Native Studies professors Christopher Trott and Peter Kulchyski teamed up with Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk and environmental researcher Ian Mauro to produce a feature length film on Inuit perceptions of climate change.

A part of the film will be played at the Copenhagen climate conference on December 10.

“This is really exciting because it’s rare as academics to get our message out to the broader public and this is a wonderful way to do just that,” Trott says. “It’s important to get the Inuit message out because their viewpoint is integral to the climate debate.”

Trott and Kulchinsky received a major Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) grant in April 2009 to conduct dozens of interviews with Inuit elders. Every elder said climate change is occurring.

“As a people they have seen climate change before and they said they adapted before. In fact, that was the strongest message: that they will adapt. They didn’t say how they would adapt but they say ‘this is what we do best’.”

Trott and Kulchinsky will go through the hours of raw footage and transcribe all the interviews to allow future researchers to use it.

Kunuk, director of Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, made the film to help present the research findings. The movie trailer can be seen on the Isuma TV website at: www.isuma.tv/hi/en/inuit-knowledge-and-climate-change/look-arctic-our-submission-un-cop-15

For more information contact Sean Moore, public affairs, University of Manitoba, 204-474-7963 (sean_moore@umanitoba.ca).