the right to be cold by sheila watt cloutier

Watt-Cloutier spent several years working to implement the recommendations of the report, which remains an important reference point. Subsequently, as one of the main contributors to the landmark 1992 Nunavik Educational Task Force Report, Watt-Cloutier and the team of Inuit leaders from Nunavik provided 101 recommendations to completely reform the system, arguing that any effective education system must consider community needs, including self-government, cultural preservation, and the development of community and regional infrastructure. As an educational administrator working for the Kativik School Board, she undertook several initiatives to improve educational standards of Inuit students, as well as addressing the problem of alcohol and drug addiction afflicting the Inuit student population. She rejects a future where the Inuit exclusively work for large extractive industries, pointing out that the dispiritedness of a people cannot be relieved by a cheque from a mining company.Įarly life and reforming the educational system in Nunavikįor the first ten years of her life, Sheila Watt-Cloutier was raised traditionally, travelling on land only by dog-sledge before she was sent away to a family in Nova Scotia and to a residential setting in Manitoba. She works towards developing the leadership potential of the Inuit youth, building programs that would allow them to use ancient Inuit life skills and wisdom that will be meaningful in a globalised world. While she remains an active participant in international forums, Watt-Cloutier has returned to the Arctic. By pointing out how unchecked greenhouse gas emissions violate the collective human rights of the Inuit, her work has helped shift the discourse around climate change. Watt-Cloutier convincingly argues that climate change is a human rights issue to which everyone on the planet is inevitably linked.

In 2015, she published the book The Right to Be Cold about her life and the effects of climate change on Inuit communities. She was an influential force behind the adoption of the Stockholm Convention to ban persistent organic pollutants, which accumulate strongly in Arctic food chains. As an elected representative of her people, administrator and advocate, Watt-Cloutier significantly contributed to an overhaul of the education system in Nunavik in Northern Quebec to make it more effective in meeting the needs of Inuit communities. Sheila Watt-Cloutier is one of the most outstanding advocates for the rights of the Inuit of the Arctic.

The right to be cold by sheila watt cloutier