THE SIDEONE PROFILE By Phyl Newbeck
Siila WattCloutier:
A resident of Jericho, Vermont, Phyl Newbeck is a freelance writer for a variety of newspapers and magazines. She is the author of Virginia Hasn’t Always Been for Lovers: Interracial Marriage Bans and the Case of Richard and Mildred Loving.
Headshot by Wolfgang Schmidt
Change will happen at the speed of trust You might not expect to find a Nobel Peace Prize
because those are parallel for us and are about
nominee living in a remote Arctic village. But for
human health and cultural survival.”
environmental activist Siila (Sheila) Watt-Cloutier, returning to her birthplace of Kuujjuaq, in Quebec’s
People didn’t initially understand when she referred
Nunavik region, four years ago was a tonic after
to climate change as a human-rights issue, Watt-
residing in big urban centres like Ottawa and
Cloutier notes. “For most people, human-rights
Montreal.
violations are individual occurrences, not collective rights – but entire populations can be affected.”
“It’s my homeland,” she says. “I consider myself able to adapt and live anywhere, but home is home.”
Watt-Cloutier worked with the Center for International Environmental Law in Washington, D.C.,
Watt-Cloutier began her environmental work on the
and San-Francisco-based Earthjustice to show that
issue of toxins in the food chain.
ice, snow and cold were things on which Inuit culture
“Scientists decided that since the Arctic was so
depends.
pristine, they should do studies here about the
“We don’t just survive, we thrive,” she says. “Ice and
occurrence of toxins,” she says. “They discovered it
snow are our lifeblood.”
was higher than expected and was even in the milk
36
of nursing mothers. That was the start of my work,
Ice and snow serve many purposes in Inuit culture,
which continued with issues of climate change,
she explains, including transportation, safety and
SIDEONE MARCH 2021
