John Thompson
Northern News Services

Iqaluit (Aug 01/05) - Sunlight reflects off patches of sea ice bobbing in the recently-thawed Frobisher Bay, brightening the living room of Sheila Watt-Cloutier.

"Every day there's change," she remarks, staring out the bright bay windows. The view provides needed solace and serves as a reminder of the changing Arctic environment for the chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, who considers the last eight months the busiest of her life.

During that time she's garnered two prestigious awards for her efforts to draw attention to the effects of pollution and climate change on the Inuit.

Most recently she won the Sophie Prize, an endowment of $100,000 established by Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder and his wife, Siri Dannevig.

And in April, Watt-Cloutier received a Champions of the Earth award from the United Nations Environment Programme.

She sees the awards as tools to further promote her cause.

"They'll both be very useful."

Watt-Cloutier has campaigned against persistent organic pollutants (POPs) - toxic chemicals like DDT that travel by wind and water from the south to polar regions, where they accumulate to dangerous levels inside the bodies of Arctic animals - for years.

Recently world governments ratified the Stockholm conventions, which calls for the elimination of POP use. She sees the move as an important step forward, but no reason to relax yet.

"We have to make sure it stays on the front burner."

Global warming is her other chief concern, which she says threatens Inuit ways of life: hunters crash through thin ice into chilly waters, and rising oceans mean communities like Tuktoyaktuk in the NWT must relocate in the near future.

She sees media stunts as one way of drawing attention to these consequences, like the recent aerial photo-op that drew Hollywood celebrities Salma Hayek and Jake Gyllenhaal to the sea ice outside Iqaluit.

She emphasizes the importance of public support from Americans, who reside in a country that wields enough clout to determine the fate of the Arctic.

"It's really something that shouldn't be underrated," she said. "We know public opinion eventually becomes public policy."

"People do make a difference."

It isn't easy to lead an eco-friendly life from Nunavut, where every community is powered by diesel fuel and scant recycling options exist. And as Watt-Cloutier puts it "it's hard not to idle your truck at -50C."

But when so much depends on curbing pollution, she says it's important to try.

"The ownership has to be from all of us."