Photo: Sheila Watt-Cloutier speaks at health panel discussion in Montreal

Environmental activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier speaks April 22 at a panel discussion organized by the Canadian Society of Circumpolar Health during the International Polar Year Conference in Montreal. Her message: there’s a connection between stresses on the Arctic environment and social and health problems in the North. Often these problems are seen as “an inability to adapt to the modern world,” Watt-Cloutier said. But these are linked to historic trauma and change, which have “unpredictably challenged” Inuit and do not reflect “our natural state of affairs,” she said. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)