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Clyde River hits world stage
Mayor reflects on balancing seismic testing fight with hamlet's economic challenges

Casey Lessard
Northern News Services
Published Monday, January 5, 2015

KANGIQTUGAAPIK/CLYDE RIVER
Despite its population of 934, according to the 2011 census, Clyde River captured international attention in 2014 by teaming up with Greenpeace to stop seismic testing - a precursor to oil and gas exploration - in the Arctic waters of Baffin Bay and Davis Strait.

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Greenpeace Canada activists join the People's Climate March in New York Sept. 21, bearing a banner that reads 'We Stand With Clyde River' in reference to Greenpeace's partnership with the Nunavut community in the fight against seismic testing. - photo courtesy of Greenpeace

It's believed seismic testing's ultra-loud sonic blasts, used to determine fault lines, can cause hearing damage or death in aquatic mammals, such as whales. The judge is expected to announce a hearing date for the Clyde River's lawsuit in the New Year.

Nunavut News/North's Casey Lessard spoke with Clyde River Mayor Jerry Natanine about the events of 2014, including the seismic testing fight.

Jerry Natanine: Looking back, especially on seismic testing, when we were starting the opposition, we were not thinking it would go this far. We were hoping some Inuit organization would pick it up and our name would not be in the papers. But that's not how it turned out.

N/N: What have you learned? Clyde River the name has been shown in New York and all over Greenpeace's Internet.

JN: Even though we're a small community, and all the communities are dispersed in our region, we can still unite and fight and work together for the same cause.

Our union with Greenpeace was a really big part of this. Trying to get over the fact that we hate them (for the group's work to end seal hunting), that was a very big deal for a few days, trying to work it out in our heads, and talking about it and talking to see if I'm going to approach them to see if they can help in any way to fight this seismic testing.

They came out with an apology, and we saw the apology and were left saying, 'Are we going to accept this?' Our history is not that great, so that was that a very, very big deal for Clyde River. To go over that hurdle of hating them and being our enemy to working with them, for me, that would be my personal highlight of 2014.

They have friends all over the world, and they were helping us to expose what's happening in our waters, and from their workings, we've had correspondence and phone calls from overseas, and other parts of the country, different people supporting us. It's just been phenomenal.

N/N: Do you think you'll win this fight?

JN: Yes, I think so. I think we're going to win this fight. What we submitted, I think it looks pretty solid. I hope we'll win this case.

N/N: What are you hoping for in 2015, going forward with this?

JN: What I'm hoping is going to happen now is they're going to put a stop to seismic testing, and what we're trying to do in Clyde River, too, now is to get baseline data of all of the animals that winter in Baffin Bay and Davis Strait and migrate along to different Arctic regions. We're hoping that project is going to take off and we're going to start gathering data about how many narwhals there are, how many walrus there are, because that data is not there at all. From that, we hope that if any other company wants to try and do seismic testing in Baffin Bay and Davis Strait, they'll see that as a community and as a territory that we're really serious about this, and if it's ever going to happen, we want to do it right with the least minimum negative effects on ecology.

N/N: One argument opposing what you're saying is that oil and gas exploration, if it comes, will benefit the people of Clyde River through jobs and other things. Do you believe that's true?

JN: That's what we were hoping would happen, and that's why initially we supported it. But they're not going to benefit the territory except maybe three or four monitoring jobs. That's not the kind of thing we want.

N/N: What are the other struggles you face in the coming year?

JN: There's a lack of jobs, and money's really hard to come by. With that, hunting equipment, tents and Ski-Doos are really hard to purchase. One thing we're trying to figure out is the Nunavut hunter support program, to utilize those funds to make it easier for people to go out on the land and for our local hunters and trappers to be able to get assets of hunting equipment that people can sign out and they just have to buy gas and oil to go out on the land, and when they come back, they return all the equipment. Hopefully this year it will take off.

N/N: What is the economic plan long-term? What will work for bringing jobs?

JN: Last summer and the summer before, there has been fisheries exploration off our coast, and they have found lots of halibut that could be economically viable. The government tells us that if we want a fish processing plant, we have to get proper docking and boat facilities. We're trying to push the government to build us a dock system that we can use.

N/N: Do you look around at other communities and see Clyde River as a have or have-not community?

JN: We compare ourselves and see we're one of the have-not communities. We have to go far away for hunting. We have lots of granite and lots of marble, but we don't have any equipment to quarry that. How can we make ourselves better? What can we do to make it better for our people? It's really hard because of funding not being there.

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