Addressing climate change will require people to acknowledge the interconnectedness of themselves and the world and take action, attendees at a University College of the North (UCN) climate change conference heard from the opening day’s keynote speaker.
Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq, a shaman, traditional healer and storyteller from Greenland, told participants of UCN’s Land, Air, Water, People, Climate Change Conference that the first signs of climate change showed up there in the early 1960s, when people noticed ice melting in January, but that little has been done to slow down global warming.
“That’s the beginning of the climate change that you and I talk about these days,” said Angakkorsuaq, who has travelled to 72 countries to address conference on climate change, the environment and Indigenous peoples. “For 50 years we talked about climate change. Nobody changed. Nobody. We are still talking.”
Conference attendees also heard that top-down plans to deal with climate change haven’t worked.
“Politicians have failed, many leaders have failed, religious leaders have failed,” he said. “The only ones we have left are you. You are the cause of climate change. You are the ones who need to change.”
But to do that, Angakkorsuaq said, people have to melt the ice in their hearts and realize that all humans are connected.
“Remember we are related to each other,” he said.
Angakkorsuaq’s message that change is everyone’s responsibility was echoed by Thompson Mayor Colleen Smook and conference emcee David Williamson.
“It is the people that are going to have to make the change and we’re going to have to realize that,” said the mayor. “The change affects us all and what we do in Thompson, it affects the north, it affects the south.”
“We’re all in this together.,” said Willamson. “We can’t escape.”
Katherine Morrisseau-Sinclair was the keynote speaker on the second day of the Feb. 12-13 conference, which also included presentations on noise pollution from UCN student Keyana Boyko-Ouellette, an elders panel on themes of the conference, and presentations about the Norway House Fisherman’s Co-op, Misipawistik Cree Nation Health Authority’s climate change action plan developed in 2019, and a University of Manitoba pilot project to help students in Wasagamack and Garden Hill First Nation design and build homes using local wood, wood stoves and traditional knowledge to help solve the First Nations housing crisis.
