Sheila Watt-Cloutier (born 2 December 1953) is a Canadian Inuk activist. She has been a political representative for Inuit at the regional, national and international levels, most recently as International Chair for the Inuit Circumpolar Council (formerly the Inuit Circumpolar Conference). Watt-Cloutier has worked on a range of social and environmental issues affecting Inuit, most recently, persistent organic pollutants and global warming. She has received numerous awards and honours for her work, and has been featured in a number of documentaries and profiled by journalists from all media. Watt-Cloutier sits as an adviser to Canada's Ecofiscal Commission. She is also a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. Early life Sheila Watt-Cloutier was born in Kuujjuaq, Nunavik, Northern Quebec, Canada. Her mother was known as a skillful healer and interpreter throughout Nunavik, and her father was an officer for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. For the first ten years of her life, Sheila was raised traditionally, travelling on the land by dog sled, before she was sent away for school in Nova Scotia and Churchill, Manitoba in the Canadian Indian residential school system. She studied counselling and education at McGill University in Montreal. Her brother is Charlie Watt, who sat in the Senate of Canada for 34 years. Early career In the mid-1970s, she worked for the Ungava Hospital as an Inuktitut translator and strove to improve education and health conditions. From 1991 to 1995, she worked as a counsellor in the review process of the education system of Northern Quebec. This work led to the 1992 report on the educational system in Nunavik, Silaturnimut - The Pathway to Wisdom. Watt-Cloutier also contributed significantly to the youth awareness video Capturing Spirit: The Inuit Journey. Political career Watt-Cloutier has been a political representative for Inuit for over a decade. From 1995 to 1998, she was Corporate Secretary of Makivik Corporation, the Canadian Inuit land-claim organization established for Northern Quebec (Nunavik) under the 1975 James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement. In 1995, she was elected President of Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) Canada, and re-elected in 1998. ICC represents internationally the interests of Inuit in Russia, Alaska, Canada and Greenland. In this position, she served as the spokesperson for indigenous peoples in the Arctic during the negotiation of the Stockholm Convention banning the manufacture and use of persistent organic pollutants (POPs), including Polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs) or DDT. These substances pollute the