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Welcome to A Radical Act of Hope. In this series, Inuk climate advocate Siila Watt-Cloutier brings us into her world. A world where melting ice isn’t just a symptom of climate change—it’s a disruption of memory, identity, and rhythms of life in the North. She takes us from her home in the Arctic to the frontlines of international climate justice, alongside those who have been speaking up—and holding steady—for decades.
Siila Watt-Cloutier is one of the most important climate justice voices of our time. Her work with the Inuit Circumpolar Council helped get the Stockholm Convention signed, ratified and enforced in record time. It's one of the most successful UN treaties that has ever been made to protect the environment by banning the “dirty dozen”––the persistent organic pollutants that contaminate food and human bodies. She then went on to pioneer linking climate change and human rights in a way that has completely revamped how the world thinks about climate justice.
Don’t miss this important conversation with Siila and the Indigenous women leaders who have inspired her journey. This isn’t just a climate story—it’s a story about the connections between people and place, and all that sustains us.
A Radical Act of Hope was produced in collaboration with the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions with support from The Gordon Foundation and the University of Victoria.
We acknowledge with respect the Lək̓ʷəŋən-speaking peoples on whose traditional territory this podcast was produced and the Songhees, Esquimalt and W̱SÁNEĆ Peoples whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day.
Welcome to A Radical Act of Hope. In this series, Inuk climate advocate Siila Watt-Cloutier brings us into her world, a world where melting ice isn't just a symptom of climate change. It's a disruption of memory, identity, and the rhythms of life in the North. She takes us from her home in the Arctic to the front lines of international climate justice, alongside those who have been speaking up and holding steady for decades.
What we see in our communities and in our atmosphere are not abnormal behaviors. In fact, what we're seeing are perfectly normal reactions to extremely abnormal circumstances. And so what we do to our planet is the same that we do to human beings and that we've done to Indigenous children and many others and women. And that the after effects of all of that trauma, there's going to be erratic behaviors of children who have not been helped, who have not healed.
Our planet is reacting in the very same way because it's a living, breathing entity.
My name is Janna Wale. I'm Gitsan from Gitamax First Nation on my dad's side and Cree Metis on my mother's side. I work as the Indigenous Research and Partnerships Lead at the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions. I'll be joining you on this journey with Siila, who reminds us that climate work isn't only technical or political. It's also spiritual, emotional, and deeply personal. Together, we'll reflect on her incredible legacy and explore what it means to carry wisdom forward across generations and through this moment of global transformation. This isn't just a climate story. It's a story about the connection between people and place and all that sustains us.
In this episode, my journey continues from witnessing the alarm bells of the melting Arctic to petitioning the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to get greenhouse gas emissions recognized as a violation of the human rights that we need. We'll also hear Jana's story and the experiences that shaped her path to focus on climate change.
A Radical Act of Hope is a collaboration between Siila Watt-Cloutier, and the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, or PICS, at the University of Victoria. My name is Ian Mauro, and as the executive director of PICS,
I'm honored to join you as we listen to the powerful voice of my friend and colleague, Siila. We acknowledge with respect the Lekwungen speaking peoples on whose traditional territory this podcast was produced, and the Songhees, Esquimalt, and WSANEC peoples whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day.
Siila Watt-Cloutier and the Coalition of Indigenous People of the Circumpolar North played a significant role in convincing the UN to ban the use of persistent organic pollutants, also known as POPs, with the signing of the Stockholm Convention in 2001. Persistent organic pollutants are just that, toxic pesticides and industrial byproducts that persist in the environment without degrading for years or even decades.
They travel long distances through changing weather patterns and accumulate in living organisms up the food chain. The risks these chemicals pose to ecosystems and to human health is now well documented and researched, but it wasn't always. Before the critical work of the Stockholm Convention banned these chemicals, they were used in global manufacturing and processing, and also used in some African countries as pesticides to prevent malaria.
While Siila was working tirelessly to help stop these toxic chemicals from traveling up north and into the Inuit food chain, rapid changes were happening at home. The Arctic ice was melting and Siila's next important mission was taking shape. We could hear it from people. We could hear from the hunters. Ice freezers was melting and you couldn't preserve the food the same way that you did before. The flooding was happening more rapidly, just like Alaska.
In Canada, the Inuvialuit region is hit the hardest. The storms and the surges are much higher and much more dangerous and creating that erosion even further. And yet, you know, governments have been very slow to protect the communities from that kind of situation, from the dire conditions that are happening with that. And coming from Nunavik, we're just below the treeline. You know, the warming that's happening, the permafrost melting. We heard the stories and we saw the evidence of how the ice would form much later in the fall and it would break up earlier in the spring. And the number of new species coming up to the Arctic as well, birds, insects, and different species, sometimes even a fish now, all of these changes were happening.
Climate change was threatening not only the Inuit way of life, but also the intergenerational sharing of knowledge necessary for survival.
And the ingeniousness of our traditional knowledge is superb.
to be able to survive and thrive up there. And so that starts to be limited as a result of these rapid changes that are happening. And many of our Elders have been saying, I'm teaching you this about safety and all kinds of things that you need to know when you're out there. However, they say a disclaimer, because of climate change, it's harder to read those conditions now. So you've got to be more vigilant and focused on your safety as you go out there because things can become very precarious very quickly. And the sea ice, of course.
You know, what you see on the surface is not what it is under because of the warming of the sink of the Arctic waters. It's forming very differently. And so it's not as thick as you think it is, even visually on the top. So that's why it limits that incredible Indigenous knowledge that we've always had to be able to read the conditions of ice and weather patterns and snow conditions and all of that. And also even the way in which our hunters travel to different places now have to re-root themselves in a longer path, which costs more fuel, more supplies, more time, to the very same places and spaces that they've been able to hunt and fish and gather and all kinds of things.
The dog sleds had been largely replaced by skidoos, and where there had been snow and ice, there was now barren soil. Caribou were traveling further north far beyond their normal migratory patterns, and seals were struggling to birth and raise pups without the shelter of snowy dens. What was happening in the Arctic wasn't just a regional crisis. It was a warning to the world. The ice was vanishing, and with it, one of Earth's last natural defenses against climate collapse. These changes continue to impact the North today, and they're indicative of the magnitude of global warming and climate change underlining what Siila and her people have known all along, that everything is connected.
The future of Inuit is tied to the future, to the rest of the world. We are now part of the global economy, part of the global society. If we cannot save the frozen Arctic, can we really hope to save the forests, the rivers, the farmlands and other regions? A frozen Arctic allows us to continue to choose our future, determine
For ourselves, how our economy and culture will develop. A frozen Arctic also allows the same opportunity to the rest of the world instead of spending trillions of dollars simply to offset the impacts of a melting Arctic.
Throughout Siila's work, a common theme was emerging. That climate change is the result of a broken relationship with the land. And a more conscious, heart-centered approach to climate advocacy was needed.
Pollution CO2 in our atmosphere causes damage to the atmosphere and it's forcing the planet to react with violent storms and other erratic events. This is not unlike the Inuk child or the Indigenous child or anyone who has gone through trauma. Without care, a space to heal, an effective coping mechanisms, self-destructive behavior is inevitable. And what we see in our communities and in our atmosphere are not abnormal behaviors. In fact, what we're seeing are perfectly normal reactions to extremely abnormal circumstances. And so what we do to our planet is the same that we do to human beings and that we've done to Indigenous children and many others and women. And that the after effects of all of that trauma, there's going to be erratic behaviours of children who have not been helped, who have not healed. And our planet is reacting in the very same way because it's a living, breathing entity.
We have been damaging it, we have been pillaging it, we have destroyed the habitat of many wildlife on our planet, and now we're creating this blanket of CO2 around it where it can't breathe, and creating the warming and all of the havoc that's happening. So we have to see it as the same as human trauma that we have done to human beings is what we're doing to our planet. And we have to see it as such so that we can start to, as we protect children as we love them.
and try to present opportunities for them to heal and receive coping mechanisms and so on. We've got to do the same for our planet. And starting point is lower the greenhouse gas emissions, create innovative, creative, sustainable businesses rather than unsustainable businesses and activities. And let's start treating our planet as a living, breathing entity in that way. Indigenous people do, and we honor it. So we've got to have the political arenas do it.
And we've got to reimagine and re-engineer new ways forward that are more aligned with Indigenous values and principles of respect for Mother Earth and for each other.
Could Siila's message of a living Earth continue to find a foothold in the political arena? After all, it was this language, this unique approach, this framing from the heart that made Siila so effective and inspirational to many, including our executive director at PICS, Ian Mauro.
Siila is an incredible orator. uses metaphor to pull people in. And I particularly like that blanket metaphor, this idea that the earth is wrapped in CO2, like a blanket and it's warming us up. And so she pulls people in on that human dimension. And for me, you know, as someone that's interested in science, but knowing that science alone isn't enough, it really helps us to kind of consider that human dimension and how we talk about the issue of climate change. And again, going up to the Arctic and starting to kind of meet Inuit and live in that context.
You know, it shaped my entire journey because the Arctic is where I cut my teeth really heavily on climate and seeing the Arctic melt over that decade plus that I was living up there in the summers and teaching up there in the summers and realizing the personal obligation when you are witnesses to something like that, when you actually see what has gone on in the Arctic and that's, you know, 25 years ago, almost it's now the equivalent of the wildfires that we get every year in BC now. That was happening, you know, decades ago in the Arctic and people, the Inuit were ringing the alarm saying, this is real. And that has caught up with us in the South.
Siila had proven the effectiveness of her approach and she felt ready for the next step in her journey. She had already shared the experiences of Inuit mothers and children. Now it was time to tell the stories of the hunters, evoking their fearlessness, patience and deep respect for the land.
Having that success under our belt. I then moved quickly into the arena of, how do we address climate change? It's gonna be a bigger challenge. The world is not as ready as it was to address the toxins issue as it is the CO2 issues, the CO2 emissions that were causing the warming of the Arctic and the planet. And so we had to start to really think deeply about these issues and wonder what kind of strategy do we have to build to make a mark that's even bigger than...
and more challenging than the work that we did that led to the successful Stockholm Convention, right?
This is a person who knows how to negotiate and think through the complexity of how to bring people together to solve these existential challenges, but do it with humility, do it with kindness, do it in a way where people feel good about the outcome. The way we treat people is an indication of how we also treat the earth. And so, Siila's movement into human rights as the angle on climate, it literally changed everything. It made it much easier for everybody to understand how this is deeply a personal human issue that affects our very core essence of being alive. And that is a universal truth that I think people are starting to now actually understand universally. But it also, think, knowing Siila also creates a sense of ongoing responsibility.
Once you see the Arctic melt and once you see what people do to remedy or make it better, you have to act. Action is not optional.
Following the success of the POPs Treaty, the universe presented an opportunity for Siila to face the climate crisis head on, while aligning her experiences and unique approach to once again shift paradigms. It was an opportunity to connect Western science with the human story, and illuminate the experiences of her people in the form of a petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. This petition was the first of its kind.
It would argue that the unabated emissions coming from the United States were violating the human rights of the people of the Arctic.
The Center for International Environmental Law in Washington, D.C. and also the Earthjustice.org or Earthjustice from San Francisco were the two environmental law firms that reached out to me and said, listen, we're working on this issue of connecting climate change to human rights. And we think that you would be the perfect
I don't know in the absence of a better word, the client or to be working with us in putting that human face and human dimension and the human rights dimension to the petition that we're working on. You know, it was not just signatures here. We're talking about a legal document with 700 and some odd legal footnotes. But what they needed were the voices of the hunters and Elders and women of the Arctic.
Before this work could begin, Siila would travel to meet the people behind the law firms, intent on working with values-aligned allies. She wanted to be sure that their intentions were noble, due to a complicated history between Indigenous people and environmental activist groups. Could they stand with her? Would they honour Indigenous sovereignty?
We have that whole history of, you know, whether it's animal rights movements or others who just want to use us in promoting what their aspirations are, what the work that they were doing. So I didn't want to be seen as sleeping with the enemy, so to speak either. And I started to talk about this with some of my fellow leaders and my boards and so on. But then I went to Washington to really assess the situation and see how it felt around these people. And were they genuine? Were they authentic? And where are they coming from? Who are they? For me is who are you as a person? And
What are your values and principles? And how do you raise your children about, you know, environment and issues and all of these things? And how much do you know about the Arctic and its people? And do you have a good background in terms of respect for Indigenous peoples of the world? I came back home to Ixaluit where I was living and it just really felt like this was the right move. Moving forward with the petition would mean confronting the same American administration that had signed the Stockholm Convention.
Siila didn't want to turn newfound allies into opponents. She strongly believed that there was another way forward. However, the work Siila had been doing for years and her unique approach had equipped her with the skills to rise to the challenge.
It was a legal petition with 700 and some odd legal footnotes. A remarkable document that would list or put into this document 167 pages the rights that would be
violated with the inaction of the world to address climate change in the way that it needed to be addressed. And in particular, it was what the USA was not doing to address this issue because the petition was targeting the United States for their inaction. We had learned through the work of the Arctic climate impact assessment that we were doing in the early 1990s, the challenge that we were having with the US government the delegation that would come to slow down the process or politicizing it. no, it can't be out before the next election. And all of these things were happening and there were stalling tactics, all of these things that were happening at the political level. So we had to fight tooth and nail to have that science be written in a document, a policy document that would be attached to it, that would add pressure to the countries to lower their greenhouse gas emissions. And we pushed, and I certainly did at the time, to push Indigenous knowledge into every chapter of that book, of that document, of that assessment. Bob Corell, who was the incredible chair scientist, who was the best science communicator I know, was the driving force behind that, along with many other scientists that were part of that assessment. And of course, going into the communities and working with Indigenous peoples, hunters, Elders, women, and that became a part of their growing as well as scientists to be able to respect Indigenous knowledge. And so we were able to incorporate Indigenous knowledge into almost every chapter. But it was, you know, again a fight to make sure that that was going to happen.
Part of that fight involved testifying in front of the American Senate. It was Siilas' heart-centered approach that would once again help her make an impact.
She remembered when these same people had brought relief to her community during a time of starvation due to the collapse of the global fur market the Inuit had relied upon for survival.
So as we prepared when we got the approval or that, you know, all the doors had been open for Bob Corell and I, and I think there were a couple of other players, but we were the two main people who were going to testify at the Senate hearings in Washington when Senator John McCain was the lead on climate change transportation.
but his Senate committee approved or accepted that we would be able to go and testify at his hearings. So we went there not just to testify, but we had a strategy also in our pocket. And when I was on the plane reading the testimony that had been drafted by my advisors, I looked at it and I thought, this isn't heart-centered enough. And I rewrote almost the whole thing from a space that I would feel would connect to the committee and also share in that testimony the importance of how the Americans just during the war when we were going through starvation in eastern Arctic especially in my region and in Nunavut and everybody had forgotten about us during that period of time the American military arrived during that period of time to build airstrips not to save us but for their own priorities of building an airstrip then that would bring them to Europe. Kuujjuaq, my hometown, was one of them. And I said in my testimony, Americans arrived when we so needed them and saved the day for many from starvation, bringing jobs and bringing supplies and bringing back some of the dignity that had been lost during the time when we were abandoned, during that period of famine or starvation time. I said, we need you back at the table to address this urgent issue, the second wave that's upon us in our homelands on climate change issues. And your State Department is playing some politics with this urgent matter. We need you back. I had forgotten that Senator John McCain was a prisoner of war. He was a military man. And I remember after my testimony, my advisor said, you should have seen him when you talked about the military coming in to help save the lives of
you know, just by the nature of their arrival, he sat back and just started to smile and relax and knew that somehow there was that resonance with him as a military man who, you know, who was in prison for so long. Just by being truthful to my own truth and the style in which I lead consciously from heart, I was able to shift the energy in that room.
And as soon as I finished my testimony from my own words, my own energy, a woman came racing out of the office from one of his offices and said, I watched you on the monitor and you made me cry. And she gave me a big hug and said, my, my. And it was just one of those moments. I thought, I've made my mark with a fellow woman who was sitting in the back, an American woman sitting in the back listening to this testimony.
And I did, I know I felt it with Senator John McCain. And you know what? He wrote a letter to the State Department and said, you've got to back this assessment. And so it was one of those moments where it was an important piece to be able to get through an American Republican Senator at the time. And he became an unexpected surprise ally in our struggle to ensure that the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment was going to go through as is policy document and it became the tool that we had to be able to then start the process of being part of that legal petition.
For Siila, the petition was not about calling the U.S. out, but calling them in. This approach aligned with her belief in the politics of influence, not of protest. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to invite the U.S. to really listen to the testimonies of Inuit affected by climate change.
Collecting those testimonies would be no small feat. But two young Americans stepped up, volunteering to help Siila do the groundwork. When I launched this legal petition, it was not an attack on the U.S. We were not striking out. We were reaching out to the highest self of USA and trying to get them to understand what these issues meant for us in terms of the Arctic climate impact assessment work and who we were in the Arctic.
Two young American scholars, Rich Powell and Sasha Earnhardt Gold, one from Washington, one from San Francisco, had heard about this work and said, we have scholarships to work on issues at our universities and we'd love to come and help you for free. So I said, absolutely for free because we, you know, we're limited in our funding and so on. So they came up north and I trained them, like in my house with my legal counsel, Paul Crowley, who's living in Iqaluit since many, many years.
Martin Wagner, who is the lawyer from earthjustice.org, came as well. And we sat and we planned and strategized and we had the mock petition in our hands. And I would be on the radio in the communities, whether it was in Labrador, Nunavut or Inuvialuit region, say, this is what I'm planning. This is what I'm hoping to do, connect human rights to climate change, to human rights. You have to walk your communities through. You make sure that they understand that so that when these young men would go up there, who they didn't know who the heck they were, knew that they were working for me and that they would go into the communities with a recorder, a video and say, Sheila wants to know your testimonies, your observations of these immense changes we're going through. And at the end of the recordings would be asked, and this is the petition that she wants to launch that connects climate change to our human rights. And these are the areas, the right to health, the right to all of these rights that were being impacted by climate change and the inaction of politicians.
We want your voices to be in each of these rights that are being violated, that she feels are being violated. And I think many of us did. And at the end of that, they would say, she's the signatory to this, but she wants to know whether you would like to sign on with her. And 62 said, yes. The majority of all those that were interviewed said yes. And when I heard that in my living room, I wept because it gave me that strength to really carry on and launch this legal petition.
With the testimonies and the data from the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment compiled, Siila and her team launched their petition at COP11 in Montreal. But her work was far from over.
My lawyers presented it to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, D.C. And we didn't hear from them for quite some time. And finally, they were saying, well, I don't know if we can move forward with this. However, we would like you to come and testify the legal impacts of climate change with your lawyers. So off we went again. I went there to justify with my legal team from CIEL and Earth Justice. And the nine man commission, every single one of them were from very hot countries. And we had already heard from State Department, I think it was just before, just after, that in fact, this commission may not go forward. So we thought, there's still politics at play here.
you know, but I kept my resolve. I didn't give up. And as one of the lawyers, Don Goldberg said in my book, I didn't know you had the stuff in you to carry on with so many odds against you. But how could I not? How could I give up? How could I give up on something that I really felt strongly that my grandchildren and their children were going to be so negatively impacted for the inaction? And when I was in that position of influence, how could I become paralyzed in fear and not take that action. I had to. It's a sense of responsibility, you know, elected and that by then we had garnered the media all over the world on this issue, all over the world. And it was just one of those moments that was really important to bring forth.
Siila's work connecting human rights to climate change was perhaps the most powerful example of what a radical act of hope can accomplish. The petition was successful and changed the language around climate change and human rights forever. Siila, 62 Inuit community members, and a handful of American environmental lawyers changed the discourse through this landmark petition. Their efforts laid the groundwork for future actions linking global warming with the rights of Indigenous people. It also resulted in Siila's co-nomination with Al Gore for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The work that Siila talks about in terms of navigating these kind of political processes, finding her voice, getting her leadership and setting her up to do this pioneering work on climate change and human rights. Like people literally did not speak like that until her petition. So essentially they brought the voice of these Inuit elders, hunters and leaders into this legal process and said that the United States is unabated emissions and the impact that it was having on the Arctic was tantamount to a human rights violation. And nobody had made that argument before. These are human rights issues. These are profoundly harmful impacts on humans in the Arctic caused by people in the South. And a culture of the South is not individuals. It's the culture of industrial production. It's the culture of not regulating. It's a culture of hubris that kind of science and technologies just solves all the problems.
And then we've realized, it actually also causes their own set of problems. And so, you know, it's this kind of huge story and Siila got recognized for that work. And so she was co-nominated for the Nobel peace prize, linking climate change and human rights and got co-nominated with Al Gore. And when the prize was given Al Gore actually got the Nobel peace prize, as many people will know, and they put in the intergovernmental panel on climate change, which is an important scientific body of world experts on climate.
The chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee announces the winners of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 is to be shared in two equal parts between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, and Albert Arnold Al Gore Jr. for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about manmade climate change and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.
But in that moment, Siila got kind of excised out of the nomination. So in many ways she won the Nobel, but she was recognized as a nominee. And in a lot of cases that isn't known that you're nominee, but I think people wanted it to be public that she actually was in that story.
And she's won the right livelihood award, which is considered the alternative Nobel Prize. That first time I met her, when you walk into her house, you know, she's not someone that wants to be adorned with prizes, but she has them there as kind of memory of her journey. And it is truly remarkable. Like she is like literally won all the large environmental prizes in the world. And, know, whether or not you get a Nobel Peace Prize in some ways is irrelevant. You look at the impact that she has had. That's what counts. It's not if you've got the award, it's have you made a difference? And we know for sure she has.
For Siila, the real reward was changing the way the entire world thinks and talks about climate change. And the real winner was the planet.
Connecting climate change to human rights was one of the most challenging and daunting tasks I've ever taken on. It was pioneering work and it was very difficult, politically, emotionally, physically, spiritually, on all those fronts for me. And I think we helped to change the discourse on the language of climate change.
EP Production Team (31:06.973)
with that approach and with that endeavour. And I feel proud of that work and I still stand by that work. And I think it has also, and it's taken, you know, I guess about 20 years maybe, for it to bear fruit in terms of others that really stood up. It started to work immediately almost within the last, the first five years of launching that petition, that language shifted and it became mainstream language, climate change, human rights. It didn't take long.
And others followed suit in standing up for their rights against big companies, like even in Alaska, and youth in Oregon and other places in the world that people were starting to stand up for their rights because they saw that connection in a very visible way through the work that we were doing.
Inspired by Siila's work reframing climate change as a human rights issue, many more have been galvanized to join efforts to address the deepening climate crisis. As our Indigenous research and partnerships lead at PICS, Janna Wale is part of a new generation of conscious climate leaders following in Siila's footsteps. An Indigenous researcher from the Gitsxan Nation, Janna holds two degrees, a Bachelor of Natural Resource Sciences, Honours, and a Master's degree in Sustainability in Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies.
Her work uses a complex human environmental systems approach, and she believes that this lens can be used when looking for ways to bridge Western and Indigenous climate and environmental knowledges.
Climate change is something that I've spent my life on. You know, I'm not yet 30, but it's something that I've been thinking about since I was a kid and something that I've been working towards making change on for basically my whole life. Looking up to people like Ian, looking up to people like Siila who have come before me and kind of continuing the work that they've put into this and just knowing that part of my role as a youth, as a young person, to carry that work as far as I can now.
Despite the distance between their homelands, Janna from northern BC and Siila from the Arctic, Jana's path towards working in climate justice was not unlike Siila's as she witnessed the impact of climate change and colonialism on her family's way of life. I kind of grew up going out on the land and spending time in my community and with my parents and my family.
Then my dad, he took a different job and we ended up moving out of my community when I was very small. And basically then that kind of led me to, you know, being a little bit more disconnected from my culture, not being on our land base anymore and having to come back. We would come back every summer to participate in harvesting activities.
We would go out and pick huckleberry. We would help my family get wood for the winter. With my whole family, we would go out picking and we would make a day of it. You know, at that time, I was probably eating more than I was actually putting in the bucket. But they were good memories and they're memories that I still hold with me and carry with me. And, you know, a couple of years ago, actually, when I was doing my master's thesis, my data collection, that was the year that the BC Heat Dome struck. When I was up harvesting...
That was one of the years that I really noticed impacts to our Huckleberry and that was kind of one of the pieces on my journey that I, you know, kind of pushed me forward and kind of made me want to continue to do this work. Because of the, you know, the impacts of the heat drought that were impacting the huckleberry at higher elevations, the berries that year were smaller, harder to find and the leaves on the huckleberry bushes had evidence of heat scorch.
As somebody that doesn't live in my territory, having those pieces of my home that I'm able to access in the form of jam or being able to pull huckleberry out of the freezer is super important for me in terms of my identity. So just another, you know, another piece of our territory that's just being impacted in all kinds of different ways.
In 2025, Janna was invited to present a TED talk, exploring the deep connection between climate change and our ailing relationship with the land. Her TED talk titled Indigenuity: How to Reframe our Relationship with Climate Change, explored more holistic solutions to addressing the far-reaching impacts of climate change, rather than simply relying on technology to solve all our problems.
My name is Janna Whale and I am Gitxsan from Gitaanmax First Nation on my dad's side and I am also Cree Metis on my mother's side. And I am a climate scientist. And as a climate scientist, I can tell you this with certainty. The environmental chaos that we're witnessing, the mega fires, the flash floods, the diseases, they are all just symptoms of a larger problem. We are living in an unhealthy relationship with our environment. All the things of the earth and the sky are letting us know that we have taken more than we've given.
Janna's Talk was inspired by her personal experiences, witnessing the impact of climate change on her family's traditional salmon harvesting practices. She too saw her family's way of life threatened by extraction and development, and she knew in her heart that Indigenous knowledge systems shaped by thousands of years of living sustainably on these lands could play a big part in helping to restore balance.
One of the big things that we did and one of the ways that I really felt connected to being a Gitxsan person was to harvest salmon. This is something that we do every year and salmon is a really big source of our food security.
But with that, there's so many teachings that come when you harvest salmon. So there's ways of doing it that kind of adhere to our culture, our protocols. There's teachings around who's doing the harvesting and, you know, timing and kind of how basically harvesting is way more than just actually taking the fish. So all of these things kind of led me to have an understanding of who I was as a Gitxsan person and being able to participate in that year after year growing up.
When I was really little, remember my dad and my uncles used to be able to get everything we would need in just a couple of days for my extended family. And my dad has four brothers, so, you know, that's a lot of fish. As I got a little bit older, you know, in grade 11, I remember I came back to help harvest that year and it ended up taking so long that my dad and one of my uncles had to sleep out overnight at our fishing site just to be able to get enough fish to feed our families for over the winter months. So basically, in, you know, the span of 10 or 15 years as I was growing up,
you know, our access to this really important resource had changed so much because of climate change, because of the changes that we are seeing on our territory, our lax yip, in our environment. And, you know, that was something that I had never really heard of before. I had heard people in my community talking about things had been so different back in my day, or we see all these changes now. And I kept hearing, you know, climate change, climate change.
And it kind of led me to wonder, you know, what is this? What is this? We've talked a little bit about it in high school, but I kind of wanted to know more about it. You know, it was impacting my family already. It was something that was really impacting my ability to be and see myself and understand who I was as a Gitxsan person.
Through Siila's Indigenous Climate Fellowship at PICS, Janna and Siila had the opportunity to spend time together, realizing just how interconnected their journeys have been from their lived experiences on their homelands to their forays into science, politics, and cultural advocacy.
You know, as two Indigenous women, and also because we've had the traditional upbringings have a lot of commonality to that. And that somehow we have been called maybe, you know, a title of climate work, but really that climate work isn't just about climate change. It's much bigger than that. It's about getting people to understand who we are as a people and teaching those values and principles to a broader audience. And it's about the aspirations that we have for our people that grounds us and connects us together. Because the colonial history has impacted all Indigenous peoples of the world with the same consequences. And we have more commonalities with one another, no matter what Indigenous peoples we come from or what places we come from, because of that history. It has had a very negative...
spiritual, emotional, physical, human impact on us negatively. That binds us together. When we talk to each other, we understand each other sometimes even without speaking, but understanding our histories together. And it's that movement needs to be built more and more because we have much to offer to this world that is very disconnected. Because we know what it's like even in my living memory, of course, and in yours as you speak about your father, in our living memories.
That's how we were raised and how we were brought up. And we've got to start to teach that more and more. And people have to value us, not just as victims to climate change and colonial pasts, but as teachers of many things that are lacking in this world today.
And I think too, like something I hear you talk a lot about in our conversations that we've had is the importance of community and family in terms of grounding you in this work. And that's something that I see as being another commonality is just the reason that I got into this work was because of the things that I saw happening in my community and in my own family. And you talk about that in your book as well. I think that that, you know, Indigenous people that are interested in any kind of intersective climate, usually it comes back to, you know, those groundings of family, of community, of teachings, and the willingness to be
active in shaping our futures. I think that, you know, in many ways our work is interconnected just because we have the same understanding of what it means to be hopeful in order to be resilient and have a lot of the same kind of values guiding us in this work, even though we come from separate parts of the country. just being able to find those.
Common grounds. Common grounds, even though our territories are different, our culture is different, our language is different, but we have the same understanding of a livable future that we want to pass on. An understanding of the human impact that has had on our world, no matter which indigenous peoples we come from.
Like Siila, Janna was inspired to follow a path that would help her address the impact of climate change on her community by blending ancestral wisdom, ecological knowledge, institutional learning, and community response. And like Siila's, Janna's path would not be linear. She would notice significant problems with the education system, particularly the ways many Western institutions lack respect for Indigenous knowledge.
So it kind of led me to go, you know, pick an undergrad that kind of had to do with the environment. I went into a natural resource science degree, but when I got there, I'd realized. I entered the post-secondary institution right after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission came out. You know, at that time, there wasn't a whole lot of Indigenous content. There wasn't a whole lot of curricula that I could really see myself in. A lot of the conversation we were still having around the environment and about resources was still really focused on extraction and how we could basically do all these calculations, do all this science to kind of figure out how we could continue to extract and kind of harm our environment, which is really not how I was taught to look at our environment growing up. So that was really difficult. When I did my masters, I had to go through all kinds of steps to get an Elder on my committee where he would be able to evaluate my work. They said, well, he can come and be a guest. And I said, no, he's the one that is, you know, he knows way more than me. He's an expert. He's a knowledge holder. And he should be able to have an influence over what my grade is. He should be able to help evaluate my work. And that took months, having to get that process moved through all kinds of different, you know.
people that were higher up in the university, was draining because they have never had to think about how to include different knowledge holders, different understandings and different experts. In my undergrad, I did an honors thesis and I had my committee come back to me and say, well, we don't know how to mark this because they had never seen, you know, Indigenous research at that point the way that I had done it because it was just after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission came out. So I think that pushing academia to understand that they are not the be all end all in terms of knowledge and understanding and the way that we see the world is really important. And creating that space in how we teach and how we give kids the option to learn, I think is really important.
Absolutely, absolutely. And to give the same value to our Elders is an uphill climb in the Western world, whether it's in universities or in scientific research. We went through that with the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment where scientists said, I mean, I already know what I have to know. What more am I going to learn from the hunters and Elders? know, that we were trying to incorporate Indigenous knowledge into every chapter of that assessment. And that too was an uphill climb politically. And eventually when they started to work with our Elders and they changed their tune and said, yes, I learned so much more than I thought I would. So, you know, there's a lot of educating that we continually have to do in changing these systems that don't...
put value to Indigenous knowledge and having discussions with Leena. I mean, she brought in Pirurvik Institute the highest knowledgeable Elders as professors into her institute because they are the experts. They really are the experts and they have so much knowledge. like she said, they just sat in their homes wondering how else are they going to teach and help the younger generation from our incredible, resilient ancestry and the values and principles and the knowledge of Inuit traditional knowledge. Then they felt valued in that system that she created for them. And the younger generation learned so much that they would never learn elsewhere, that are never taught in universities. There are some universities, UVic's an example of that, where they have Indigenous professors and Indigenous deans and Indigenous leaders in the system. And to pay that respect is really important.
You're absolutely right. think most universities you have to fight as an uphill climb to get them to understand these pieces and how valuable traditional knowledge is and that there are going to be research papers that don't fit the norm, their norm. But it's really important that these are recognized research papers, you know, coming from Indigenous young scholars like yourself and others. Or even, you know, the understanding of who's an expert.
That's right. I think I've probably learned more from my dad and my family members than I ever have in any university setting. And all of the knowledge that I bring from that is so important into informing the work that I do now. And I imagine what you do is just bringing in the pieces that you've learned from your lived experience. And modeling that we've had. absolutely. Faced with so many injustices and barriers, one might think holding on to hope would be difficult.
But with role models like Siila Watt-Cloutier and Janna Wale, the future generation of leaders can find courage to keep going. And I was reflecting on, you know, what I would say to my younger self, like, you know, I'm not that old, but even 10 years ago when I started to realize, you know, what climate change is, how it's impacting my family and my community and how it's going to impact my family and community into the future. And when I start to have kids, how it's going to impact them and my, you know, my grandchildren way down the line.
I think it was hard not to feel, you know, that sense of rage, you know, knowing that Indigenous communities in particular have not, you know, participated in a lot of the things that have really caused climate change. Colonialism is at the root of climate change and knowing how, you know, Indigenous communities were marginalized for many years and continue to be marginalized when we're talking about, you know, policy and legislation that we could enact and could make a difference. I think when I started to realize those things at 17 and 18, I think I was...
I was angry. think I was very mad and it was an interesting coming to understand, you know, the way that the world is working, how it doesn't match up with the way that I've been taught and how I grew up in community and then having to look to my Elders, having to look to my family to understand how to navigate that rage and grief really about how do we bring this to somewhere productive? How can I use this and turn it into something that's useful and positive and something to find hope in rather than just becoming angry about it and letting it defeat me?
When Janna looks to the future, she hopes sharing Siila's story will help inspire others to step into their roles as change makers and sharers of stories. In reframing our relationship with climate change, we also reframe our relationship to ourselves and to one another. Janna and Siila not only want us to feel empowered, hopeful and optimistic about the future, but they also encourage us to feel that same way in our own lives and in how we exist alongside other living beings.
The climate change conversation feels very far removed from people. think that's what I hear a lot from when I go into community, when I go out speaking, is it feels, you know, in some ways that it's kind of happening without them. People are not sure what they can do to make a difference. People are not sure that, you know, any of the actions that they can take will be impactful. I think that having this conversation and kind of listening to Siila's story, I think will really help to create agency in a lot of the people that really you know, feel in a lot of ways that they've been left behind. And maybe they're just starting to engage with these ideas, but I think it'll really frame out. I hope that it will frame out their thinking in terms of what our future could look like in a hopeful way.
When you model strength and when you model clarity and focus and calm, that's the best teaching that you can give, I think, to the next generation, really, because they see what's possible for them. If you project your own limitations onto anybody, for that matter, your children or anyone, then you're projecting your own limitations. You're not modeling possibilities for them. So it's important to check in as any leader that you're in or any position that you're in to say,
Stay focused, stay calm, be hopeful. And even though there things can become very dire, stay centered as much as you can. Find the practices, traditional or non-traditional, ways in which you stay grounded and centered and know that you don't have to be a sponge for all the chaos and the dysfunction that's going on around you, whether it's in our communities or in the world, but to stay in that space and say, I don't own that. I am above.
that, not in an egoistic way, but I am a person who can contribute. And if I focus on what's not going right, then it will affect me. So I've got to stay grounded and centered. And oftentimes it's really about going back to nature, going back to land, going back to connections with family and friends and traditions that really help you stay grounded in that way.
On the next episode of A Radical Act of Hope, Siila welcomes two powerful and inspiring Indigenous women to the conversation. Planetary health leader Dr. Nicole Redvers and Aleqa Hammond, former Premier of Greenland and a leading voice for Indigenous rights and climate resilience. Join us for episode four as Siila and her guests share stories and explore the many different ways to embody conscious climate leadership and inspire others to help change the world. Subscribe to A Radical Act of Hope wherever you get your podcasts and visit climatsolutions.ca to learn more about how the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions is supporting climate action. This podcast was made with respect, gratitude and a radical act of hope by Everything Podcasts and the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, PICS would like to thank the Gordon Foundation and the University of Victoria for their support of Siila's Indigenous Climate Fellowship and this podcast.
Our hosts are Siila Watt-Cloutier, Janna Wale and Ian Mauro. Our executive producers, Jennifer Smith. Editor in chief, Don Schafer. Showrunner, Jessica Grajczyk. Our writer, Eva Grant. Sound design by Scott Whittaker. Production support by Cindy MacDougall. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced on the lands of the Lekwungen-speaking and WSANEC peoples. Our guests come from Indigenous lands across this country known as Canada and the world. Wherever you may be listening from, we thank you for joining us on this storytelling journey.
another Everything Podcasts production. Visit everythingpodcasts.com, a division of Pattison Media. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast.