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ICC Canada Launches Northern Lights Against POPs: Combatting Toxic Threats in the Arctic
 Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Chair, Inuit Circumpolar Conference launches Northern Lights Against POPs. |
In early March 2003 more than 300 people from several countries attended a symposium in Ottawa at which the second Canadian Arctic Contaminants Assessment Report was released. Reporting five years of research sponsored by the Northern Contaminants Program (NCP), the symposium was a significant success. Speaking on behalf of the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Nancy Karetak-Lindell, MP for Nunavut, conveyed the minister's ongoing support for the program and commitment to act on its findings. Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Chair of ICC, spoke of ICC's work to promote international agreements to reduce emissions of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and mercury which end up in the Arctic. Taking advantage of the symposium, Ms. Watt-Cloutier launched Northern Lights Against POPs: Combatting Toxic Threats in the Arctic, a 300-page book prepared by ICC and published by McGill/Queen's University Press.
Northern Lights illustrates the role played by Inuit and other northern Indigenous peoples to encourage and cajole states to translate the findings of contaminants research in the Arctic into public policy, both national and international. It focusses on negotiations that resulted in May 2001 with the signing in Stockholm, Sweden of a global agreement to reduce emissions of POPs. Ms. Watt-Cloutier's chapter in this book is featured in this issue of Silarjualiriniq. Enclosed in this issue of Silarjualirinq are order forms for the book.
The Inuit Journey Towards a POPs-free World
SHEILA WATT-CLOUTIER
My public role in the POPs process began with an invitation to speak at a forum organized by Physicians for Social Responsibility in Montreal, the day before the first United Nations negotiating session towards a legally binding agreement to eliminate persistent organic pollutants (POPs) at their source.
However, my personal involvement started when I was a child growing up in a traditional Inuit world: hunting, fishing, and gathering; travelling on the land, ice, and water by dog team in the winter and canoe in the summer. I was the youngest of a small family born to a single mother and grandmother (in those days the white fathers did not stay). My mother worked very hard to provide for our family, working for the Hudson Bay Company and later at the nursing stations. Because she travelled a fair amount with her work, we were raised by our grandmother during most of our early childhood. We lived quite traditionally; my two brothers were the only males in the house and they learned to become hunters at a young age, feeding the family with our precious "country food," mainly caribou, ptarmigan, fish, goose, seal, and whale. To this day, I am an avid country-food eater and have a very close connection to my Inuit heritage.
My perspectives on this POPs process will be from the heart: it is my spiritual journey. I will start by saying that although my role in these negotiations has been that of a person elected by my people to work on global issues - including the protection of our environment - there can be no doubt it led my personal and professional journeys to mirror each other. As I work to help the world rid itself of its man-made toxins, a parallel process is happening in my own spirit as deep-rooted legacies of generational wounds that have left their mark deep in my soul are now, through my own cleansing, leaving my body and spirit.
Anyone who knows me well knows how spiritual I am and that I am more so since the loss of three close family members in the last three years and the near loss of one of my own children. I buried my beloved only sister, who without warning died at age forty-eight of a massive heart attack, a week after the second session in Nairobi. A few days before leaving for the fifth session in Johannesburg, we buried an aunt who had played a key role in my childhood. Just days after my return from Johannesburg, one of my children was airlifted out of the Arctic by air ambulance and went into emergency surgery moments before potential death. Less than three months after the signing of the Stockholm Convention, I also buried my mother. My personal losses are mirrored by those of many families in our Inuit world who have come to know personal loss all too well.
I am part of a generation that has experienced tumultuous change in a short period of time, coming from a very traditional way of life to a modern, high-tech world. In fewer than fifty years I have come from travelling only by dog team and canoe to flying in jumbo jets all over the world. This change has come at great cost to our society: we Inuit are known to have the highest suicide rates in North America, higher than any of our Indian brethren, and the speed of change has been a contributor. This change from a strong, independent way of life - living and learning from the land under our own education, judicial, social, and economic systems - to a highly dependent way of life, often involving alcohol, drugs, institutions, and processes, has shaken the very foundation of our families and communities.
More recently though, we are stopping, thinking, and, more importantly, feeling: we have begun to recognize what has happened in our Inuit world and we have started to understand the importance of regaining control over the health of our communities that has been lost over the last few decades. We have begun to appreciate the importance of the wisdom of the land in regaining the health of our families and communities. The land not only teaches the technical skills of aiming a gun or harpoon or skinning a seal, it teaches what is required to survive, giving confidence to our people. It builds the character skills of judgement, courage, patience, strength under pressure, and withstanding stress, which together is the wisdom that will help our young people to change, to choose life over self-destruction.
As we gradually revert to a more sustaining way of life, the last thing we need is to think that our cultural way of life - including our precious country food - is adding to our turmoil. Imagine the shock, confusion, and rage that we initially felt when evidence of high levels of POPs were discovered in our blood cords and nursing milk in the mid-1980s. In fact, levels of many of these substances in the breast milk of Inuit women have been found to be higher than in women anywhere else in the world. Published studies confirm the presence of more than 200 chemicals - including DDT, PCBs, dioxin, lead, mercury, toluene, benzene, and xylene. These were found in mothers milk, not in some hazardous-waste site. We were being poisoned - not of our doing but from afar.
Faced with this stark reality, I brought a sense of responsibility, commitment, urgency, and passion to my work - both on the issue of POPs and on other issues, such as climate change, that could bring disastrous negative impacts to our very way of life. The issue is not just the contaminants on our plate; our entire way of life is at stake. Traditional Inuit wisdom, the teachings of the land, the power of the hunt, and the consumption of our country food all contain answers to the problems we are facing. They will lead us to meet our challenges and help us to survive in this modern world that has come so rapidly to our Arctic doorstep.
This chapter will include my perspectives on the Inuit Circumpolar Conferences (ICC) role in the work of the negotiations and, as importantly, on some of the side events and important players with whom I have had the privilege of becoming a comrade-in-arms in this fight.
The first negotiating session in Montreal must be considered a strong opening for our message and our struggle. I addressed the forum organized by the Physicians for Social Responsibility the day before the UN negotiations began. The audiences standing ovation was a significant demonstration of support for the clear message that those most affected, Inuit, would become involved in the process and would bring the collective weight of a people to the fight against POPs. This was when I first met Barry Commoner, a well-known American scientist and advocate for the environment, who urged me to bring forward Inuit perspectives in the POPs negotiations, and Tom Goldtooth, of the US-based Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), who was committed to injecting the views of Indigenous peoples into the POPs negotiations. We subsequently worked closely with Tom and his colleagues.
Then, the next day, my short intervention on the first day of the UN negotiating session was equally well received. Christine Stewart, then Canadian Minister of Environment, had delivered a welcoming speech in which she mentioned the high levels of POPs Inuit mothers had in their nursing milk. My initial reaction could be described as cautiously optimistic: with this kind of support and recognition at the onset of discussions, we just might have a crack at getting the world to understand our plight. These were hopeful moments for me in my newly acquired role as spokesperson for the Coalition that had been established to voice the concerns and interests of Inuit, Metis, Dene, and Yukon First Nations in northern Canada. (First called the Northern Aboriginal Peoples Coordinating Committee on POPs, the Coalition later became known as the Canadian Arctic Indigenous Peoples Against POPs (CAIPAP).) As ICC President for Canada and Vice-President for ICC International, I was representing the Inuit of Greenland, Alaska, and Russia, as well as Canada on this particular issue.
At the second session, in Nairobi, Kenya, through the International POPs Elimination Network (IPEN), we were able to make connections with Indigenous peoples of Africa who were also struggling with the issue of POPs. It was a parallel IPEN/World Wildlife Fund-sponsored evening reception that proved, in the long term, most important to Inuit. A public presentation to Mr Klaus Tpfer, the Executive Director of UNEP, at that reception became a symbol for the duration of the negotiations.
Klaus Tpfer was a man who, from the outset of this process, gave attention to and connected the POPs issue with the Inuit and the Arctic. As our host for the week in Nairobi, he said that the ultimate goal of this treaty must be the elimination of the production and use of POPs, not simply better management. ICCs position was also that the POPs Convention, when eventually ratified, should reflect the goal of elimination rather than risk management. Our objective had been to use ICCs UN observer status to press for a comprehensive, rigorous, and verifiable global POPs treaty. We knew that even if the taps were shut off at their source today, it would take fifty years to clean up the Arctic sink. Simply managing these toxins was not going to be enough for those who live in the Arctic and live with this reality. Klaus Tpfer was consistent in his demonstration of respect and understanding of our plight throughout the entire process of the negotiations, and I will be forever grateful to him for that.
In appreciation for that respect I presented him with a soapstone carving of a mother and child carved by an Inuk woman from my region of Nunavik. He in turn presented the carving to John Buccini, the chair of the sessions, and said that it would sit in front of the chair through the rest of the negotiations. It did indeed. John Buccini told me once that when fatigue threatened, he would only have to look to the carving for further energy and strength. (John did a remarkable job of chairing these challenging negotiations. His calm, organized, and inclusive demeanour reminded me of the qualities of our Inuit elders; it radiated throughout the negotiations and led to the signing of the convention.)
The third session of negotiations, held in Geneva, Switzerland, was perhaps the most challenging to me. My staff and I would often finalize most of the text of my speeches only when we were at the negotiation session. I always felt that feeling the pulse of the place, the players, and the issues was important before finalizing the text. Inuit are few in number and we need to be as strategic and focused as possible - just as the hunter must be wise and focused when going out for a hunt - when we make our interventions. This is another level of hunting, after all, and our people expect their leaders to come home with something of substance. In fact, it was the case that Inuit - only 150,000 strong in the entire world - exerted influence beyond our numbers in the negotiations; our "hunt" was successful.
Nunavut Sivuniksavut Students perform at the
Northern Lights Against POPs book launch.
The importance of DDT to malaria control was the "hot" issue in Geneva and the timing of my presentation - the day after most of the NGOs and others had intervened - gave us the opportunity to reflect and respond in a way that would be appropriate and helpful to the bigger picture. I remember quite clearly a person from The Malaria Project suggesting, in his presentation, that if we continued with the goal of eliminating POPs, including DDT, that we would be bringing death to many thousands and perhaps millions of people. He used images of jumbo jets filled with people to show the numbers that would die each year if DDT were not available to help fight malaria. As I was listening to this presentation I started to question how 150,000 Inuit could compete with those stark figures of potential deaths. Our team, which included Shirley Adamson of the Yukon First Nations, had to develop a strategy to circumvent seeing this solely in terms of numbers; if numbers were going to be part of the equation then the Inuit and Aboriginal peoples of the circumpolar world would surely lose.
We told the negotiators that in the circumpolar world we know about disease and death; whole families and communities had been virtually annihilated by smallpox in the last century and some Indigenous peoples in Russia stand now on the brink of extinction. I stressed that the issue of POPs was about the survival of entire peoples, potentially a loss to the whole world. We chose the "high moral ground," empathizing with people who felt they needed DDT to preserve life and health. We told the delegation that we would not be party to any agreement that threatens others as it was not our way, and we continued to push the delegation not see the DDT issue as in either/or terms as we felt it would lead to inappropriate choices.
I stated in my speech that "I cannot believe that a mother in the Arctic should have to worry about contaminants in the life-giving milk she feeds her infant. Nor can I believe that a mother in the South has to use these very chemicals to protect their babies from disease. Surely we must commit ourselves to finding and using alternatives. While adopting elimination, not perpetual management, as an ultimate goal, the POPs convention must simultaneously ensure that cost-effective alternatives, particularly for DDT, are made available in the developing world." I also reminded delegates of what I said in Montreal on the first session: that a "poisoned Inuk child, a poisoned Arctic, and a poisoned planet are all one in the same," and that we were all in this together.
The fourth negotiating session was in Bonn, Germany, and in the months preceding we had planned with the head of the host German delegation to bring Aboriginal artists from Canada to perform at a reception that the German government would host. Performances by Aqsarniit ("The Northern Lights"), an Inuit drum dancing and throat singing group, and the Tagish Nation Dancers (composed of Tagish and Tlingits peoples) as well as the country food we offered to those at the reception helped sensitize the world to our culture. It was a proud time for us and certainly for me as my daughter, Sylvia, was one of the performers promoting our way of life.
However, alarm bells began to ring that week as we heard that some delegations were starting to believe that the Arctic was getting too much focus. Surprisingly, even a person who had intimate knowledge and perspectives of the Arctic, having worked for an Inuit organization, asked one of my staff "What are you guys up to on Thursday night at the reception anyway?" and suggested that we shouldnt "be too repetitive in [our] intervention." We listened to these alarm bells, and knowing that perceptions - or misperceptions - have potential to do a lot of damage, accepted that not everyone understood or sympathized fully with us. However, I also knew that because the priorities of others could easily dilute the reality of this issue to the Arctic, it would be up to us to keep our strategy on track; we had to maintain our focus to keep the Arctic face visible on the map.
As an individual my emotions may be triggered from time to time, however, I must work through those quickly as it is crucial for the larger scheme of things that I not operate from a position of fear. It is my responsibility as an elected leader to remain open and to lead with wisdom rather than fear; in light of what was happening we knew we had to bridge the gap between North and South. My intervention in Bonn reflected this and we called upon the collective wisdom of all countries to find ways and means to achieve a strong agreement. We recognized that POPs posed a significant human and environmental health threat both at the origin of their use and, through long-range transport, to Arctic indigenous peoples. We also recognized that people from the Arctic to Mexico and India as well as everyone in between are at risk and would either bear the burden of a weak agreement or reap the benefits of a good global convention.
We also pressed for financial commitments to implement an agreement, for without a financing mechanism the developing world and countries with economies in transition would not be able to move from a dependence on POPs to safer, more effective alternatives and cleaner processes. Although we in the Arctic were net recipients of these POPs, our message was always to work with the world. As partners, not victims, we once again asked the people of the world for their help, courage, and wisdom to build a convention that would provide safety to people in the countries still using these chemicals and to Arctic peoples who were receiving them.
By this time there was much media interest in this issue. The world generally knows more about the Arctics wildlife than its people. We believed it was crucial that the world appreciate that the Arctic is a real, majestic land with a resilient people who, to survive, are closely linked to the land upon which we hunt, fish, and gather. Between the fourth session in Bonn and the fifth in Johannesburg, South Africa, I hosted the UNEP communications team and BBC-World television crews who came to Iqaluit, where I presently live, to film how our world is being affected by POPs. They went seal hunting and got to experience our culture at its best. They ate country food and, importantly, got to see just what it is we are up against. The film that UNEP produced was shown at the fifth and final session in Johannesburg and the BBC piece aired on BBC-World television several times before Johannesburg. While all this was very helpful, we could never assume that everyone would "get it." UNEP started showing its video in the corridors once the sessions started and a UNEP employee commented disparagingly on one of the scenes showing a group of us eating our country food raw as we Inuit so often do. I incorporated that into my intervention the next day, reminding the delegation that we eat what we hunt; that we eat animals raw is the reality we have presented to you for the last two years. I added that I hoped our message - ensuring our health and cultural survival - was getting through.
The final negotiating session was held in South Africa, the great country that gave us the leading figure of our time, Nelson Mandela. Feeling certain his participation would help reinforce our cause, I had invited Paul Okalik, the first premier of the new Canadian territory of Nunavut, to join us as part of the coalition delegation in the final negotiations. Not only was Premier Okalik a great delegate, he and I had the honour and privilege of meeting Nelson Mandela on the seventh of December during the week of my forty-seventh birthday. What a birthday gift! Through his life, Premier Okalik had revered and learned from the experiences of Nelson Mandela; our meeting with him was memorable, to say the least, and he left us hopeful of meeting again.
By the fifth session we had become impressed with the commitment by nations around the globe to address POPs and, reflecting these sentiments, I stated that we were firmly convinced that the job could be completed by the end of the week. We also continued to press for the guarantee of significant funding and technical support to the developing world and economies in transition. We were encouraged by comments from the head of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), Mr Mohammad El-Ashry, about his commitment to making the GEF an accessible funding agency to deal with financing for implementation. I first met Mr El-Ashry at the Arctic Parliamentarians meeting in Finland, where, in my speech, I pressed him publicly to listen to what the developing world was perceiving about the GEFs inaccessibility and also invited him to attend the final POPs negotiation session in Johannesburg to show his commitment to the process. My forthright invitation to him was taken somewhat as an offence to the American Chair of the Arctic Council, who felt it was the right of the chair to extend such an invitation. We needed not only a strong convention but one that could be implemented and although I did not feel apologetic to the chair of the Arctic Council, I did have an amicable "chat" with him on the matter and all was smoothed over. Mohammed El-Ashry came to South Africa and we became friends, finding common ground in being "grandparents against POPs." As he announced, in his presentation, the birth of his second grandchild, he set the context of cleaning our world for the future generations.
Prior to the Johannesburg meetings, Finland had assumed the chair of the Arctic Council and made great efforts to bring all Arctic nations and the Councils Permanent Participants together by first hosting a luncheon and then presenting the political declaration signed that autumn by ministers representing all eight Arctic nations in Barrow, Alaska. The declaration highlighted the need for a comprehensive and verifiable global POPs convention, committing the Arctic states to "coordinate closely in international fora on environmental and sustainable development matters of importance to the Arctic." The declaration was, in our opinion, a real step toward an effective convention. I remember clearly another hopeful moment during that ministerial meeting in Barrow, when, after my presentation on the POPs issue, the American spokesperson, Frank Loy, Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs in the State Department, commended Klaus Tpfer for his work on POPs and wished Klaus well as he was truly doing "Gods work." Hearing that statement from Frank Loy and listening to a great speech from Fran Ulmer, the Lieutenant Governor of Alaska, I remember thinking, "by jove we just might have these tough Americans on our side." In my experience with the Americans at the political level, it is always difficult to get anything through with the American delegation unless they were the initiators. Knowing that the Americans can exert great influence on others, I became more hopeful now that an American in that position felt it was "Gods work" to try to rid the world of toxins.
Throughout the week in Johannesburg there were stressful times with the possibility that we were not going to get a convention. Tensions were high at all levels and for the first time I felt the strain on our chair, John Buccini, as some unexpected divisive partnership issues surfaced among what were thought to be certain allies. We knew from the recently concluded, less-than-successful negotiations on climate change in The Hague, that any global negotiations can be fraught with difficulties and that mistrust and misunderstandings are common. Attitudes and objectives within and between North and South are often very different. The pressure was on not to repeat the history of the climate change negotiations and after an all-nighter on the last day, the world had a convention, a convention that we at ICC and the coalition could live with.
Reaching the day of the signing in Stockholm, Sweden, had truly been a team effort. How proud I was as an Inuk to have participated with the world in this monumental effort to rid the world of POPs. My last speech in Stockholm reflected my appreciation to all the players involved throughout this process, including all members of CAIPAP: the Council of Yukon First Nations, the Dene Nation, the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada (now known as Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami), and, during the final three sessions, the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North.
The process also nurtured working links with many environmental organizations and, through the exceptional efforts of the members of IPEN, we made many friends, and developed relationships even with industry representatives. We learned to understand each others perspectives through much dialogue and I feel we together accomplished a great feat. Not only was I proud as an Inuk, I felt proud as a Canadian, watching as our Minister of Environment, David Anderson, signed and ratified the convention on the spot. I remember feeling at the time that the world was still compassionate and loving and humanity was still good. I felt that the human element all of the players brought to the negotiations had led to the success of the agreement. Each countrys team had approached the negotiations with optimism, working within their countries and among countries in a true spirit of compromise. I thanked them all from my heart and noted special thanks to Chair John Buccini, Klaus Tpfer the Executive Director of UNEP, and Jim Willis of UNEP with his committed staff.
I ended my speech by saying:
"As Indigenous peoples, we have always sought balance in our interactions with the environment. The Stockholm Convention must set the standard that we rise together to restore the balance. Thank you all for your openness and wisdom. Your combined efforts have brought us an important step closer to fulfilling the basic human right of every person, to live in a world free of toxic contamination. For Inuit and Indigenous peoples, this means not only a healthy and secure environment but also the survival of a people. For that I am grateful. Nakurmiik. Thank you."
As an ending to this chapter from the "heart," thanks are due to other players without whom I could not have accomplished my work as an elected leader of our people and as a spokesperson for the Coalition. As an elected Inuit leader I am acutely aware that the Inuit of the world are a minority within their own countries and that relations between Indigenous peoples and their governments can often become strained. Respect is a key criterion Inuit use when evaluating others, and both John Buccini and Klaus Tpfer certainly embodied this quality throughout the entire journey.
Throughout this process we worked with and fostered a relationship with our Canadian delegation comprising various players from Foreign Affairs, Health Canada, Industry Canada, DIAND, CIDA, and others. While it took some effort initially, and was very challenging at times, the delegation and northern Indigenous peoples developed a partnership that soon became a model for other countries. At the request of the coalition, the Government of Canada included on its delegation Carol Mills, a Dene woman well-versed in contaminant issues. History was being re-written, as government and Indigenous peoples singing from the same song sheet is a rarity. By speaking reasonably, wisely, and professionally and always from the "high moral ground," we were able to strengthen and support the position of the Canadian delegation and help bridge the sometimes wide gulf between developed and developing worlds. Although all of the Canadian delegation figured importantly in the negotiations, from where I stood, the support of David Stone of the Northern Contaminants Program of DIAND and Ken McCartney of Foreign Affairs certainly was instrumental to me both on and off the delegation.
On the domestic front we welcomed and appreciated the support of federal ministers responsible for Environment, Foreign Affairs, International Development, and Finance. We also benefited greatly from the support and commitment of Clifford Lincoln, Karen Kraft Sloan, Charles Caccia, Rick Lalibert, John Herron, and additional members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development. It is not often that MPs attend international negotiations to encourage their own national delegation, or for standing committees to scrutinize and oversee a delegation during the process, but this is exactly what happened during the global POPs negotiations.
Absolutely without a doubt I would not have been able to accomplish my work in the manner that I did without the incredibly loyal technical and political advice from Stephanie Meakin and Terry Fenge. They added an exceptional calibre of commitment and value to this work and, on behalf of the Arctic peoples of Canada, I thank them immensely for their part in the work. Terry Fenge, with no holds barred, did what he is good at and what I hired him for: to keep the Canadian government and other governments committed to reaching a convention that would work for the Arctic. Stephanie Meakin, either with child in womb or nursing her newborn, adding to the symbolism of our message, was with us through all the negotiations and worked with our Canadian delegation at home between sessions. A biologist, Stephanie worked continuously to give us the assurance that the unfolding convention policy reflected the Arctic focus we needed. Terry and Stephanie never let down their guard for a second and their loyalty to me has had more far-reaching benefits than one would, in simple terms, understand. Together we were re-writing history. The significant level of trust between me, an Inuit politician, and Stephanie and Terry, two non-Inuit advisors, that developed during the POPs negotiations was important, relatively unusual, and most welcome.
Finally, I should speak to the coalition of which I, perhaps because of the ICC observer status to the UN, became spokesperson. I attended and spoke at every session in all five countries - Canada, Kenya, Switzerland, Germany, and South Africa - and it was an honour and a pleasure to serve as a spokesperson for the coalition. The coalition worked quite well as a team throughout the negotiations, yet I felt relationships strain as the media started to really pick up on the issue and focus on me and my Inuit world. With ICCs history of involvement in these issues it seemed quite natural that Inuit/Arctic would become the focus of the attention. In fact I felt it to be good strategy to encourage this perspective since the science-based reality is that we Inuit, being avid consumers of marine mammals, are indeed the greatest net recipients of these POPs. Harnessing the attention, in my opinion, was playing good politics. Shirley Adamson and John Burdeck, of Yukon First Nations and Will Mayo, a member of the Tanana Tribe of the Interior of Alaska, were elected leaders who understood and respected the politics of this without feeling threatened or undermined by the Inuit exposure. Shirley and Will helped draft the texts of our speeches and their words are reflected in the session in Geneva and at the signing session in Stockholm. Shirley and I also spoke together at an IPEN forum in Geneva. John and I, along with Minister David Anderson, did a press conference together in Stockholm at the signing. I was grateful for the maturity, wisdom, and constructive input offered by Shirley, John, and Will and for their help during the process. I would be remiss in not acknowledging the participation of Cindy Dickson and Chief Bob Charlie of Yukon First Nations in many of the negotiating sessions and of John Crump and Clive Tesar of the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee for their assistance, especially in Johannesburg. As I have said on many occasions, the hunter must be strategic and focused. There is too much at stake to expend energies on anything other than the ultimate goal. In our world, opportunities to gain attention for the Arctic are few and it is important to keep the focus. In my role as spokesperson for all the Aboriginal people of Arctic Canada - and the circumpolar world - I strove at all times to be respectful and inclusive in my deliberations.
The gala night in Stockholm at the signing of the convention was a night filled with excitement, accomplishment, and affirmation as we were hosted by Sweden in a magnificent museum with the largest wooden boat that I have ever seen - right in the middle of the reception hall! That night I presented John Buccini and Klaus Tpfer with painted ostrich eggs. Stephanie Meakin and I first got the idea while in South Africa where we saw these beautifully painted ostrich eggs in many stores. I picked up three unpainted eggs and a young Inuk artist and mother painted Arctic scenes on them. The gesture symbolized a bridging of North and South and the eggs were well received. During the evening, UNEP presented me with an award for ICC, "in recognition of contributions to the "POPs Club" leading to the successful completion of the Stockholm convention on POPs."
I have a habit of picking up pennies as I walk. I call them my pennies from heaven or angels that keep me connected to source and reassure me that I am on the right path. As Stephanie Meakin and I were transferring planes at Heathrow Airport, on our way to Stockholm, we were racing down the hall to catch our flight and I was, as usual, picking up pennies. Stephanie, who was hurrying me along as I picked up these pennies, was somewhat puzzled until, once on the plane, I explained what they represented for me. So you can well imagine the amazed reaction from Stephanie at the gala in Stockholm when Klaus Tpfer presented me with what he called a "lucky penny," which he had given to John Buccini at the onset of these negotiations to ensure luck in his new role as chair. John returned the penny to Klaus that evening and in turn Klaus presented my "lucky global penny" to me - directly from my angels I say.
As challenging as this work has been, it has been uplifting and rewarding because we achieved a convention that will eventually make our Arctic environment and eating our country food safe once again and because the teachings and lessons of the journey were invaluable for me and for our people. Because we engaged in the politics of influence rather than the politics of protest, we were able to exert influence out of all proportion to our numbers.
Though small in numbers, we became equal partners in a world of millions and helped to re-awaken a conscience. Though small in numbers and up against vested interests seeking the status quo, we were neither intimidated nor afraid in our attempt to save our cultural way of life, for the power itself was in the attempt. I have been changed forever just by the energy of that attempt.
