Sheila Watt Cloutier

Early life and career

Sheila Watt-Cloutier was born in Kuujjuaq, Nunavik, Northern Quebec, Canada. Her mother was known as a skillful healer and interpreter throughout Nunavik, and her father was an officer for the RCMP. For the first ten years of her life, Sheila was raised traditionally, traveling on the land by dog sled, before she was sent away for school in Nova Scotia and Churchill, Manitoba. At McGill University in Montreal she took courses on counselling, education and human development. In the mid-1970s, she worked for the Ungava Hospital as an Inuktitut translator and strived to improve education and health conditions. From 1991 to 1995, she worked as a counsellor in the review process of the education system of Northern Quebec. This work led to the 1992 report on the educational system in Nunavik, Silaturnimut - The Pathway to Wisdom. Watt-Cloutier also contributed significantly to the youth awareness video Capturing Spirit: The Inuit Journey.

Watt-Cloutier has a daughter, a son, and a grandson. Her son is a commercial jet pilot. Her daughter is an acclaimed Inuit folk singer, throat-singer and drum dancer. Currently, Sheila Watt-Cloutier lives in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada.

Political positions

Watt-Cloutier has been a political representative for Inuit for over a decade. From 1995 to 1998, she was Corporate Secretary of Makivik Corporation, the Canadian Inuit land-claim organization established for Northern Quebec (Nunavik) under the 1975 James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement.

In 1995, she was elected President of Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) Canada, and re-elected in 1998. ICC represents internationally the interests of Inuit in Russia, Alaska, Canada and Greenland. In this position, she served as the spokesperson for Arctic indigenous peoples in the negotiation of the Stockholm Convention banning the manufacture and use of persistent organic pollutants (POPs), including Polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs) or DDT. These substances pollute the Arctic food chain and accumulate in the bodies of Inuit, many of whom continue to subsist on local country food.

In 2002, she was elected International Chair of ICC, a position she would hold until 2006. Most recently, her work has emphasized the human face of the impacts of global climate change in the Arctic. On December 7, 2005, based on the findings of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, which projects that Inuit hunting culture may not survive the loss of sea ice and other changes projected over the coming decades, she launched the world's first international legal action on climate change: a petition, along with 62 Inuit Hunters and Elders from communities across Canada and Alaska, to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, alleging that unchecked emissions of greenhouse gases from the United States have violated Inuit cultural and environmental human rights as guaranteed by the 1948 American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man. Although the IACHR decided against hearing her petition, the Commission invited . Watt-Cloutier to testify with her international legal team (including lawyers from Earthjustice and the Center for International Environmental Law) at their first hearing on climate change and human rights on March 1, 2007.

Her book The Right to Be Cold, about the effects of climate change on Inuit communities, was published by Allen Lane - Penguin Random House in 2015.

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