Few social networking platforms are known for inspiring positive social change these days, but an Inuit-developed app is helping Indigenous communities from Alaska to Greenland advance their self-determination. Named SIKU after the Inuktitut word for “sea ice,” the app allows communities in the North to pull together traditional knowledge and scientific data to track changes in the environment, keep tabs on local wild foods and make decisions about how to manage wildlife — all while controlling how the information is shared.

A group of Inuit Elders and hunters from Sanikiluaq, Nvt., came up with the idea for SIKU more than a decade ago to document and understand the changing sea ice they were witnessing in southeastern Hudson Bay. The group turned to the local nonprofit Arctic Eider Society to develop a web-based platform where hunters in nearby coastal communities could upload photos and videos and share knowledge. Contributors began using the portal in 2015 to log water temperature and salinity data, note observations of important wildlife species — such as beluga and common eider ducks — and track the flow of contaminants through the food web.

Over the years, SIKU has evolved, and recently, the Elders saw that the platform could help address a familiar challenge: sharing knowledge with younger people who often have their noses in their phones. In 2019, SIKU relaunched as a full-fledged social network — a platform where members can post photos and notes about wildlife sightings, hunts, sea ice conditions and more. The app operates in multiple languages, such as Inuktitut, Cree, Innu and Greenlandic, and includes maps with traditional place names. Since early 2024, over 25,000 people from at least 120 communities have made more than 75,000 posts on SIKU.

Members’ photos demonstrate the breadth and bounty of northern foods: they show plump bags of berries sitting on the tundra, clusters of sea urchins nestled on smooth gray stones and boxes of fresh Arctic char placed in the snow. They depict harp seals, ringed seals, ptarmigan, beluga, common eider and neat rows of colorful eggs laid out next to smiling kids. The posts tell stories of hunting and traveling, the impacts of climate change and industrial activity, and the migrations, diets and illnesses of local animals. In effect, SIKU captures everyday Indigenous life in a rapidly changing landscape.

Traditionally, Inuit communities shared this information orally. “We have lived in the environment for centuries. We know about the wildlife,” says Lucassie Arragutainaq, a manager at the Sanikiluaq Hunters and Trappers Association and cofounder of the Arctic Eider Society. Yet industry representatives and government scientists have a long history of dismissing Indigenous knowledge and making decisions based on sparse environmental data collected during irregular, short-term studies. Now armed with SIKU, northerners are documenting information “in a way that [other] people will understand,” Arragutainaq says.

The app is also equipped with useful tools for life on the ice, including weather reports, sea ice forecasts and other critical safety information. Hunters and harvesters can use their phones’ GPS to track their routes and geolocate each post and photo. “When I go out on the land with family, we go a long distance, and the SIKU app can show which area we are in. It’s precise,” says Karen Nanook, who lives in Taloyoak, Nvt.

In June 2023, for instance, Nanook was heading home across the frozen ocean after an ice fishing trip when a rift appeared to open in the ice beneath one of her sled’s runners. “I thought the sled was going to fall in,” she says. But clear ice was covering the crack, and the sled stayed upright. After her close call, Nanook snapped a photo, tagged it as a “dangerous ice observation,” and posted it to SIKU to warn others.

The data held in SIKU is robust and up to date, and communities are already using the app to inform important decisions. In 2021, for example, Elders in Sanikiluaq were worried the local reindeer population had thinned, so the Hunters and Trappers Association used SIKU to survey hunters and look at recent reported harvest rates. The analysis led the association to temporarily close the hunt to relieve pressure on the population and to reintroduce hunting slowly once the number of reindeer increased. This decision shows how Inuit can use the technology in combination with traditional wildlife management, says Arragutainaq. Today, the community is also using SIKU data to guide the development of the Qikiqtait Protected Area around the Belcher Islands, where Sanikiluaq is located.

SIKU has become the main tool for other research projects, too. “Having the people who are already the eyes and ears of the land use the platform to share that information will revolutionize the way we make decisions,” says Stephanie Varty, a wildlife management biologist at the Eeyou Marine Region Wildlife Board in the traditional territory of the Crees of Eeyou Istchee, in James Bay, Que.

Varty says trappers and land users from Eeyou Istchee’s five coastal communities — Waskaganish, Eastmain, Wemindji, Chisasibi and Whapmagoostui — will soon use SIKU to document climate change in their region. They’ll also log observations and hunting stories, which will help the communities assess the environmental impacts of future development projects, including a proposed deep-sea port that would allow mining companies to access lithium and other minerals in the region.

Northern Indigenous communities are showing southerners that Traditional Knowledge should be taken seriously. “When Inuit knowledge is mobilized into graphs and diagrams, that [information] can’t be ignored and written off as anecdotal stories,” says Joel Heath, the executive director and cofounder of the Arctic Eider Society.

The ingenuity of SIKU is how it weaves together all kinds of insights about life in the North and supports community-driven research. “It’s part science and part Inuit knowledge,” says Arragutainaq. “It can work both ways, instead of one dominating the other.”

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

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The Qikiqtani Inuit Association should have addressed environmental concerns with a large mine expansion project on Baffin Island before it inked a benefits deal with the owner, according to a joint letter signed by mayors of five Inuit communities and chairs of local hunters and trappers organizations.

Baffinland Iron Mines wants to double iron ore production at its Mary River Mine on north Baffin Island under a second phase of development, which is being assessed by the Nunavut Impact Review Board. After months of delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the signing of the deal led the board to restart hearings. A pre-hearing conference wrapped up this week and the review board has yet to set a date for the final hearings.

The Qikiqtani Inuit Association, which is landlord of the Qikiqtaaluk Region and allows Baffinland to operate there through a commercial lease, signed the Inuit Certainty Agreement with the company on June 16. The agreement outlines benefits to the communities — such as Inuit employment and environmental monitoring efforts — throughout the mine’s life of about 21 years.

But leaders of hamlets and hunting organizations say the Qikiqtani Inuit Association, which represents 15,000 Inuit, signed the agreement prematurely and overlooked community concerns.

Louie Primo, senior administrative officer of Sanirajak (Hall Beach), told The Narwhal it doesn’t make sense to establish benefits with communities that remain concerned about environmental damage that could result from an expanded mine. “It doesn’t really resolve anything,” he said.

The joint letter, dated Aug. 29, was signed by representatives from Sanirajak, Pond Inlet, Igloolik, Arctic Bay and Clyde River.

The letter states that by inking the agreement, the association “has demonstrated a particular interest in the outcome of the hearing process and has a particular bias that must be balanced by a fair and complete consideration of all issues and concerns.” 

The letter goes on to state that the agreement was put together “without meaningful input from our organizations” and the communities plan to adequately address possible impacts during the assessment process. 

“We respectfully reserve the right to determine agreement with the project based on our own findings; separately and distinct from the ICA and the association’s determination.”

A spokesperson with the association declined to comment, stating that the organization is currently involved in meeting with affected communities.

Letter to Qikiqtani Inuit Association about Inuit Certainty Agreement with Baffinland by The Narwhal on Scribd

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Minister of Northern Affairs urged review board to restart process

Technical meetings, community roundtables and hearings about the Mary River expansion project have been rocky, stopping and starting for almost a year. In March, hearings were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which limited both travel and public gatherings. They were rescheduled to be held virtually, but were cancelled due to concerns from intervenors that some people might not be able to participate in that format. 

Almost one month after the certainty agreement was signed, Dan Vandal, minister of Northern Affairs, urged the review board to reboot the review process. 

In a July 10 letter to the review board, he said “it is appropriate to recommence the formal reconsideration at this time” on the grounds that the Inuit Certainty Agreement was signed and both Baffinland and the Qikiqtani Inuit Association had requested it move ahead. 

He further justified this recommendation by citing a section of the Nunavut Planning and Project Assessment Act, which states: “The responsible minister may indicate to the board that a review or a reconsideration of terms and conditions is a priority in relation to other reviews or reconsiderations and may propose a reasonable period within which it must be completed.”

The minister’s letter makes no mention of other projects over which to prioritize, and the hearing was not postponed due to any conflicting projects.  

An ore stockpile at the port in Milne Inlet, Nunavut. Photo: Baffinland

Mélanie Mellon, a spokesperson with Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs, said the Inuit Certainty Agreement “is a sign of progress, however decisions about the next steps in the Phase 2 reconsideration process are the board’s responsibility.” 

With the easing of public health restrictions, the review board scheduled a blend of pre-hearing teleconferences, in-person meetings and video conferences between Aug. 31 and Oct. 1, according to a July 29 letter from Karen Costello, executive director of the review board to interested parties. 

“The board has concluded that modifications and new approaches are necessary because an indefinite suspension of the board’s usual in-person proceedings to await a return to normal is unacceptable,” it says.

Once the hearing process is complete, the review board will issue a recommendation to the federal government on whether or not to allow the expansion project to go forward.

A spokesperson for Baffinland didn’t return a request for comment prior to publication.

Concerns around Baffinland’s expansion plans

Baffinland is permitted to ship six million tonnes of iron ore from its port on Milne Inlet, just west of the community of Pond Inlet, located on Eclipse Sound. The company wants to increase production up to 12 million tonnes of iron ore per year and construct a 110-kilometre railway to move that ore from mine to port (it currently uses a tote road).

If the expansion is approved, the number of annual voyages by ore carriers would more than double, from 81 in 2019 to 176. 

Community representatives and environmental groups remain concerned about what increased ship traffic could do to sensitive habitats and the marine mammals that rely on them to survive. These concerns were also raised by the Government of Greenland. Earlier this year, the Government of Canada affirmed the Kingdom of Denmark’s right to be part of the expansion project’s assessment due to potential transboundary impacts.

“Overall, the transportation of the iron ore in the Mary River project must be considered one of the greatest threats to marine mammals in the Arctic,” Greenland’s Directorate for the Environment and Nature said in a memo included in a February letter from Denmark to the Canadian government, adding that there are risks of oil spills and collisions with whales. 

Greenland’s memo also noted that ice breaking and ship traffic could affect the habitat of seals, walruses and whales, noting that bowhead whales are just returning to the area after virtually disappearing for 100 years.

The region is particularly important to narwhals, with Eclipse Sound, which Milne Inlet opens into, being home to 10 per cent of the world’s population of the species, the memo said. 

If Baffinland’s proposed plan goes ahead, noise created by ships could permanently prevent narwhals from feeding in the area, it said. 

Greenland has raise concerns about the impacts of shipping on narwhals. Eclipse Sound, which Milne Inlet opens into, is home to about 10 per cent of the world’s population of the species, according to a memo submitted by Greenland. Photo: Baffinland

Dollars and commitments outlined in Inuit Certainty Agreement

The Inuit Certainty Agreement includes environmental protection, employment and compensation for wildlife loss. Most benefits — such as a country food study and Inuit-led monitoring program — would be bankrolled by Baffinland, including $3 million for childcare infrastructure in the five affected communities and the extension of a program that offers $400,000 per year for fuel for Pond Inlet harvesters for the remainder of the mine’s life.

Neither Baffinland nor the Qikiqtani Inuit Association would provide The Narwhal with a total dollar figure for the agreement. 

“As a transparent Inuit organization, QIA will release and discuss financial matters pertaining to the ICA with its board and impacted communities,” Sima Sahar Zerehi, a spokesperson for the association, wrote in an email to The Narwhal. “It is of utmost importance that this information is communicated and considered by those most impacted when considering whether or not to support the project proposal.”

Iron ore is loaded onto a ship at Baffinland’s port in Milne Inlet. Photo: Baffinland

According to the agreement summary document, the agreement “provides greater Inuit control and oversight, direct community benefits and new and expanded programs for Inuit in communities impacted by the Mary River project.” 

The agreement also requires that Baffinland have enough financial security in place to “ensure that the entire Mary River project site will be cleaned up and restored when the project is completed.”

The Qikiqtani Inuit Association will hold money earmarked for reclamation, the document says, and, if there’s a dispute over the amount needed, Baffinland will provide the amount recommended by the association while the issue is settled.

Under the agreement, an adaptive management plan will be produced to monitor impacts from the project and prevent similar impacts in the future.

But Primo said an adaptive management plan may not be enough to address the intensity of the project.

“Let’s say that the activity becomes so great that the marine mammals just all leave and there’s nothing more there for the people to hunt,” he said. “I don’t know how you deal with that with an adaptive management process.”

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The Government of Canada has affirmed Greenland’s right to take part in the environmental assessment of an iron ore mine expansion project that could see a railroad built on Baffin Island and ship traffic increase in the Canadian Arctic and beyond.

Greenland’s concerns hinge on how the expansion of the Mary River Mine could impact wildlife — narwhals, in particular — a concern also raised by subsistence hunters and community members in Nunavut as Baffinland Iron Mines Corp. seeks to increase production. 

Baffinland opened the Mary River Mine on north Baffin Island in 2014 — the northernmost mine in Canada. The company is now looking to double its capacity under a second phase of development, which is under review by the Nunavut Impact Review Board. 

Mary River Mine, on Baffin Island, Nunavut. Map: Google Maps

That assessment process has seen various technical meetings and public hearings throughout 2019, which included Inuit organizations, hunters and trappers organizations, communities,  federal and territorial government departments and environmental groups.

The Kingdom of Denmark also requested a say in the process, on behalf of its autonomous territory of Greenland, in a letter submitted to the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada in February. The foreign government argued its rights to consult on the project under a United Nations treaty to which both Canada and Denmark are signatories.

In a letter posted to the review board’s registry on June 25, the agency confirmed the Espoo Convention — signed in 1991, laying out consultation obligations for development projects that pose transboundary impacts — applies to Baffinland’s proposed expansion project.

In the letter, Tara Frezza, director of intergovernmental affairs at the agency, calls on the review board to alert the Government of Denmark to “the likely significant adverse transboundary impacts, including impacts on marine mammals, accidents and malfunctions, invasive species and any mitigation measures and alternatives being considered.” 

She added that Denmark must be informed of any possible transboundary impacts of the expansion project and be consulted on their significance. 

Karen Costello, the executive director of the review board, told The Narwhal all information from interested parties will be considered in the review process — and confirmed Greenland is an interested party. 

“We will look forward to whatever their concerns are,” she said.

Baffinland Iron Mines’ expansion plans for Mary River

Baffinland is currently permitted to ship six million tonnes of iron ore from its port on Milne Inlet, just west of the community of Pond Inlet, located on Eclipse Sound. Baffinland wants to ratchet production up to 12 million tonnes of iron ore per year, and to construct a 110-kilometre railway to move that ore from mine to port (it currently uses a tote road for that purpose).

Under phase two, Baffinland is proposing 176 voyages for ore carriers, between July and November each year. Baffinland has also requested that its production be capped by the maximum number of ship voyages, as well as a limit on train trips, rather than the actual 12-million-tonne figure, to allow for flexibility. 

As reported by The Narwhal in October, the company appears to be telling investors a different story than regulators, claiming to the former it will increase capacity to 18 million tonnes.

A Baffinland spokesperson declined to comment. 

What are Greenland’s concerns about the Mary River Mine? 

Ore-laden ships travel from Mary River’s Milne Inlet port through Eclipse Sound to Baffin Bay, along the west coast of Greenland, to reach Europe where the ore is transported to market. 

Increased traffic on the route raises concerns for Greenland because ships will travel through sensitive marine mammal habitat, including that of narwhal. 

“Overall, the transportation of the iron ore in the Mary River project must be considered one of the greatest threats to marine mammals in the Arctic,” says a memo from Greenland’s Directorate for the Environment and Nature, included in Denmark’s February letter to Canada, adding that there are risks of oil spills and collisions with whales.

Mads Peter Heide Jørgensen and Fernando Ugarte, the memo’s authors, state that Eclipse Sound, which Milne Inlet opens into, is home to 10 per cent of the world’s population of narwhal, which are “incredibly noise-sensitive.” 

“Most of their food intake takes place during winter in the dense but moving ice pack at depths of between 1,000 and 2,000 metres,” the memo says. “These are areas that are known to be very quiet, and precisely the silence is something that the narwhals rely on when hunting fish at great depths.” 

If Baffinland’s proposed plan goes ahead, noise created by ships could permanently prevent  narwhal from feeding in the area, the memo says.

Narwhal. Photo: Baffinland

Narwhals are almost entirely dependent on auditory cues for communication, navigation and accessing food. As a result, they’ve been identified as the Arctic marine mammal most threatened by Arctic shipping.

“We’re talking about an animal that has lived in relative isolation from the effects of industrial development and they’re now going to be exposed to potentially regular shipping,” Brandon Laforest, a senior specialist in Arctic species and ecosystems for WWF-Canada, told The Narwhal last year. 

For a whole variety of reasons, narwhals have been identified as the most susceptible Arctic marine mammal to climate change.

“They have a very limited range, they have a very low genetic diversity and very specific food habits that are passed down through generations. And they also rely on sea ice,” Laforest said.

Greenland’s memo also noted that ice-breaking and ship traffic could affect the habitat of seals, walruses and whales, noting that bowhead whales are just returning to the area after virtually disappearing for 100 years.

Where is the process at now?

The November public hearing about the expansion project ground to a halt two days early — and with only a fraction of the agenda covered — after Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., the land claims representative for Nunavut Inuit, motioned to adjourn, seeing too many unanswered questions. Meetings were rescheduled for March, and then put on hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic limiting both travel and public gatherings.

Costello said information on the process moving forward, such as timelines, will be sent to all parties involved later this month. 

This could signal a possible reboot of the beleaguered assessment process for Mary River phase two — one that has now gained international attention and participation.

Once the process is complete, the review board will issue a recommendation to the federal government on whether or not to allow the expansion project to go forward.

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After graduating from university in 2000, I took a teaching job in the remote First Nations community of Old Crow, along the Porcupine River in northern Yukon. The Gwich’in of Old Crow chose the location of the community to align with the spring and fall migrations of the Porcupine caribou herd. Every year the caribou pass Old Crow as they migrate to and from their calving grounds in Alaska’s Arctic Coastal Plains. 

The caribou normally cross the Porcupine River in April or early May when it’s still frozen. One June, when Gwich’in Elder Robert Bruce took me upriver on a spring hunt, we were seeing caribou cow with calves, two or three days old, swimming across the swollen, freezing river.

Calving had happened in the boreal forest south of Old Crow. The caribou were a week’s travel short of the calving grounds. 

We rounded a corner in our boat and saw a cow pacing nervously at the top of a 60-metre cutbank. She was calling out to her calf, who was stuck in the mud at river level. Bruce steered the boat to the riverbank and when we were close enough, scooped up the little calf. We moved her upstream to solid ground and a caribou trail that led to her mom. 

It was the first time Bruce had seen the caribou calve so far from their calving grounds — an early cue to the distress the changing climate is causing on the natural world.

As a Whitehorse-based photojournalist, I have documented that distress and its impacts on wildlife, wild landscapes and people connected to the land for the last 20 years.

The photographs here tell those stories and show how, for those in the North, the forces of a rapidly changing climate are playing out in front of our eyes.

The Porcupine Caribou Herd migration covers more than 2,400 kilometres each year from its calving grounds in the coastal plains of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, through its range in Alaska, Yukon and the Northwest Territories. The herd’s calving grounds are centred on a small strip of flat grasslands between the Arctic Ocean and the mountains of the Brooks Range, providing a safe-haven for calves and an abundance of grasses and sedge for lactating cows to feed on. Though it is the only suitable calving area in the enormous range of the herd, the coastal plains are now threatened by oil and gas development.

A group of pregnant cow caribou cross the dangerous jumble of broken river ice as they’re drawn to their calving grounds in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The migration of the Porcupine caribou is thought to be the longest among land mammals and it can be treacherous as environmental conditions change.

A group of caribou from the Porcupine herd linger on the edge of the Crow River during their spring migration to the Arctic Coast. The Gwich’in  of Yukon, Northwest Territories and Alaska depend on the caribou for their cultural, physical and spiritual sustenance. They live in 13 communities throughout the North and the subsistence lifestyle of the Gwich’in is based around the caribou — hunting them during their long migration.

In 2013 my wife Terri and I stumbled upon a black bear sow and three cubs emerging from their den. Watching the momma bear with her cubs reminded Terri of having a newborn. The mother was so tired and worn out that she didn’t give us a second thought. She patiently waited while the cub cried and screamed for 45 minutes until it tuckered itself out and retreated back into its den. Then the relieved mother followed.

A grizzly bear follows its own tracks as it explores around its den in early spring. I often wonder which animals will benefit from the warming weather and which animals will suffer. Does a bear need an extended sleep each winter or will it thrive with more time in spring and fall to stuff its belly?

A black bear cub emerges from its den, to take its first tentative steps in a new world. With spring arriving earlier every year in the North, bears are naturally emerging from their dens sooner every year.

I began photographing spawning Chinook salmon in Tatchun Creek in central Yukon in 2013. Salmon need cool waters to spawn in. If the water in the creek is too warm, they’ll wait in the deep, cool waters of the Yukon River until the temperature in Tatchun Creek comfortably drops. 

I was roaming up and down the small, bear- and salmon-infested shore of Tatchun Creek when I bumped into fish biologist Nicolas De Graf, who has been studying Yukon salmon for decades. I followed him and his son, Joe, around for a day as they captured salmon to gather eggs and milt (semen) for a school hatchery project with the local Carmacks Little Salmon First Nation. He was also measuring the temperature of the creek, which salmon are very sensitive to when spawning.

Tatchun Creek is a minor spawning creek for Yukon River Chinook Salmon. I’ve returned here every year since 2013 and watched the salmon move into the creek later and later in the summer, year after year.

I set up a remote camera on a wolverine den in Alaska’s coastal plains and captured a pair of red foxes when they came over to investigate it. Spotting red fox here is alarmingly common. One of the well-documented concerns with climate change is the migration of red foxes north. As the temperature has risen in the Arctic, red foxes are now able to survive and thrive where they couldn’t before.

A red fox on a caribou kill in the Arctic Coastal Plains. The presence of red fox so far above their traditional range is causing a disruption in many Northern ecosystems — the red fox is a much more efficient hunter than the Arctic fox.

An Arctic Fox visits a wolf-killed caribou on Alaska’s North Slope. The northern cousin is seeing more competition as red foxes move into their range, but also a more direct threat: red fox are known to prey on Arctic fox.

Many Inuit have humorous stories about the shock of seeing their first moose. The massive ungulates, here in the boreal forest of Alaska, are no longer an uncommon site for Arctic communities. 

In the winter of 2019 I was flying with biologists studying wolverines on Alaska’s Arctic coast. We flew over a willow patch and counted 17 moose.

Throughout the North, Elders talk about the changes on the land brought by the slow migration of willows, which moose eat, moving North along river valleys. Moose and hare have followed willow trees and shrubs that have slowly migrated north. Lynx, following their prey the hare, are also increasingly found in the Arctic.

In a sealskin boat, Inupiat whalers paddle through an opening in the ocean ice. One of the most magical experiences of my life was spending 24 hours on the ice with an Inupiat whaling crew. The light, the community effort and the success of a bowhead whale hunt, is a once in a lifetime experience.

An Inupiat hunter, with his harpoon ready, prepares to pursue a bowhead whale. The bowhead hunt is a subsistence hunt, with the meat divided up amongst the hunting crew and community members.

A bowhead whale is secured to the shore ice as Inupiat hunters prepare to pull it up. Bowhead hunts in Alaska have always contained a certain amount of risk but these risks are mediated by the thousand-year-old knowledge of Elders and whaling captains. As a warming climate makes the sea ice less predictable, the hunt is subsequently more dangerous.

Caribou rest on an ice patch in the mountains in northern Alaska. It reminded me that my dad, a passionate armchair archeologist and history lover, was ecstatic when some sheep hunters found 1,700-year-old caribou scat on an ice patch behind our cabin in 1997.

Caribou have always used high elevation ice patches to escape the incessant mosquitoes of summer; First Nations hunters have always used this knowledge to hunt caribou. As the ice patches melt in the warming climate, artifacts like atlatl darts, bows and arrows are being revealed.

In 2015, I was on a caribou photography expedition in Yukon’s Ivvavik National Park where we spent the day photographing caribou crossing a small ice patch. On our way back to camp we found an ancient hunting tool on rocks that were once encompassed by the shrinking ice patch. Yukon archeologists said it was most likely a part of a makeshift scarecrow that hunters would use to corral caribou during a hunt.

Cooper Island is a small barren island just off Alaska’s Arctic coastline, home to polar bears, birds and George Divoky. Divoky has been studying seabirds, specifically black guillemots, on this small island for over four decades and he has observed first-hand the effects of climate change like few others.

A black guillemot delivers a meal to its chick: sculpin, inferior prey in Alaska’s waters. Black guillemots rely on the fatty, nutritious flesh of Arctic cod to feed their chicks. Arctic cod tend to track on the ice edge, but ice that was a few miles off shore in the summer is now hundreds of miles away. It’s a journey too far for breeding pairs of black guillemots.

A guillemot chick that did not survive. The survival rate of chicks has been drastically reduced with the movement North of summer sea ice and the access to food that the shifting ice edge provides.

A black guillemot lands on a log at its colony on Cooper Island. In his four decades of study, Divoky has seen this Arctic island warm enough for a breeding colony of black guillemots to establish themselves here. As the Arctic continues to warm, he’s now watching that colony disappear.

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The company that owns the Mary River open-pit iron mine on Baffin Island in Nunavut has been sending different messages — one to regulators and another to potential investors — regarding its expansion plans. 

Baffinland currently has approval to ship six million tonnes of iron ore per year from from Milne Inlet, north of the mine. The company’s public plans for an expansion to its shipping capacity show it loading 12 million tonnes of iron ore into ships, via a 110-kilometre railway, in Milne Inlet every year by 2020 or 2021. 

But behind closed doors, Baffinland has been distributing materials to potential investors claiming it will increase its capacity 50 per cent higher than that, to 18 million tonnes, as early as 2021. 

“Their plan, at least as communicated to bond buyers, is to get authorization to ship 12 million [tonnes] out of Milne and immediately turn around and get approval to ship 18 million [tonnes] out of Milne — something they’ve never told the public,” says Chris Debicki, vice-president of policy development and counsel for Oceans North.

Iron ore is primarily used in steelmaking. Canada is one of the top-producing iron ore countries in the world, producing 49 million tonnes in total in 2017, according to Natural Resources Canada.

Public hearings for the Mary River mine expansion to 12 million tonnes are set to begin in Iqaluit next week. 

The company has not mentioned the additional expansion in any of its regulatory submissions. 

Media representatives for Baffinland did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

Export ships to pass through narwhal habitat

The mine is located on the northern tip of Baffin Island, and is one of the northernmost mines in the world. It exports its iron ore through Milne Inlet to the north. 

Ships leaving Milne Inlet pass through Eclipse Sound. Both bodies of water are important for narwhals, a species of special concern in Canada.

Before Mary River, there was no large-scale industrial shipping in the area.

“We actually don’t know, based on any of the research, that shipping even 4.2 million tonnes [its original permitted amount] is a safe threshold in terms of disturbance to marine mammals and a host of other environmental impacts,” Debicki explains. “If you look at the way this mine has ramped up quite quickly over the last five years, I don’t think the science has caught up.” 

The entire region involved in the shipping from Milne Inlet is part of the Tallurutiup Imanga National Marine Conservation Area, a 108,000 square-kilometre stretch of Arctic Ocean recently designated in recognition of its importance to wildlife, including narwhals.  

A map showing the Tallurutiup Imanga Marine Conservation Area. Map: Government of Canada

“That was a collective recognition, led by Inuit leadership, that this area is a spectacular ecosystem, highly productive and of huge cultural importance,” Debicki says. “The incremental increases in industrial shipping really flies in the face of the social and cultural importance, and natural importance of this area.” 

The extra iron ore would mean more ships making transits through the sensitive habitat in Eclipse Sound, from around 150 ships per year to “well in excess of 200,” according to a sworn affidavit filed with the Nunavut Impact Review Board by Oceans North researcher Georgia MacDonald. 

Those ships generate noise that Oceans North says has already affected narwhal behaviour and impacted traditional Inuit hunting. The Narwhal reached out to the Qikiqtani Inuit Association for comment, but the organization was not able to respond before publication; this story will be updated if and when the association responds.

Ship noise has been confirmed as a cause of stress in marine mammals, resulting in loss of feeding opportunities, social disruption, stranding and other behaviour changes.  

The company says it has again requested approval to ship during the early winter months as well as during the summer. Given the sea ice that forms every fall, this would presumably involve using icebreakers, a notion the regulator rejected in 2015.

An investors’ circular shared with The Narwhal shows the larger expansion would be expected to increase profits substantially while shortening the mine’s life by 10 years; it is also expected to decrease the total amount of royalties the company would pay.

“The expected economic benefits from a massive ramp up in production don’t necessarily flow to rights holders, specifically Inuit,” Debicki says. 

Documents show expansion work already begun

The port at Milne Inlet, which the company now intends to use to ship millions of tonnes of ore each year, was originally pitched to “only be used occasionally for the delivery of oversized equipment,” the company writes in the investment document.

The conflicting information “undermines a rational environmental impact analysis,” MacDonald of Oceans North wrote in the affidavit. 

The investor materials appear to show that the company has already begun work on the expansion. Nunatsiaq News, Nunavut’s paper of record, reported this summer that equipment and buildings for the rail expansion have already been delivered to the site. 

The mine has the consent of local Inuit communities, but CBC North reports that that relationship has been fraying lately, with the communities of Igloolik and Pond Inlet saying this summer that traditional knowledge is not being used appropriately. Local employment levels have also fallen far short of what the company promised. 

Affidavit of Georgia MacDonald, Oceans North researcher re: Baffinland Mary River mine expansion 28, 2019 by The Narwhal on Scribd

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This is part five of Land Crafted: a five-part video series exploring entrepreneurship in northern Canada.

Bernice and Justin Clarke’s home, with its open kitchen, cozy wood stove and enormous TV, could just as well be in Saskatoon or Halifax were it not for the heaps of maktaaq on the kitchen island.

Friends and family are gathered around taking slices of bowhead and narwhal blubber with their crescent-shaped ulus, carving off bits of frozen caribou, and picking at a whole Arctic char. It’s mid-morning on a quiet Saturday in Iqaluit, and Bernice is in her element.

“We’re very much still tied to the food and the land here,” she says. “It’s very healing when we’re eating together. It brings us close together.”

Bernice has been on a journey the last several years as she’s rediscovering the power of Inuit traditions. A new chapter began when she started making body butter as a hobby and giving it away to her friends. Meeka Mike, a family friend, suggested that she incorporate bowhead whale oil into the products, and took it a step further by delivering a bin full of blubber to her front door.

“I think Justin was a bit hesitant at first,” Mike laughs. But she explained to the couple that there was a long tradition of Inuit using the oil to clean their skin, and that her own grandmother had used whale oil to make soap.

Word got out quickly, and when Uasau Soap arrived at craft fairs, their products would sell out almost immediately.

“I think she came back with about $450 profit,” Justin recalls, still impressed, of Bernice’s first craft fair.

Both Justin and Bernice were convinced. The company now sells products across multiple lines, many of which incorporate whale oil, and some of which use blubber from bearded seals and plants from the tundra around Iqaluit.

It’s a bold idea in a world where marine mammal products  — even those from limited Indigenous hunts — have been treated harshly by activists and governments. Yet Bernice says reactions to her using whale oil in her products has been mostly positive.

“I’ve even had vegans tell me it’s a beautiful story,” she says.

“I haven’t had anyone come to me that wasn’t happy with me using the [oil]. They’ve actually been really supportive. And if I do come across anyone that is against me using the oil, that’s their belief, and I’m not going to try and change their mind. I’ll explain my story. They have their beliefs and I have mine — and I’m very strong in mine.”

The business has grown, but it has also allowed Bernice to feel pride in her culture, one that was deliberately and systematically oppressed through colonization. She and Justin both have jobs outside of the soap-making, but are working on building their business so that it can grow and spread to support other families.

“It’s accidentally given me so much vision and strength, and a drive to really get deeper into my culture,” she says.

“And that’s through —” she smiles, and tilts her head, “blubber!”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This is part one of Land Crafted: a five-part video series exploring entrepreneurship in northern Canada.

Prominently displayed on the fridge in Nooks Lindell and Emma Kreuger’s kitchen in Arviat, Nunavut, is a hand-drawn poster covered in stickers. It reads “NIPI” followed by the equivalent Inuktitut syllabics, ᓂᐱ. Nipi is their son’s name — and Kreuger and Lindell want him to grow up knowing where he comes from.

It’s a childhood Nooks didn’t have a chance to have himself.

“When I moved to Ottawa I was only seven, so it was a pretty major change,” Lindell recalls. He spent the rest of his childhood there, trying his best to blend in.

“I’m not sure why it was, but it seemed like it wasn’t cool to be Inuk,” he says. “You don’t really see Inuit on TV. … You just want to speak in English and play sports.”

When Nooks returned to the North, it was as a fully assimilated southerner. His Inuktitut was gone, and the essential experiences of an Inuit childhood — learning to hunt, drive a snowmobile, tie a qammutik — had passed him by. He had developed a dependency on alcohol and drugs.

Art, he says, corrected his course.

Hanging out with his brother in his Iqaluit shack one day, Nooks made his first ulu, a traditional Inuit woman’s knife.

“It was so ugly,” he laughs. And it took three days. But he got better. And gradually, art became a way to replace the substances that were driving a wedge between him and his culture.

“When I got sober, we decided to start Hinaani,” he says. Hinaani Design became his outlet, a way to express, explore and celebrate his Inuit identity through art. The shirts, hats, leggings, jewelry, bags and other products all reflect an aspect of being Inuit — from simple words and sayings to representations of traditional Inuit tattoos.

There are barriers to growing the business out of a small hamlet like Arviat, on the western edge of Hudson Bay. The business is based on the internet: it’s an online store and orders are shipped directly from the manufacturer to the customer. But that means a lot of bandwidth, for uploading images, dealing with customers and keeping up with social media. Internet access in Nunavut is some of the most expensive and slowest service in the world, so operating a web-based business is naturally a challenge.

Then there’s the limited market. There are only around 65,000 Inuit in Canada, and incomes among Inuit are significantly lower than the Canadian average — and that’s not even accounting for the high cost of living. But Nooks, Emma and their business partners Paula Ikuutaq Rumbolt and Lori Tagoona are determined to keep their products accessible.

“It has to be affordable because a lot of Inuit don’t make very much money,” Nooks explains. “We don’t have a lot of disposable income.”

Inuit have embraced the brand. The first item to be recognized across the North, and one that’s proudly displayed today on the bodies of Inuit everywhere, was a simple design.

In block letters, it proudly proclaims, “INUK.”

This series was made possible with the support of EntrepreNorth; however, the organization did not have editorial input into the videos or articles published on The Narwhal.

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We are living in a time of extraordinary ecological loss. Not only are human actions destabilising the very conditions that sustain life, but it is also increasingly clear that we are pushing the Earth into an entirely new geological era, often described as the Anthropocene.

Research shows that people increasingly feel the effects of these planetary changes and associated ecological losses in their daily lives, and that these changes present significant direct and indirect threats to mental health and well-being. Climate change, and the associated impacts to land and environment, for example, have recently been linked to a range of negative mental health impacts, including depression, suicidal ideation, post-traumatic stress, as well as feelings of anger, hopelessness, distress, and despair.

Not well represented in the literature, however, is an emotional response we term ‘ecological grief,’ which we have defined in a recent Nature Climate Change article: “The grief felt in relation to experienced or anticipated ecological losses, including the loss of species, ecosystems, and meaningful landscapes due to acute or chronic environmental change.”

We believe ecological grief is a natural, though overlooked, response to ecological loss, and one that is likely to affect more of us into the future.

Understanding ecological grief

Grief takes many forms and differs greatly between individuals and cultures. Although grief is well understood in relation to human losses, ‘to grieve’ is rarely considered something that we do in relation to losses in the natural world.

The eminent American naturalist Aldo Leopold was among the first to describe the emotional toll of ecological loss in his 1949 book, A Sand County Almanac: “One of the penalties of an ecological education,” he wrote, “is to live alone in a world of wounds.”

More recently, many respected ecologists and climate scientists have expressed their feelings of grief and distress in response to climate change and the environmental destruction it entails in places like: “Climate scientists feel weight of the world on their shoulders” and “Is this how you feel?”

Photo: Jean Wimmerlin via Unsplash

Ecological grief is also a significant theme in our own work. In different research projects working with Inuit in Inuit Nunangat in Arctic Canada and farmers in the Western Australian Wheatbelt, both of us have spent a combined total of almost 20 years working with people living in areas experiencing significant climatic changes and environmental shifts.

Despite very different geographical and cultural contexts, our research revealed a surprising degree of commonality between Inuit and family farming communities as they struggled to cope, both emotionally and psychologically, with mounting ecological losses and the prospect of an uncertain future.

Voices of ecological grief

Our research shows that climate-related ecological losses can trigger grief experiences in several ways. Foremost, people grieve for lost landscapes, ecosystems, species, or places that carry personal or collective meaning.

For Inuit communities in the Inuit Land Claim Settlement Area of Nunatsiavut, Labrador, Canada, the land is foundational to mental health. In recent years, melting sea ice prevented travel to significant cultural sites and engagement in traditional cultural activities, such as hunting and fishing. These disruptions to an Inuit sense of place was accompanied by strong emotional reactions, including grief, anger, sadness, frustration and despair.

One male who grew up hunting and trapping on the land in the community of Rigolet, Nunatsiavut explained:

“People are not who they are. They’re not comfortable and can’t do the same things. If something is taken away from you, you don’t have it. If a way of life is taken away because of circumstances you have no control over, you lose control over your life.”

Chronic drought conditions in the Western Australian Wheatbelt elicited similar emotional reactions for some family farmers. As one long-time farmer described:

“There’s probably nothing worse than seeing your farm go in a dust storm. I reckon it’s probably one of the worst feelings […] I find that one of the most depressing things of the lot, seeing the farm blow away in a dust storm. That really gets up my nose, and a long way up too. If its blowing dust I come inside – I just come inside here. I can’t stand to watch it.”

Sweeping away the dust in the central Western Australian Wheatbelt Feb. 2013. Photo: Neville Ellis

In both cases, such experiences resonate strongly with the concept of “solastalgia,” described both as a form of homesickness while still in place, and as a type of grief over the loss of a healthy place or a thriving ecosystem.

People also grieve for lost environmental knowledge and associated identities. In these cases, people mourn the part of self-identity that is lost when the land upon which it is based changes or disappears.

For Australian family farmers, the inability to maintain a healthy landscape in the context of worsening seasonal variability and chronic dryness often elicited feelings of self-blame and shame:

“Farmers just hate seeing their farm lift; it somehow says to them ‘I’m a bad farmer’. And I think all farmers are good farmers. They all try their hardest to be. They all love their land.”

For older Inuit in Nunatsiavut, changes to weather and landscape are invalidating long-standing and multi-generational ecological knowledge, and with it, a coherent sense of culture and self. As one well-respected hunter shared:

“It’s hurting in a way. It’s hurting in a lot of ways. Because I kinda thinks I’m not going to show my grandkids the way we used to do it. It’s hurting me. It’s hurting me big time. And I just keep that to myself.”

Many Inuit and family farmers also worry about their futures, and express grief in anticipation of worsening ecological losses. As one woman explained from Rigolet, Nunatsiavut:

“I think that [the changes] will have an impact maybe on mental health, because it’s a depressing feeling when you’re stuck. I mean for us to go off [on the land] is just a part of life. If you don’t have it, then that part of your life is gone, and I think that’s very depressing.”

Similarly, a farmer in Australia worried about the future shared their thoughts on the possibility of losing their family farm:

“[It] would be like a death. Yeah, there would be a grieving process because the farm embodies everything that the family farm is … And I think if we were to lose it, it would be like losing a person … but it would be sadder than losing a person … I don’t know, it would be hard definitely.”

Ecological grief in a climate-changed future

Ecological grief reminds us that climate change is not just some abstract scientific concept or a distant environmental problem. Rather, it draws our attention to the personally experienced emotional and psychological losses suffered when there are changes or deaths in the natural world. In doing so, ecological grief also illuminates the ways in which more-than-humans are integral to our mental wellness, our communities, our cultures, and for our ability to thrive in a human-dominated world.

From what we have seen in our own research, although this type of grief is already being experienced, it often lacks an appropriate avenue for expression or for healing. Indeed, not only do we lack the rituals and practices to help address feelings of ecological grief, until recently we did not even have the language to give such feelings voice. And it is for these reasons that grief over losses in the natural world can feel, as American ecologist Phyllis Windle put it, ‘irrational, inappropriate, anthropomorphic.’

We argue that recognising ecological grief as a legitimate response to ecological loss is an important first step for humanising climate change and its related impacts, and for expanding our understanding of what it means to be human in the Anthropocene. How to grieve ecological losses well — particularly when they are ambiguous, cumulative and ongoing — is a question currently without answer. However, it is a question that we expect will become more pressing as further impacts from climate change, including loss, are experienced.

Moonrise of Rigolet, Nunavut. Photo: Ashlee Cunsolo

We do not see ecological grief as submitting to despair, and neither does it justify ‘switching off’ from the many environmental problems that confront humanity. Instead, we find great hope in the responses ecological grief is likely to invoke. Just as grief over the loss of a loved person puts into perspective what matters in our lives, collective experiences of ecological grief may coalesce into a strengthened sense of love and commitment to the places, ecosystems and species that inspire, nurture and sustain us. There is much grief work to be done, and much of it will be hard. However, being open to the pain of ecological loss may be what is needed to prevent such losses from occurring in the first place.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Ron Pottle Jr. barely has time to lay down on the wooden sled before his dog team bolts across the frozen ground, yelping and howling and sprinting after some invisible prey.

He holds the reins tightly and directs his animals with short commands in Inuktitut, trying to keep them on track, as he quickly disappears out of sight. With just two weeks to go before an annual dog sled race in honour of Pottle’s late father, the young dogs still have a lot to learn.

Pottle, 21, is learning, too – he’s trying to master the ancient Inuit practice of dog mushing, as a way to honour his father’s memory and help keep an iconic part of his people’s culture alive.

But Labrador’s dog mushers are facing new challenges even Pottle’s father rarely saw.

The coastline that surrounds Pottle’s home in northern Labrador is going through unprecedented changes. In the winter of 2018, one of the mildest on record, the sea ice in the bay he races on didn’t freeze up until February, months later than usual.

“Is this going to be able to happen; is this safe?” —RCMP Cpl. Mike McKee

Most people in Canada’s northern regions long ago abandoned dog sleds in favour of snowmobiles. But for people like Pottle, keeping up the dog mushing tradition is getting harder and harder as cold winters become increasingly unreliable.

“It’s been a strange winter,” Pottle acknowledges.

Climate scientists back him up. All along the remote and rugged Labrador coast, they’re seeing more snow, milder temperatures and higher winds. In early March, in what traditionally should be the dead of winter, there was talk of cancelling another local dog race out of safety — the ice was thawing too quickly.

“Before the race, it was so warm people were concerned: ‘Is this going to be able to happen; is this safe?’” said Cpl. Mike McKee, one of two RCMP officers posted in Pottle’s hometown of Rigolet. “This is stuff that, typically, they never used to worry about.”

That same month, organizers of Cain’s Quest — a 3,100-kilometre skidoo race that circles Labrador — were scrambling to plan for unexpected thaws where the race route crosses lakes and bays that are normally frozen. They considered bringing in pontoons in case racers ran into open water.

The loss of sea ice has been dramatic, according to Happy Valley-Goose Bay-based climatologist Robert Way. Labrador’s northern region has lost about a third of its ice cover in the past decade, according to the Canadian Ice Service historical database.

“It impacts every ounce of life here”

Labrador’s coastline is a volatile place when it comes to climate, with extreme swings in the weather that can both amplify and mask the changes that are happening. In tiny Rigolet, the southernmost Inuit community in Canada, the changes are being felt profoundly. Compared to historical norms, Way says winter is already about six weeks shorter than it used to be.

“It impacts every ounce of life here,” Way said. “If you look at the rate of warming from the late 1980s to 2015, this is one of the fastest warming places in the world. It’s quite concerning.”

What worries the climatologist is what the new normal will be within a few decades in Labrador, and what that will mean for a culture long built around cold, reliable winters.

“It’s sad, really. If I look at my lifetime, it’s already included some of the most rapid changes we’ve ever seen,” Way said. “But I’m more cognizant of the changes expected to come. Right now, we’re still able to do a lot of things we still care about. But whether that becomes as plausible 30 years down the road, I don’t know.”

Climate change is also affecting Labrador’s Inuit dog sled racers in another, more direct way — making it more difficult for them to reach the seals that are the main supply of meat for their dogs. Pottle’s people have long hunted seals as a source of food and clothing, but his ancestors never had to contend with retreating sea ice and unpredictable swings in the weather quite like this.

“Getting seals is the hardest part, especially when it comes to the ice,” Pottle said.

“If I look at my lifetime, it’s already included some of the most rapid changes we’ve ever seen.” —Robert Way

One seal might provide only a day and half’s worth of food for his animals, so Pottle has to head out on the ice regularly to catch more. But as the sea ice vanishes, they’re travelling further to reach the seals, over increasingly unsafe routes to get there. They say the seals seem less plentiful.

“It means you’ve got to work harder,” said his cousin, Todd Pottle. “It takes longer for us to get the seals we need.”

Hunters say the ice is increasingly unreliable and prone to breaking up under the weight of a snowmobile. Some seal hunters will try to use boats, riding over open water, to reach the seals at the edge of the receding ice. But that’s not without risks, especially in choppy seas in the middle of winter.

“Every time you go out, you don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Guido Rich, 28, one of the other dog racers in the village. “It can lead to trouble when the ice is no good. There was a couple who went out last year who almost drowned.”

That’s a major problem in a place where there are no roads connecting the village to other communities, and snowmobile trails over the ice are a lifeline out for many people.

Traditions melting away

The Inuit of northern Labrador are a people of the sea ice, and have long built their traditions to survive using it. But they’re being forced to adapt on the fly.

“Life is going to be hard, and it’s changing really fast,” said Oz Allen, 66, who’s lived in Rigolet most of his life. “The last few years, it’s getting warmer and the ice gives out sooner. The ground never even froze this year, because we had so much snow.”

Elders say they used to go ice fishing well into May. Now winter fades so quickly here some worry the local tradition of travelling over ice roads to their families’ remote cabins for the Easter holidays could come to an end.

“If this continues the way it’s going, we won’t even be able to do that anymore,” said Paula McLean-Sheppard, who works with the Nunatsiavut government.

Pottle’s father began taking him out on dog sleds when he was around eight years old. The boy was only ten when his father died of a heart attack on the ice. It was another ten years before Pottle decided he would get a dog team of his own and keep the family tradition going.

“It’s good fun, I’d say, when you’re out there. But it’s a lot of work. I only do it because my father done it. That’s what pushes me to keep dogs,” he said. “My father pretty much grew up with dog teams.”

Pottle’s mother, Cora Pottle, is proud that her son is taking after her late husband, who was known locally as a skilled dog musher. On the weekend of the memorial race, the start time was postponed twice by unusually high winds, another symptom some here blame on a warming planet.

When the race was finally held the following day, she was among the crowd who gathered on Double Mer Bay, cheering in between sips of moose and partridge soup. Ron Pottle’s young team raced hard around the bay for an hour and a half, finishing sixth. Next year, he plans to teach his 13-year-old cousin how to race, too.

“He really wants to keep this going,” his mother said. “It’s not getting any easier, with the way things are changing. But they don’t want to give up hope on this.”

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When Inuk hunter Joseph Monteith went through the ice in Frobisher Bay, he had seen the signs coming long before. But it was already too late.

The first domino, as Monteith puts it, had already fallen.

“Our first indication that the ice was thin was when the back of my skidoo broke through the ice,” he recalls.

Not knowing which way was safe, Monteith and his hunting partner Kelly Akpaleapik charged forward in an attempt to get out of the bad ice. They soon realized that they had actually gone deeper into the rotten ice. Another domino.

“At that point I started to panic and started to pick up speed.”

The pair found themselves with a giant crack ahead, and nothing but bad ice behind them. They came to a stop, hopeless, and the series of events that had begun with one lapse in navigation reached its inevitable conclusion: the ice beneath them gave way, plunging the pair, their skidoo and supplies into the briny Arctic water.

Data to the rescue

The serious situation in which Monteith and Akpaleapik found themselves is not unique; in fact, it’s increasingly common in the Arctic.

The warming Arctic is causing the sea ice to become thinner, cover a smaller part of the ocean and to last for less time. The maximum sea ice extent reported by NASA in March was the second lowest ever recorded. The lowest ever was in 2017, representing a continuation of a decades-long trend of shrinking ice.

That trend is represented in the thickness of the ice as well. Between 1975 and 2012, ice in the centre of the Arctic Ocean thinned by 65 per cent during the winter. In the shoulder seasons, when the ice is at its most dangerous, the situation is much worse: September ice thickness shrank by 85 per cent during that same four decades.

In 2010, a warm, rainy spring in Labrador created a dangerous scenario on the ice local communities depend on for hunting and travel.

By the summer, one in 12 people surveyed in Nain, Labrador, had fallen through the ice that year. So they reached out to Trevor Bell, who was then developing research priorities for the Nunatsiavut Government, for help.

“People were afraid to travel on their traditional trails,” Bell told DeSmog Canada. “People were afraid to use the ice.”

Bell began work on what would become known as SmartICE. The system includes electronic buoys frozen into the ice near communities as well as mobile devices, so-called SmartQAMUTIKs (named for the traditional Inuit sleds), all of which gather and relay information about ice thickness and snow depth.

That information is collected into colour-coded, intuitive maps that can be downloaded onto computers or mobile devices to help people plan their travel across the ice.

The maps are augmented with a legend developed by Inuit communities in order to make the most sense and convey the most relevant information to the Inuit using them.

That stands in stark contrast to the former best-available technology — government-produced sea ice maps — which are oriented towards the shipping industry rather than northern residents.

“It’s not intuitive for Inuit because thick ice, which is safe to travel on, is coloured red, because of course that ice presents a hazard for shipping,” said Bell.

The government maps are also not produced in the winter, because shipping isn’t happening then, and use complicated jargon.

“We’re filling that void by providing something at the right scale, produced at the right time,” he said.

Precarious pathways to sustainability

There are currently nine communities using SmartICE, and another 12 on a waitlist.

“I get a call a week from different communities who want smartICE,” said Bell.

Expanding the program means building new buoys (around five or 10 per community), new qamutiiks, and training more people in using the technology. That expansion is expensive. But it also benefits northern communities in other ways, says Bell: there are now plans to create a production centre in Nain, where the high-tech tools will be built.

To fund the expansion, Bell wants to partner with businesses across the North that would benefit from more reliable and consistent information about sea ice conditions — industries like tourism, fishing, or shipping.

“They all depend on safe sea-ice travel, and a secure ice platform from which to conduct their operations,” he said, adding that a single tourist going through the ice could set the tourism industry back decades.

SmartICE relies on a system of buoys, frozen into the ice, combined with local knowledge. L-R: Sgt. Titus Allooloo, Canadian Rangers, Moses Amagoalik, SmartICE operations, Pond Inlet, and Trevor Bell, SmartICE. Image by Michael Schmidt.

SmartICE has already partnered with an Arctic Bay-based outfitter, Arctic Bay Adventures, to make their operations safer, and, as Bell puts it, “reduce the risk of climate change impacts” on their business.

Government has been part of the program since the beginning, with different agencies and institutions giving money at different times. But Bell believes there is a longer-term role for the government, one that would be mutually beneficial.

“If I had enough ministers in a room I could make an argument that this makes sense,” he said. “We have the ability to avoid search-and-rescue operations in the North.”

Aerial search-and-rescue units are based in Trenton, Ontario, and sending help can be very costly. One particularly dramatic example in 2013, in which a group of tourists and guides were trapped on an ice floe, reportedly cost the government more than $2.7 million.

For Monteith and Akpaleapik, rescue operations were conducted from nearby Iqaluit.

In Inuit culture, Monteith says, it’s important to return to the site of an accident in order to move on. He has since returned to where he went through the ice, and the island where he spent an excruciating night awaiting rescue. For Monteith and Akpaleapik, the rescue operations were conducted from nearby Iqaluit.

The pair had dragged themselves out of the water, the ice crumbling beneath them over and over — for Monteith, nine times — and plunging them back into the frozen bay. They walked six hours to an island just two kilometres away, and spent the night huddling together and burning grass and shrubs for warmth.

Monteith doesn’t know whether SmartICE could have prevented him from suffering that fate, an event that still haunts him with post-traumatic stress disorder. But he acknowledges that, for Inuit, “doing your homework about the area you’re going to go to” is a core part of the practices that have been passed down through generations to keep hunters safe.

Bell agrees.

“It’s a business model that’s consistent with Inuit societal values — caring for the environment, caring for the community,” he says.

“I don’t think I need to explain why ice is important for Inuit.”

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The Arctic’s Baffin Bay and Davis Strait region is home to seals, bowhead whales, polar bears and up to 90 per cent of the world’s narwhals. The area’s marine waters also provide habitat for 116 species of fish, such as Arctic char, an important dietary staple for Nunavut’s Inuit communities.

Although the area is crucial to Inuit for hunting and other traditional activities, the federal government has approved underwater seismic blasting by a consortium of energy companies. They plan to fire underwater cannons from boats to map the ocean floor for oil and gas deposits, in preparation for offshore drilling.

The blasting, approved by Canada’s National Energy Board in 2014, is meeting fierce opposition.

A lower court affirmed the NEB decision in 2015, claiming Inuit were adequately consulted on the project — something Inuit dispute. To prevent destruction of their hunting grounds, the remote hamlet of Clyde River in Nunavut and the Nammautaq Hunters and Trappers Organization appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada, which agreed to hear the case later this year. A positive decision could halt seismic blasting and affirm the right of Indigenous peoples to decide their own future regarding resource development in their territories, which is central to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, of which Canada is a signatory.

This case is in an isolated region. But the threat of massive development in yet another traditional territory is not an isolated case. Indigenous peoples are on the front lines of environmental change around the planet. Ever-expanding resource developments are degrading traditional territories that have sustained communities for millennia, from Arctic tundra to primeval rainforest to arid desert. They’re criss-crossed with roads, transmission lines and pipelines, and pockmarked by pumpjacks, flare stacks and other infrastructure for drilling, fracking and strip-mining fossil fuels. Most developments proceed without consent from local communities and with minimal benefit to them in terms of jobs, training and economic prosperity.

Numerous studies show that Indigenous communities usually bear the brunt of resource development, from declining water quality to destruction of traditional hunting and fishing grounds. The social consequences are devastating. Earlier this year I participated in the Canadian Indigenous Health Conference, which brought public health experts together with Indigenous elders, political leaders, youth, hunters and trappers. Many First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities’ social problems — including alcoholism, physical abuse, depression and suicide — are linked to the vacuum left when communities can no longer hunt, fish, trap, gather berries and otherwise live off their lands as their ancestors did.

Despite living in one the world’s wealthiest countries, Inuit face chronic food insecurity. Nearly 70 per cent of households in communities like Clyde River struggle with getting enough nutrition to stay healthy, compared to eight per cent for the country as a whole.

Traditional activities like hunting and fishing are critical to Indigenous communities’ food security, but they also support a holistic approach to the overall health and well-being of Indigenous peoples. A David Suzuki Foundation study on the importance of caribou hunting to First Nations in the boreal forest found “harvesting as a practice is not solely a process of obtaining meat for nutrition. With each hunt a deliberate set of relationships and protocols is awakened and reinforced. These include reciprocity, social cohesion, spirituality and the passing on of knowledge to future generations.”

Scientists fear high-intensity sounds from seismic blasting in the Arctic could adversely affect marine wildlife, exacerbating the food-insecurity crisis. Inuit hunters have observed altered migration patterns of some species, and reported horrific damage to the internal organs of seals and other animals exposed to underwater seismic blasts.

Clyde River’s resistance to big oil is classic David versus Goliath. On one side, powerful corporations with money and access to politicians. On the other, one of the world’s oldest cultures, which has survived for millennia in harmony with the environment. Former Clyde River mayor Jerry Natanine said, “Inuit do not live on the land; we are part of it. We form an indivisible unity with the Arctic environment that we are fighting to preserve for our people and our culture to survive and thrive.” 

Let’s stand with Inuit and stop seismic blasting in the Canadian Arctic.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Ontario and Northern Canada Director Faisal Moola.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

Image: Christian Aslund, Greenpeace

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