New podcast features life and legacy of Siila Watt-Cloutier

A new podcast series is exploring the connection between climate change, climate justice, people and memory.

Inuk climate and human rights advocate Siila Watt-Cloutier co-hosts the new podcast, titled A Radical Act of Hope, which looks at her life, work and wisdom as “one of the world’s foremost defenders of the Arctic.”

“For thousands of years, Inuit have lived sustainably in our environment. We have been stewards of the land,” Watt-Cloutier states in one episode of the limited series.

“All this wisdom too is threatened by the changing climate. That is to say, if we allow the Arctic to melt, we lose more than the planet that has nurtured us for all of human history. We lose the wisdom required for us to sustain it.”

In an interview with Cabin Radio, Watt-Cloutier said that the motivation behind the podcast series is to connect with a larger audience and get more people thinking about climate change from a unique angle.

“Podcasts are now very effective in reaching the world, much more than a book can, much more than one interview on the radio or a newspaper article,” said Watt-Cloutier.

“It’s about trying to reach the entire world on these issues, which we need to have that dialogue and discussion about how we can lead differently from the raging that is going on in the world today.”

Conscious leadership

Watt-Cloutier served as president of the Inuit Circumpolar Council from 2004-2006, and played a key role in negotiating the 2001 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, a United Nations treaty that aims to protect human health and the environment from harmful chemicals. She also initiated the world’s first legal action on climate change through a petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights alleging that fossil fuel emissions from the US violated Inuit human rights.

Watt-Cloutier has received many honours for work, including a Nobel Peace Prize nomination in 2007 for her work linking climate change to human rights.

She said the podcast builds on that work.

“The whole podcast, the point was to highlight the effective way in which many people have felt that I have led at the international level,” said Watt-Cloutier.

Watt-Cloutier calls her approach to climate advocacy “conscious leadership.”

The new podcast series was created in collaboration with the Pacific Institute for Climate Change Solutions, or PICS, a research and climate advocate institute based in British Columbia.

The podcast is co-hosted by PICS executive director Dr Ian Mauro, and Janna Wale, Indigenous research and partnerships lead at the institute.

The series also features the voices of other Indigenous women leaders: Leena Evic, founder of the Piruvik Centre, an Inuktut higher learning institute in Iqaluit; Nicole Redvers, an Indigenous global health researcher and associate professor at Western University; and Aleqa Hammond, the former premier of Greenland.

“I really wanted to share this microphone to the four women [who] were already functioning from those conscious leadership spaces, and not just have my voice be there,” said Watt-Cloutier, referring to Wale, Elvic, Redvers and Hammond.

A hopeful approach

Wale told Cabin Radio that the podcast takes a different approach to framing climate change.

“Taking this approach of hope, rather than the defeatist attitude that you sometimes see perpetuated in media about how bad things are getting,” Wale explained. “As a younger person, I think it’s something that’s so special.

“It’s about bringing that spirit of resilience back into the way that we work and think about how to address these problems, and really thinking about the legacy and what we want to leave behind, and what we want to teach the next generation about their own agency in terms of being able to make those changes.”

There are four episodes in the series. They introduce listeners to Watt-Cloutier and her work as a climate leader, explore the Arctic as the Earth’s cooling system, the connections between climate change and human rights, and the meaning behind conscious climate leadership.

‘It starts with you’

The podcast series calls for individual action on climate change and asks listeners to reflect on their personal relationships with the planet and other people.

“Climate change is a problem that needs everybody,” said Wale. “For so long, I didn’t see myself in it. It kind-of felt like something that was decided at UN tables and the government was dealing with it.

“But I think in the last couple of years, I’ve realized that it really does take everybody. It’s a big, complex problem and, you know, the more people that we have working on it and the more people that are working collaboratively and together, I think that is the best way forward.”

In the series, Watt-Cloutier highlights how building the connections needed to move forward on climate action begins at the personal level.

“It’s your own personal transformation, that will then be able to allow you to change how you do things in your family, in the south or wherever you are, with your family, with your work and the role you play in the world,” she says in on episode.

“It starts with you.”