Sheila watt-cloutier biography

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Before her are Gabriela Svobodová, The Honky Tonk Man, Željko Reiner, David Gulpilil, Jasem Yaqoub, and Dennis Miller. In 2017 she received her 20thHonorary Doctorate from the Law Society of Upper Canada in Toronto, Ontario.

She has served as a mentor for two Trudeau Foundation Scholars pursuing their Ph.D.’s.

In 2005, she was honored with the United Nations Champion of the Earth Award and the Sophie prize in Norway. Later in the year, she was presented with the inaugural Northern Medal by the outgoing Governor General of Canada, Adrienne Clarkson.

In early 2006, Global Green, USA, the American Branch of Mikhail Gorbachev’s Green Cross International, selected Sheila for its International Environmental Leadership Award, and in June she received both the Citation of Lifetime Achievement from the Canadian Environment Awards and the Earth Day Canada International Environment Award.

She lived with her cousin her first year in Ottawa, but they were separated in her second year. 

She felt isolated and dejected when a government councillor would discourage her from pursuing a medical degree. After her are Tatiana Maslany (1985), June Havoc (1912), XQc (1995), Patrick Gallagher (1968), Adam Beach (1972), and Debbi Wilkes (1946).

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Sheila Watt-Cloutier

Sheila (Siila) Watt-Cloutier resided in Iqaluit, Nunavut for 15 years and now has returned back in her hometown of Kuujjuaq, Quebec.

Later that month at the U.N. Human Development Awards in New York, Secretary General Ban Ki Moon presented Sheila with the 2007 Mahbub ul Haq Human Development Award. The Stockholm Convention on POPs was adopted in 2001 and entered into force on 17 May 2004. After her are Pauli Murray, Susana Trimarco, Yoani Sánchez, Judith Heumann, Grace Abbott, and Zakia Zaki.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1953, Sheila Watt-Cloutier ranks 630.

Sheila Watt-Cloutier

From 1995 to 1998, Watt-Cloutier was elected and served as Corporate Secretary of the Makivik Corporation, the Inuit land claims organisation established under the 1975 James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement.

sheila watt-cloutier biography

She is the past Chair of Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC), the organization that represents internationally the more than 155,000 Inuit of Canada, Greenland, Alaska, and Chukotka in the Far East of the Federation of Russia.

Dealing with youth issues holistically is important for Ms. Watt-Cloutier. Defending the rights of Inuit has been at the forefront of Ms.

Watt-Cloutier’s mandate since her election as President of ICC Canada in 1995 and re‑election in 1998. She spent her childhood observing one of the most drastic cultural and social shifts her community has ever experienced. She was born in Kuujjuaq, Nunavik (northern Quebec), and was raised traditionally in her early years before attending school in southern Canada and in Churchill, Manitoba.

Her book was shortlisted for the British Columbia Canadian Non-Fiction Award, The Cohen Shaughnessy for Political writing, the Cobo Emerging Writer Prize and the CBC Canada Reads competition.

In November 2015, she was one of four Laureates awarded the ‘Right Livelihood Award’ considered the Alternate Nobel Peace Prize which was presented in the Parliament of Sweden.

In 2017 she received the Climate Change Award from the Prince Albert of Monaco Foundation.

Ms.

While the case was dropped by the court, she had built the foundation to argue the link between global warming and human rights. 

Watt-Cloutier was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for bringing awareness to the impacts of climate change on the Inuit people. 

She would continue to work as a negotiator and political advisor bringing attention to the threat of global warming by building awareness and understanding of the topic.  

In 2015, Watt-Cloutier published her book, The Right to be Cold: One Woman’s Story of Protecting Her Culture, the Arctic and the Whole Planet.

She received four additional honorary degrees in 2009 from the Universities of Western Ontario, the University of Alberta, Queens University and Bowdoin College in Maine, USA. In 2010 she received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Victoria as well as being named one of 25 Transformational Canadians by the Globe and Mail and CTV.

In 2011 she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Northern British Columbia and was chosen as one of four ‘Canadians who made a difference’ by Canada Post and her life’s work was memorialized in a Canadian Stamp in 2012 commemorating the Jubilee Year. Read more on Wikipedia

Her biography is available in 16 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 15 in 2024).

She would not win that year but learned from the experience and won in 1995 on a platform of addressing youth social and educational concerns. 

Also, in 1995, she was elected as the Canadian president for the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC). The ICC is a multinational non-governmental organization representing the Indigenous peoples of the Arctic.