Welcome to A Radical Act of Hope. In this series, Inuk climate advocate Siila Watt-Cloutier brings us into her world. A world where melting ice isn’t just a symptom of climate change—it’s a disruption of memory, identity, and rhythms of life in the North. She takes us from her home in the Arctic to the frontlines of international climate justice, alongside those who have been speaking up—and holding steady—for decades.
Siila Watt-Cloutier is one of the most important climate justice voices of our time. Her work with the Inuit Circumpolar Council helped get the Stockholm Convention signed, ratified and enforced in record time. It's one of the most successful UN treaties that has ever been made to protect the environment by banning the “dirty dozen”––the persistent organic pollutants that contaminate food and human bodies. She then went on to pioneer linking climate change and human rights in a way that has completely revamped how the world thinks about climate justice.
Don’t miss this important conversation with Siila and the Indigenous women leaders who have inspired her journey. This isn’t just a climate story—it’s a story about the connections between people and place, and all that sustains us.
A Radical Act of Hope was produced in collaboration with the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions with support from The Gordon Foundation and the University of Victoria.
We acknowledge with respect the Lək̓ʷəŋən-speaking peoples on whose traditional territory this podcast was produced and the Songhees, Esquimalt and W̱SÁNEĆ Peoples whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day.