you know that it's not just a bunch of signatures, it's a remarkable piece of legal work. And we worked with our elders and our hunters and their observations, their energy, their brilliance and ingenuity and wisdom is woven through this entire piece of work. And for a lawyer you would understand when I say it's got over 700 footnotes so you can imagine the kind of work that has gone into this remarkable piece of legal work. We worked with Earth Justice from San Francisco. We worked with the Center for Environmental -- International Environmental Law in Washington. And James Anaya was our main consultant advisor to this process. James Anaya being an indigenous human rights lawyer in the University of Arizona.

And our petition asks very reasonable what we're asking, very reasonable. We're asking the Commission to come to the north to see for themselves what is happening to the environment. We seek a declaration from the Commission that the United States which is the source of 25 percent of greenhouse gases is, indeed, violating our rights detailed in the 1948 declaration on the rights and duties of man. And a declaration that may not be enforceable because it's not a lawsuit and we're not suing for damages or for money, but it has great moral and political value in the way that we have done this. And we need this high moral way in which to persuade and encourage, I think, the United States and the governments around the world and industry and business and NGOs to cut the greenhouse gas emissions.

And, again, be sure to understand that we are -- it is not suing, it's not a lawsuit. Some media have picked it up and sensationalized it as a David and Goliath lawsuit kind of thing but that's not how we perceive it. It has the purpose to educate, to inform and to ask the United States to join the community of nations in a global campaign to combat climate change. And that's what I mean by the arctic can bridge the world in this way.

And so just let me say a few words about the spirit in which this motivates and guides our petition. And I can't say this enough, it's not meant to be, as I say, an aggressive act. In fact, this is -- and I said this in Montreal as we launched it, I'm a mother, I'm a grandmother and I can tell you that -- and I led this petition in the way that it was going to be and I will continue to lead it because my name is on there and I will lead it to the end. I have never put this forward with any sense or feeling of aggression or anger. It is the most caring act I have ever done in protection of my culture and in protection of the future of my grandson who is eight who will grow up in all of these influences that happen. It is a loving act in reality. It is not an angry one.

And so -- and it's not a means to an end and not an end in itself either. It is one that is meant to really be both from the heart. It is meant to be from the mind. It is very cool. It's very calm. It's very collected. It's very compelling. And I would want all of you to read it to understand and to learn how it all connects, not only to the arctic and its peoples but how it connects to the rest of the world and how we do things today.

And so we're asking the commission to come north to see for themselves what is happening up here. We're asking the commission to hold hearings so that we can, the elders and the hunters and the women who are part of this petition, can also say in their own testmionies to the commission.

And, again, I say this petition is a gift, not only to the United States, it is a gift to the world. It is an act of generosity. It an act of generosity from our hunters from an age old and ancient culture that is deeply tied to the natural environment and still in tune with its wisdom. And you may only hear about some of the despair and the challenges and struggles that we face, but I can guarantee you there is still that wisdom in our communities. And it is that that we want to protect and it is that that we're trying to tell the world in a world that is grappling with these issues of sustainability and balance because it is because of a disconnect that the world is having in terms of its own connection to one's self, to your family, to the environment, to your neighbors that we are debating this issue of climate change in the first place.

It is that disconnect that makes it as though it were not a human issue and it is short-term thinking, not long-term that is causing these problems to begin with. So we're trying to make our way in our way of standing up for our human rights to be the way in which the world can understand connectivity to one another. It is a way in which we feel that the arctic is melting and the glaciers and Greenland is melting at such a rapid rate that as Greenland melts the small island developing states are sinking today, not tomorrow, today. And it is that -- if you can put that in your image, in your daily lives and know and understand because you can't get clearer than that in terms of understanding connectivity. It's when the arctic melts other places in the planet are sinking. And that's the connectivity of the people on this planet are one.

And it's that that we are trying to portray in our message and our story. And so it's important that we see this as that gift in a non-angry fashion, in a clear fashion to say we're the early warning, we give you this, we give you this. And so many people have responded to our petition in fact, and I have more e-mails in support from the citizens of America than I do anywhere else in the world. Because there are many citizens of America that are way ahead of their own government's policies and they are there.

And so I invite all of you to look at that and to support where you can, how you can to get that understanding to continue to move forward, that this is, indeed, a humanity issue. This is, indeed, a human rights issue and if there's any way that you want to help you get in touch with us.

And, again, I want to thank you for having me here today in Anchorage. I always coming coming here. I get to see familiar faces that, you know, Natalie who goes around, you know, with Arctic Council meetings and other meetings as well. It's always good to see. I see that there's an old friend if my brother's who is here who came to meet me just because she wanted to know how my brother who she knew 20, 30 years ago is doing and the family as well. There have been many losses there, too, but Charlie and I are here and we're still plugging away at trying to make this a better world for our own families and our communities and our nations as a whole just not only in the Inuit nations, but to use this story to connect us all.

Use the arctic to connect us all is my message. And if we can protect the arctic we can save the planet. And I say that often very genuinely. It's because I feel that that's the case. (Speaking Inuit)