Look! The Arctic! Our submission to the UN for COP-15

Go Siila! I think this video clip is fabulous, and so informative and worthwhile.

I am Canadian and studied Anthropology as an undergraduate in the early 1970s, working all my summers in between in what was then Canada's NWT. I loved the people and the place so much that i went to work full time for the GNWT for several years, before going to graduate school in Planning at UBC (where my graduate thesis was about how cultural values influence land use planning and resource management, using the NWT--with its 1/3 Inuit, 1/3 Indian and Dene, and 1/3 White as my examples).

I have gone on to become a socioeconomic and environmental consultant and somehow (after working stints in Vancouver and Calgary) ended up in northern California.  I recently wrote a novel about the dramatic culture change I learned about (and oberved personally) in the area west of Hudson Bay that is now in Nunavut. The "novel" is a fictionalized account, meant to be more acessible to people, but is very much based on true facts and actual events that affected the Inuit people over the course of the 20th century. I have so much respect for the Inuit for their ability to survive in the Arctic for millennia, but even more respect for their gracious ability to adapt to rapid, unforeseen changes in recent history (economic, social, political, cultural).

Since we as a species seem to be confronted with more of the same in the near future on a planet-wide scale, I think we should look to the Inuit example of how to provide leadership in adapting to unforeseen changes elegantly.

Mara Feeney
Author of Rankin Inlet: A Novel
ISBN 978-0-9819319-5-1
www.gabypress.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rh-5BP9UF4