Michael Byers holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia.
“Canada needs an Inuk astronaut, and it could be you.”
A dozen teenagers stared incredulously at me from their front-row seats in the Luke Novoligak Community Hall in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, where I was speaking at a trade show.
“I know, it sounds crazy. But let me explain.”
The Arctic environment only exists because of outer space, since the extreme seasons that define the region are a consequence of Earth’s orbital mechanics – most notably the tilt of the planet as it orbits the sun. This leads to the absence of sunlight in winter and 24-hour sunlight in summer in the Earth’s polar regions.
The Inuit have always lived in harmony with the seasons. Kenojuak Ashevak’s artwork Nunavut (Our Land) celebrates the 1993 Nunavut Settlement Agreement, which eventually created a new majority-Inuit territory in Canada in 1999. The four-metre-wide lithograph chronicles the annual cycle of Inuit life in a circle revolving around the sun, the moon and the stars. Inuit traditions are inextricably linked to the cycles of the cosmos, including those of the aurora borealis, which appears when charged particles from the sun slam into Earth’s magnetic field and are redirected northward, interacting with the upper atmosphere to create a dynamic luminescence. The Inuit consider these “Northern Lights” to be the souls of their ancestors. Eastern Nunavut boasts some of the highest tides in the world, with thick blocks of sea ice jumbled along the shore. Powerful cosmic forces are also at work here, with tides resulting from the Earth’s interaction with the moon’s gravity.
For decades, space agencies have sent trainee astronauts to the Arctic, where they learn to drive rovers on surfaces akin to moonscapes. But in their recruitment efforts, agencies have consistently overlooked a people who, for millenniums, have learned how to survive and thrive in an extreme climate. The Inuit ingeniously built boats that didn’t require wood, made warm winter houses out of snow and travelled thousands of kilometres across the sea ice by dogsled.
Canada’s space program has always been centred on the Arctic. In 1962, Canada became the third country with a satellite in orbit. The Alouette 1 was designed to study a layer of the upper atmosphere called the ionosphere, to understand why Arctic radio communications could be disrupted by solar storms. It was named after the song that carried voyageurs along the colonial trade routes of Northern Canada. A decade later, the Anik A1 satellite was launched into geosynchronous orbit, 36,000 kilometres above the Earth’s surface, so that the CBC could broadcast to the entire country. Anik means “little brother” in Inuktitut.
Satellites in geosynchronous orbit still connect Arctic communities, facilitating education, health care and commerce. But now, they are also being supplemented by “mega-constellations” of satellites in Earth’s lower orbits, notably SpaceX’s Starlink, which offers low-latency internet access (wherein data are delivered with minimal time delay) from satellites just 550 km above the surface. Starlink terminals, each about the size of a pizza box, are now appearing outside homes and businesses across Nunavut. Inuit can now work for global tech companies or create startups of their own.
Meanwhile, hunters, prospectors and adventurers carry handheld beacons that can send distress signals to a global network of relay satellites. This takes the “search” out of search-and-rescue, saving lives and money. Other satellites take images of the Earth’s surface, supporting scientific research. Radar satellites, developed in Canada for the seasonally sunless Arctic, take images at night and through clouds, and can also measure the thickness and hardness of Arctic sea ice, facilitating safe navigation by ships and snowmobiles.
If all these connections between the Arctic and space were not enough reason to choose an Inuk astronaut, consider this: Space agencies have spent decades developing the ideal psychological profile for astronauts, conducting experiments that replicate the isolated character of spacecraft to ensure people can work well together. In her 1971 book, Never in Anger: Portrait of an Eskimo Family, anthropologist Jean Briggs explained the unique ability of Inuit to control anger, developed over millenniums of learning to live peacefully in confined spaces during the winter.
The next time the Canadian Space Agency is searching for exceptionally talented, motivated and measured people, it should look to the Arctic. The young people I met in Cambridge Bay are intent on becoming electricians, entrepreneurs and health care workers. One young man plans to become an underwater welder – a job I would wager is one of the closest things we have on Earth to an astronaut working on the outside of a spaceship.