Inuit Sentinels: Examining the Efficacy of (Life) Writing Climate Change in Sheila Watt-Cloutier’s The Right to Be Cold

Abstract

The impact of climate change on Inuit communities in the Canadian Arctic has been widely documented in a myriad of scientific publications. However, the cultural and identity shifts attached to these changes have often been overlooked in mainstream portrayals that center on ice melt and animal species extinction to the detriment of the human factor. As many scholars have stated (Patrizia Isabella Duda, 2017 and Andrew Stuhl, 2016), the risks embedded in Arctic climate change must be considered as directly related to a demise of culture, education, and the social conditions of Inuit communities. This paper examines Inuit experience as a human-centered approach to climate change in Sheila Watt-Cloutier’s The Right to Be Cold (2015). The text explores how Inuit ways of being are inseparable from the Arctic environment, demonstrating the vulnerability, adaptability and ingenuity of Inuit communities in the face of environmental crisis. Informed by Inuit epistemology and impregnated with feeling, I will argue how the autobiographical subject positions interlaced with affectivity in The Right exemplify Inuit life writing as essential contributions to climate change discourse.