Challenging the Imagined North in Sheila Watt-Cloutier’s The Right to Be Cold

Abstract

The aim of the chapter is to discuss Sheila Watt-Cloutier's memoir The Right to Be Cold vis-a-vis Daniel Chartier's essay What is the Imagined North? Ethical Principles. The close reading of the activist's autobiography gives the impression of addressing directly the concerns expressed by the scholar, both texts demystifying the preconceived ideas about the North, too often reduced to a vast icebound landscape. Drawing on her lived experience of the native inhabitant of the circumpolar region, Watt-Cloutier challenges the misconceptions of “an uninhabited and uninhabitable Arctic” as well as defies “the silencing of cultural and human aspects of cold territories” (Chartier 78, 79). Not only does she give a human face to climate emergency, for which she has been universally credited, but importantly for this chapter, she gives a human face to the Canadian north. The discussion focuses on such aspects as indigenous colonialism and its aftermath, traditional knowledge and culture, as well as climate emergency that has changed the face of the Arctic region.