This week, as a prelude to Saturday's announcement of The Globe's Nation Builder of 2007, we introduce the four other finalists/runners-up who have made a major contribution to Canadian society. Today, we profile Inuit environmentalist Sheila Watt-Cloutier.
It has been cold in Iqaluit so far this winter, more like January weather than December. But to Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier, minus 40 is something to celebrate.
The Inuit, she says, have a right to be cold, and for the last 12 years she has travelled the world to bring that message to politicians and policy makers.
The Arctic is warming faster than almost anywhere else on the planet, melting ice and permafrost, making life more difficult and dangerous for the people who live there. Sea ice is less stable in winter, and more treacherous for hunters. In spring, the streams are more torrential because of melting ice. While it has been a frigid December, climatologists say the season that defines the North is clearly getting warmer.
"We live with this every day," says Ms. Watt-Cloutier. For her, the fight against global warming is about human rights; climate change threatens her people's culture and their way of life.
It is an approach that has earned her many awards, including an Order of Canada last year. Rolling Stone magazine called her an emissary. Time magazine called her a climate crusader. For the second year in a row, she has been chosen as a nation builder by The Globe and Mail.
She and former U.S. president Al Gore were jointly nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize this year. Nominations are normally secret, she says, but the Norwegian parliamentarian who put their names forward went public.
It brought her so much attention she had to hire an agent to schedule her speaking engagements. For years, she says, she was better known in Europe than at home, but now Canadians want to hear from her as well. The requests picked up, she says, when Mr. Gore and the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change took the Nobel.
Was she disappointed not to share in the $1.5-million prize? She says she felt peaceful when she didn't win. While she doesn't want to criticize Mr. Gore, or negate his work, she has come to see that her spirit wasn't comfortable being paired to him.
"The energy behind it all, and the fact that I am an indigenous Inuk woman, with one of the peoples most negatively impacted in the world, makes it a rather different fight. When I was freed from this twosome I had my grounding back."
She has never spoken to Mr. Gore, perhaps the most famous environmentalist in the world. His Academy Award-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, lays out the reasons why cutting emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide - produced when oil, coal and gas are burned - is a moral imperative.
When their joint Nobel nomination was announced in February, she had expected Mr. Gore to get in touch with her. Ms. Watt-Cloutier had been hoping he could help her draw attention to what is happening in the North.
"I had this illusion - he's going to call me. He's going to come to the Arctic. That bubble burst right away."
A month later, she was in Washington at a hearing of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. She and 62 Inuit hunters have filed a petition claiming that U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases threaten their culture and violate their human rights. One of the lawyers she was working with called one of Mr. Gore's people to set up a short meeting.
Mr. Gore, however, was fully booked seven days a week for six months, so she dropped the idea of meeting her co-nominee, or enlisting his help.
"I am not an Al Gore groupie, I'm busy doing my own thing and I don't need to piggyback onto anybody at all," she says.
Ms. Watt-Cloutier lived the traditional Inuit life until she was 10. She grew up in Kuujjuaq, Nunavik, in northern Quebec, and as a child travelled by dogsled. She attended schools in Nova Scotia, Manitoba and Ontario, and had to relearn her native tongue when she returned to the North.
She was involved in educational reform, and entered active politics 12 years ago. In 2002, she was voted international chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, an international organization representing the interests of Inuit in Canada, Alaska, Russia and Greenland. She has now left active politics, but continues her crusade.
"I spend my life on airplanes," the 54-year-old says. She is hoping to be at home more this year, and start writing a book about her life and the changes in the North. She would also like more time with her grandson, who is 10.
She is a reflective, introspective person, an introvert doing an extrovert's work. She says she is inspired by the strength of her mother and grandmother, who have known hunger and hard times. She also tries to embody the qualities of an Inuit hunter.
"I try to bring with me the best of the sound judgment and wisdom and focus and reflection that a hunter does, because my people expect me to come home with something that helps to alleviate the challenges we are facing."
