Reading 3 -  Inuits and Climate Change

Unusual incidents are being reported across the Arctic. Inuit families going off on snowmobiles to prepare their summer hunting camps have found themselves cut off from home by a sea of mud, following early thaws. There are reports of igloos losing their insulating properties, of lakes draining into the sea as permafrost melts, and sea ice breaking up earlier than usual, carrying seals beyond the reach hunters. Climate change may still be a rather abstract idea to most of us, but in the Arctic it is already having dramatic effects. Scientists are increasingly keen to find out what’s going on because they consider that Arctic the ‘canary in the mine’ for global warming – a warning of what’s in store for the rest of the world.

For the Inuit the problem is urgent. Climate change, whatever its cause, is a direct threat to their way of life. Nobody knows the Arctic as well as the locals, which is why they are not content simply to stand back and let outside experts tell them what’s happening. In Canada, where the Inuit people are jealously guarding their hard-won autonomy in the country’s newest territory, Nunavut, they believe their best hope of survival in this changing environment lies in combining their ancestral knowledge with the best of modern science.

The Canadian Arctic is a vast, treeless polar desert that’s covered with snow for most of the year. Farming is out of the question and nature offers meager pickings. Humans first settled in the Arctic a mere 4,500 years ago, surviving by exploiting sea mammals and fish. The environment tested them to the limits: sometimes the colonists were successful, sometimes they failed and vanished. But around a thousand years ago, one group emerged that was uniquely well adapted to cope with the Arctic environment. These Thule people moved in from Alaska, bringing kayaks, sleds, dogs, pottery and iron tools. They are the ancestors of today’s Inuit people.

Life for the descendants of the Thule people is still harsh. Over the past 40 years, most have abandoned their nomadic ways and settled in the territory’s 28 isolated communities, but they still rely heavily on nature to provide food and clothing. Provisions available in local shops have to be flown into Nunavut on one of the most costly air networks in the world, or brought by supply ship during the few ice-free weeks of summer. It would cost a family around £7,000 a year to replace meat they obtained themselves through hunting with imported meat. Economic opportunities are scarce, and for many people state benefits are their only income.

While the Inuit may not actually starve if hunting and trapping are curtailed by climate change, there has certainly been an impact on people’s health. Obesity, heart disease and diabetes are beginning to appear in a people for whom these have never before been problems.

Questions

1.       What causes the Inuit to face things they had not experienced ever before?
2.       Why do scientists consider the Arctic as the ‘canary in the mine’ for global warming?
3.       Why wouldn’t the Inuit just accept expert advice, but depend more on their knowledge?
4.       Give an evidence to prove that the Inuit do not totally discard the advice given by the scientists?
5.       Why should the people living in the Arctic mostly depend on food got from the ocean?
6.       4500 years is a long period. If so, why does the writer use the phrase ‘a mere 4500 years ago’?
7.        What is the difference between Thule people and the people who came to settle in the Arctic before them?
8.       Where did the Thule originally come from?
How has the change in their nomadic ways affected the people in Nunavut?