Happiness, Nobel Prize and ‘paralyzing’ politics: Siila Watt-Cloutier takes Proust Questionnaire

Siila Watt-Cloutier could have been the first-ever Inuk Nobel Prize winner.

She was nominated by two Norwegian parliamentarians for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, along with the former U.S. vice-president Al Gore and the United Nation’s climate change panel.

Watt-Cloutier is an author and Indigenous climate change activist with more than a dozen honorary degrees from different universities and a recipient of national and international prizes for her work.

Among other things, Watt-Cloutier was the international chairperson for the Inuit Circumpolar Council, corporate secretary for Makivvik Corp. and a public speaker.

She says her goal was to “humanize” the climate northern climates. Literally.

“When it came to the Arctic, what you saw were polar bears and ice, you never saw the human faces,” she said.

“You can’t just focus on the wildlife and not the people.”

However, Watt-Cloutier didn’t get the chance to make history as Nobel laureate. Gore and the UN did.

“Everybody was disappointed and angry for me,” she said, adding she felt the nomination alone was a still a victory.

“All eyes were on the Arctic, and to me that’s a win.”

Watt-Cloutier recently talked to Nunatsiaq News from her home in Montreal to answer the Proust Questionnaire.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

I don’t know if there’s perfect happiness, because I think life is meant to be somewhat of a struggle. It’s within those struggles that you find yourself if you stick with it and not give up.

What is your greatest fear?

Overcoming the internal politics and sticking to my values and principles of what I felt was the right thing to do.

But that wasn’t always the case with fellow leaders. That’s why I left elected politics, really. Politics are paralyzing. So I would say that the biggest challenge and accomplishment that I have felt I have made was to stick to principles.

On what occasions do you lie?

If this goes public, it might be detrimental to my international travels, but sometimes going through customs. I feel like as Indigenous people, when we’re passing through other countries, if we had the right papers we probably would get away better with bringing in like our ivory earrings or our sealskin products.

But I try to live a truthful life.

What do you most dislike about your appearance?

If you read my book, there was a time in my life as I was growing up about looking so white but yet feeling so Inuk.

People would say, “Oh, well, you don’t look Inuk.” But I was raised very traditionally. I travelled only by dog teams, didn’t know any English until I was 10 and then went to residential school.

There’s always a reason for why we look the way we look.

But in the end, it kind of helped some of the negotiations [with governments and international organizations]. I wasn’t so different from them, and the barrier was a little bit easier to cut through in that sense.

What is your greatest regret?

I think in the last several years it’s that I have left that connection I had with Iqaluit.

Connection is extremely, extremely important, and when you’ve lost that connection you start to lose your sense of direction, your sense of grounding, your sense of peace.

I know that it has led to the challenges that I’ve had here with health and emotions.

Nunatsiaq News is borrowing the old Proust Questionnaire parlour game to get to know people who are in the news. If you know someone in your community who our readers should get to know by taking this questionnaire, let us know by email: editors@nunatsiaq.com.