Inuit People and Climate Change

The Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), representing 155,000 Inuit people in Russia, Canada, Greenland, and Alaska, is planning a human-rights legal case against Arctic states—particularly the United States—for their

complicity in global climate change. “What is at stake here is the cultural survival of Inuit as a people,” said ICC chair Sheila Watt-Cloutier. ICC will likely invoke the 1948 American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man. “Inuit hunters understand nature’s rhythms and cycles. Their environmental knowledge is detailed and accurate,” said Watt-Cloutier. “But many Inuit hunters now find the weather unpredictable and traveling over the sea-ice dangerous.” ICC is online at www.inuitcircumpolar.com.