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Channel / Source:
TEDx Talks
Published: 2017-08-25
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNImUp836rg
so I would like to ask you though like to ask all of you today what comes to mind when you think of the arctic what do you think about what image comes up when I talk about the polls because every since I was young I heard about this incredible area I would imagine polar bears traversing because the ice that's or ambitious explorers looking for new routes
or harsh frozen landscapes that prompted adventure this was the polls to me in fact if you were to Google the arctic this is what you would see and it echoes a lot of the perceptions that many of us have regarding the polls because it's a place that's very distant from where we are a place we don't know much about now as I grew up this dialogue
regarding the polls begin he heard lots about how beautiful it was and more about what issues were surrounding it one issue in particular climate change and this dominated the public's perception on the arctic and it was all I heard about for a long time and for that reason I'm here to talk to you about a subject that's not as well known now in the summer twenty
sixteen I received the chance of a lifetime to go to the eastern Canadian and Greenlandic arctic with an organization called students are nice and this organization hope to bring young people to the polls so that they could become advocates for their protection needless to say it worked on me I went with a hundred twenty young people from all around the world where there was close by
in Surrey or as far away as India Malaysia and along with me were eighty educators from any discipline you could think of where there was art history science it was all there and these perspectives taught me so much about the polls because he gave me a very diverse view on events and issues that were surrounding it and I brought the stories here me today now I'm
a very precise day I was lucky enough to meet a few other people in Ottawa we got to meet Mr Justin Trudeau and I thought to myself this is going to be amazing experience is going to change my view but at the same time I didn't know exactly how I remember in our very first day on board I would look outside the window and I would
be so completely fascinated by this view because this is what there was to me ice floes drifting past the clouds the dance before us I remember on our very first day I was eating breakfast when some their expedition leader came on and he said good morning everyone I am not sure if you'd be interested but there's something outside right in front of us that may capture
your view and there they were for polar bears a mother bear and her two cubs a large male and nice sprinted to the very front of the ship because this is what I wanted to see this is what the article was to me and I was completely swimming in joy because the polar bear is the poster child for the polls or even the entire environmental movement
but at the same time the arctic is so much more than that it embodies a culture embodies the people it is a symbol of resilience it is a diverse ecosystem and this is something about how little I knew about the arctic at the time and yet this expedition I was about to learn a lot more on our second day we arrived in this place Paul to
Hebron it is a small village on the northern coast of Labrador establishment Moravian missionaries in the eighteen thirties and I was so confused about why we were here this wasn't the arctic to me what we saw was the really high up north this was in Labrador was it missiles be really cold where the glaciers but when I arrived on shore this is what I saw and
this and this it turns out in the nineteen fifties there were approximately sixty Inuit families living in this area but one day somebody came on to their shores it was the government and they said you were leaving there was no consultation this was a time of cultural assimilation this is a time when indigenous peoples weren't valued and they took them away from their home but their
children into residential schools really kicked them far away from the place they were used to in these residential schools these young children for physically mentally emotionally sexually abuse the place where that anymore live is the basis for their entire way of life when you take them away from that you destroy it today this is all that is left of Hebron small scattered remains of a once
vibrant village now this is a friend of mine her name is Caitlyn and she was a staff member aboard the expedition and when she was there I learned a really special story associated with their it turns out that although she lives in Ontario a family is from Hebron in fact in this picture she's actually her great grandmother's house and we when she recounted her family's history
she couldn't help being so emotional about it because she was looking at a life that could have been hers she looked at a community that could have been hers this house could offend her home but that possibility was taken away from her it was stolen from her now as he recounted back towards the history of the units there was another story that came out by from
the mining Justin now when Justin was a teen he wanted nothing more than to have braces he thought braces made you super cool and he wants them because everybody around him had braces and he would get them to so you went up to his mom and he bagged her braces and she said no and he would beg again she would say no and that happened over
and over again until he gave up but he never knew why he can get his braces like everyone else and it wasn't until a few years later that she finally decided to give an explanation it turns out Justin's mother was a victim of the residential school system and when she was there dentistry services needed to be given out to their students but just because they were
necessary doesn't mean that they were regulated so one day one by one the students would line up onto a school bus ahead on off to the dentist and he was paid for every two fewer moved regardless of the procedure was necessary or not so one by one these kids a walk up and they would have a tooth removed tour three of you are lucky and no
anesthetic was given Justin's mother was so traumatized that this experience she wanted nothing more than to make sure Justin didn't have to go through it either she pulled him away from the dentist you want to make sure she would never have to relive that I hope you understand just how horribly these people were treated I hadn't thought about this at all when I was headed to
be arctic and as he recounted our time in Hebron I looked back and I realize that many people around me reaping distraught and I didn't really know why at the time until I realize that many of these people were in units because something like this doesn't stop with one generation it goes on and on and on that pain moves on and those that survived the residential
school system looked for different ways to cope the return to all the whole substance abuse violence in those habits move on to their children and their children and on and on and on so these people were looking at this issue and they're realizing that it was a symbol for so many of the issues that they're living with today today then you would suicide rates are ten
times the national average today they're still not being consulted whether it being spoken to but they're not having having any power in this position today their way of life and their culture is being compromised by our actions we need to look at this we need to look at those mistakes we've made we need to reconcile them and we didn't think of ways to stop this affect
because this is an oak I headed to the north expecting to see a wildlife to CD's astounding sites to be bombarded with all these beautiful things see evidence of climate change and become an advocate against it and those are all true but beyond those preconceptions was a complex web of lies and so so much there that I never even thought of and this is something that
I today want to do something about to do is stand before you because I think this issue needs to be addressed today I stand before you because I want to share the story with an audience especially as open minded and curious as you all are I stand here today because I keep opportunity to learn about them so I could do something up and I'm giving you
