This article was originally published in the Wellesley Magazine. Deborah Cramer is the author of The Narrow Edge: A Tiny Bird, an Ancient Crab, and an Epic Journey. By Deborah Cramer Illustrations by Christiane Engel It is June, but it doesn’t feel like summer. Instead of kayaking through the salt marshes near my home in

By Sophie des Beauvais On August 2, 2007, the Russian expedition Arktika 2007 planted a Russian flag on the North Pole seabed, descending more than two miles under the ice cap in a pair of submersible vessels. Notably, one third of Russia lies within the Arctic Circle, a region full of natural energy that plays a

By Diane Burko I am an artist consumed by how ice is an indicator of climate change. Greenland’s Petermann Glacier, whose ice sheet empties into the Arctic Ocean, first attracted my attention in 2010 when a large piece of its floating tongue cracked off. The giant iceberg that separated from the sheet (the size of

By Edward Struzik As Arctic sea ice continues to retreat, the world is no longer looking solely at the oil and gas that may lie in the region. Increasingly, it’s the future of fisheries that is taking center stage in the geopolitical discussions that come with planning for the future Arctic. This was made evident

By Chantal Bilodeau A few weeks ago, I returned from a trip to Tromsø in the Norwegian Arctic, where I spent five days working on my new play Forward. I had been invited by Hålogaland Teater to participate in their ArtLab program, which provides 25 hours of rehearsals followed by a public presentation of the

By Rob Huebert The Arctic faces a transformation of epic proportions. Formerly a region of isolation from the rest of the world, it was home to only a small number of northern inhabitants such as the Inuit, who had adapted to a very specialized way of life to live there. For the rest of humanity,

By Heather Exner-Pirot The United States will assume the chairmanship of the Arctic Council this coming April for a two-year term. In the run-up to this transition, the Obama Administration has been making significant efforts to beef up its Arctic policies and objectives. It launched a new National Strategy for the Arctic Region in May

By Michael Byers How many Americans realize that one of their country’s most pristine maritime areas is threatened by the unregulated passage of more than 5,000 tankers and cargo ships each year? Since the Earth is a sphere, the shortest shipping route from the Northwest United States and Western Canada to China, Japan, and South

By Shauna Morgan It is often said that resource extraction is the “cornerstone“ of northern Canadian economies. The gritty pursuit of minerals, oil, and gas shaped a ‘frontier’ culture, and in the modern era is said to be the only way northerners—particularly indigenous people—can make a decent living, despite the environmental trade-offs. Indeed, perhaps more

By Sophie des Beauvais Last February, 26-year-old Loretta Saunders was found dead two weeks after she disappeared, while she herself was working on a thesis on missing and murdered Inuit women in Canada. She was the third Native woman killed that year, and five others were found later last autumn. Her death has sparked calls