Baffin Island Expedition Supplement for Grades 3-12
From February through May 2007, explorers Will Steger and John Stetson, and educators Elizabeth Andre and Abby Fenton joined three Inuit hunters on a 1,200-mile, four-month-long dogsled expedition across the Canadian Arctic’s Baffin Island. The expedition traveled with Inuit dog teams over traditional hunting paths, up frozen rivers, through steep-sided fjords, over glaciers and ice caps, and across the sea ice and visited some of the most remote Inuit villages of the world.
The expedition dispatches in this Baffin Island 2007 supplement were written by Abby Fenton, Elizabeth Andre, and Nancy Moundalexis and were selected to complement the Global Warming 101 lesson plans.
On February 24th, 2007, the expedition team left from Iqaluit, Baffin Island, the capital of Nunavut, for the journey. Following the frozen McKeand River over the Hall Peninsula, the expedition team crossed the Cumberland Sound to the community of Pangnirtung. The expedition spent one week in each of the five communities along the way and documented the native people’s observations of the rapidly changing climate. The emphasis was on interviewing the elders — hearing their stories of the past and their concerns for the future. These elders, many of whom are in their eighties, remember the days before the influence of western culture on their society, and they provide an important historical perspective to our changing times and climate. It is important to document the stories of their era before it vanishes.
