Sheila Watt-Cloutier

FULL PASSES AND INDIVIDUAL SEATS AVAILABLE HERE

Shelia Watt-Cloutier is a Canadian Inuit activist, Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and political representative for a number of issues affecting Inuit people, including persistent organic pollutants and global warming. She was the chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council from 2002-2006, an international organization that protects the rights of Indigenous peoples in the Arctic Circle, in Canada, Russia, Alaska, and Greenland. In 2005, she launched the first international legal action on climate change: a petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights which argued that excessive emissions of greenhouse gases from the US have violated Inuit cultural and environmental human rights according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Watt-Cloutier is an Officer of the Order of Canada. She is the recipient of numerous awards including: the Aboriginal Achievement Award, the UN Champion of the Earth Award, the Norwegian Sophie Prize, and the Right Livelihood Award. 

Watt-Cloutier is also the author of the 2015 memoir, The Right to Be Cold: One Woman’s Story of Protecting Her Culture, the Arctic and the Whole Planet. The book was nominated for the 2016 BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction and the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. The book was recently shortlisted for CBC Canada Reads 2017, and is being defended by Chantal Kreviazuk.

This lecture will take place on Thursday, May 11 at 6:00 pm in Eckhardt Gramatté Hall.