Spearheaded by Georgetown photographer Will Richard, a symposium examining social and political issues in the Arctic presents panel discussions and a film at Bates College from Sept. 29 through Oct. 1.

The discussions on Sept. 29 and 30 revolve around politics and the role of women in Nunavut, a new Canadian territority with a largely Inuit population. Symposium speakers include Meeka Kilabuk and Aaju Peter, known for their civic activism in the territory. The symposium, which begins Sept. 26 with the opening of a photography exhibit by Richard at the Chewonki Foundation, Wiscasset, ends Oct. 1 with the 2001 film The Fast Runner (Atanarjuat), based on an Inuit legend.

All symposium events are open to the public free of charge. Please call 207-786-6295 for more information.

Why a symposium on life in the Arctic? "We can learn from these people that there are other ways of living and there are other values, other expressions of what constitutes riches," says Richard, an artist, guide, educator and artist increasingly well-known for his photographs of the polar and near-polar regions.

Meeka Kilabuk

At Bates, the symposium "Political and Social Issues Facing the Newest Territory in Canada -- Nunavut" takes place at 7 p.m. Monday, Sept. 29, in the Muskie Archives, Campus Avenue. Panelists are Kilabuk, Peter, Richard and Chewonki President Don Hudson.

At 4 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 30, the second panel takes place in Chase Hall Lounge, Campus Avenue. Addressing the topic "Women of Nunavut: Changes in the Role of Women in Politics, Education, Workplace" will be Kilabuk, Peter, Professor Kati Dana of the Center for Northern Studies and Lindsay Dorney, adjunct professor of women's studies, English and nature writing at the University of Southern Maine.

Finally, The Fast Runner will be shown at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 1, in the Olin Arts Center, Room 104, Russell Avenue. Filmed in northern Canada, the film tells the story of a hunter fighting for the affections of a woman who has been promised to another. "As passionate and primal as any film noir," wrote an Amazon.com reviewer, the film "is framed by the daily lives of the Inuit -- a struggle for survival that is both simple and vivid, foreign yet immediately understandable."

Aaju Peter was born in northern Greenland, educated in Denmark and now lives in Nunavut. She owns a company that employs native women to make clothing from skins in the traditional Inuit way, attends Akitsiraq Law School and is collecting traditional legal practices for the Nunavut Department of Justice.

Meeka Kilabuk is originally from Nunavut's Baffin Island, in the Arctic Ocean. For nearly 20 years, she has been associated with the Inuit Land Claims Agreement and the creation of the Canadian Inuit territory, experience that has made her a speaker in demand. She has traveled widely in Asia, North America and Europe.

Reaching from the southern tip of Hudson Bay to the North Pole, Nunavut was created as a semiautonomous territory in 1999. It covers some 2 million square kilometers of beautiful, varied and barren landscape, and is inhabited by 29,000 people, 85 percent of them Inuit.

 A frequent traveler to the region, Richard is passionate about the lessons the Inuit and other Arctic peoples can offer our industrialized consumerist society. "We in the United States are rather myopic in terms of our appreciation for other cultures," he says. "We can learn a lot from these people who can live on a landscape where there's no way we'd be able to."

For example, an understanding of the Nunavut economy invites a new perspective on environmental issues. Richard explains that Nunavut has become integrated into the modern North American economy -- the Inuits use snowmobiles, rifles and food produced in the south.

Yet U.S. environmental law keeps Nunavut from realizing its full potential in that economy. Sealskins and sealskin products, explains Richard, are Nunavut's most important export, yet the territory cannot sell them in the United States -- the major importer of all other Canadian furs -- because of the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

"It's fairly natural for most Americans to think that killing seals is horrible -- many of us were raised on images of clubbing seals," explains Rachel Narehood Austin, associate professor of chemistry at Bates and a faculty member in the Program in Environmental Studies, a symposium sponsor. But, she says, we also have to understand that our view of what's right for a natural resource may not look right through other eyes.

"We really want our environmental-studies students to wrap their minds around the complexity of human-environmental interactions," she says. "The ES program is always looking for ways to challenge students and challenge members of the community to think about why we hold the views we have."

The Arctic Symposium begins Friday, Sept. 26, with the opening of The Far Northeast: Window on a Landscape, an exhibition of Richard's images of northern Canada and the Arctic, at the Chewonki Foundation, Wiscasset. A reception at 5 p.m. is followed by a 7 p.m. slide lecture featuring Nunavut Inuit leaders Meeka Kilabuk and Aaju Peter. Please call the foundation at 207-882-7323 for more information about the exhibit and reception.

In addition to the Program in Environmental Studies, the symposium is sponsored by the Chewonki Foundation, the Falmouth-based Davis Family Foundation, the Bates Multicultural Center, the English and anthropology departments, and the offices of the president and the dean of faculty.