Climate Change and a Journey Across the Inuit’s Arctic
Travel Blog • Eva Holland • 11.02.07 | 2:16 PM ET
In a thoughtful essay in this month’s Arctic-themed issue of The Walrus, Franklyn Griffiths chronicles a trip from one end of the Canadian north to another, flying 15,000 miles to visit Inuit communities and learn what the people on the front lines of climate change have to say on the topic. He found a range of responses. Chief among them: suspicion and skepticism about the warnings emanating from the same environmental NGOs that have campaigned relentlessly against the seal hunt, and from southern politicians who have, in the view of many, rarely done the Inuit any favors.
Griffiths found a firm faith in the resourcefulness and adaptability of a people who have survived for millennia in one of the world’s least hospitable regions. And he found fears that a fixation on climate change could shift the focus away from other pressing problems: suicide rates, cultural erosion and the loss of traditional survival skills.
Some view climate change as linked inextricably to those other issues. As one activist put it, if the snow and ice disappear, “Who are we going to be?”
Griffiths’ essay is accompanied on The Walrus Web site by Margo Pfeiff’s The Spinach Armada, which recounts how some families in the most isolated northern communities buy one year’s worth of groceries at a time, sending out orders each April for sea shipments that will arrive, by Coast Guard icebreaker, in September. It’s a fascinating glimpse into a way of life that most of us know nothing about—and one that may be on the brink of enormous change.
Related on World Hum:
* Northwest Passage Open for Business?
* The Seven Wonders of Canada, or More Proof the Country Isn’t Boring
* A Brief and Awkward Tour of the End of the Earth
Photo by treasuresthouhast via Flickr, (Creative Commons).
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