Join us for a special lecture about the Arctic and the environment "Learning from the Northern Peoples" with Leslie King, Professor at Royal Roads University, British Columbia. Reception to follow.

Arctic explorers sometimes credited their survival and exploration successes to the knowledge they gained from Indigenous people during their explorations in dangerous times in harsh but fragile environments. Others who were less open to the wisdom of Arctic dwellers failed to learn from them and thus also failed to meet their objectives and indeed, sometimes perished. We are now experiencing another dangerous time of climate and associated rapid environmental and social change. Yet one hundred years later, researchers working in the North have often made the same mistakes by discounting Indigenous and local knowledge in their search for scientific truth-whether seeking the fate of the Franklin expedition or documenting disappearing sea ice and permafrost. In large part, however, our survival and future depend on the lessons we are learning from Northern people on the front lines of climate change and biodiversity loss about how to adapt and thrive in conditions of dramatic uncertainty and change. Climate researchers are modern explorers attempting to learn from the knowledge, ancient and contemporary, held by Northern people which may yet ensure our survival. This Stefansson Memorial Lecture will introduce some of the emerging findings from that research that may help those of us in lower latitudes to prepare for, respond to and survive dramatic changes in the social-ecological systems upon which we depend.

Leslie King is Professor of Environment and Sustainability at Royal Roads University in Victoria, Canada. After completing her PhD at the London School of Economics she designed and implemented Environmental programs at Universities in the US, Canada and Africa, including Founding Chair of Environment, UNBC, Founding Dean of Environment at U Manitoba, and VP Academic at Vancouver Island University. Her lifelong research interests have been environmental governance and Indigenous knowledge in the Arctic and Africa.