Exhibits

Exhibits
Ancient Ice, Cool Science: Climate Change in the North

Inuit Elders Talk about Climate Change

Anne with two Inuit

Anne Henshaw, Director of the Coastal Studies Center at Bowdoin College is documenting Inuit perceptions of climate change in several Arctic communities within Nunavut. The interviews included here were collected as part of her research project,Baffin Island Photographic Identification and Oral History Project: A Temporal Study of Inuit Environmental Knowledge project , funded by the National Science Foundation. Henshaw uses the rich photographic archives housed in the Peary-MacMillan Arctic museum as a way to trigger Inuit memory about various environmental conditions that may have existed in the past. So far, 23 Inuit have been interviewed from the community of Kinngait (Cape Dorset) representing over thirty hours of video and audio tape recording. The video footage presented in this exhibit features excerpts from two of these interviews.

Click on one of the links below to hear what Inuit elders have to say about weather and climate in their environment.

Inuit sitting in the snow talking   Elderly Inuit sitting at a table
     

Qimiataq Nungusuituq describes how position of the sun has moved during his lifetime and how Arctic sea ice is changing.		   Lukta Qiatsuk describes how he learned to forecast the weather from his father and how the ocean tides have changed during his lifetime.

Note on translations: These are not direct translations but general interpretations of the ideas being conveyed by the speakers.