A team of seven people completed a 1,200-mile expedition across the Canadian Baffin Island by dogsled in spring 2007 – and one of them was a graduate of Iowa State.

The crew traveled across glaciers, fjords and rivers to visit four of the most remote Inuit villages on the planet with the objective of studying the cultural aspects of global warming.

People, not profit

Western civilization has evolved into a system that rewards and promotes individual success. Cultures with deep communal bonds and values seem to be a thing of the past.

But such places do exist.

The Inuit people of Canada’s Baffin Island own a historically rich culture. Only recently – not more than 60 years ago – the Canadian government required the Inuit people settle into permanent villages, forcing them to abandon the nomadic existence they had perfected over thousands of years.

Still relatively isolated from most of the world, their daily activities haven’t changed drastically. Their primary resources continue to be their surroundings: wild animals and ice.

Groceries for the Inuit people, shipped from other parts of the world, are impractical because of the cost – milk is currently around $14 per gallon, a single pineapple around $18 – and unhealthy because of the lengthy shipping process and amounts of preservatives.

Inhabitants of Inuit villages have learned how to provide for one another and created an infrastructure of teamwork and ingenuity.

The small world of dogsledding

Elizabeth Andre, an Ames native and 1998 alumna of Iowa State, learned to dogsled through a course at Outward Bound, a nonprofit outdoor education organization in Minnesota.

Through acquaintances, she heard that Will Steger, legendary dogsled explorer from Minnesota, was planning another expedition spanning the Baffin Islands to study the cultural effects of global warming. At one of Steger’s book signings, she handed him a resume.

“Can I come on your next expedition?” she asked excitedly, to the surprise of Steger and other fans.

After a few meetings between the two, Steger accepted, and the planning began.

Beyond the trees

Flying over the Baffin Islands to Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut, in early February, Andre saw a land completely new and different to her.

Sheets of ice and snow-capped rocks made up the majority of the landscape, with dark clouds and blue, open water in the distance.

“It really looked almost lunar,” she said.

Iqaluit’s makeup was no less foreign. No roads led out of the village or connected the inexpensive, prefabricated buildings.

Homes and commercial buildings stand up on stilts to avoid melting the permafrost and jeopardizing the building’s foundation.

Every building is painted in beautiful reds, greens and blues to contrast the colorless backdrop of snow. The two exceptions are schools and government facilities, which receive generous federal grants for aesthetic and technological purposes.

Learning from the hunters

For the next three-and-a-half months, Andre, Steger, two other explorers and three Inuit hunters traversed the Baffin Islands with the help of 44 of the Inuit’s dogs.

The team witnessed all the signs of climate change, including receding glacier lines, thinning ice and hungry polar bears, which, Andre added, share the top of the food chain with humans.

Andre said the biggest lesson she learned was the importance of open communication.

On the first two legs of the trip, a lack of communication concerning schedules created tension between the Inuit members and the rest of the group. Each group thought they were perpetually behind the other.

A simple meeting was enough to reveal and solve the perceived problems, allowing more efficient and enjoyable teamwork.

Between the villages, the crew ran into numerous obstacles. In every case, Andre said, the Inuit members handled it calmly and efficiently.

At one point, a sled runner split right down the middle, a setback that devastated the southerners. The Inuits fixed it using a tea kettle and caribou skins.

“Anything that would break, they were just like, ‘Oh, no problem, we’ll fix it,'” Andre said.

“They have really nothing. It’s one of the harshest places to live in the world. There are no trees . nothing. They’re just so adaptable and resourceful,” she said.

During their weeklong village stays, a lot of time was spent getting to know the people and interviewing the elders.

Andre was captivated by their rich, straight-forward culture.

“It’s hard to explain, but every person from the south that I’ve talked to who has gone up there just seems to immediately fall in love with the culture and the people,” she said. “What’s really special about the Inuit people is that they have this very long, continuous culture that’s been going for thousands and thousands of years.”

The cold reality

The members saw for themselves global warming and climate change is a visible truth, and the Inuit are on the front lines.

Andre said the Inuits are optimistic about their future.

Paraphrasing the Inuit frame of mind, Andre said, “‘Well, we’ll adapt. We’ll figure out a way to continue being Inuit and keep our culture.'”

One day, an Inuit asked something that surprised Andre.

“Once I got to know people better, they would open up and say, ‘What I don’t see is how your culture in the south is going to adapt.'”

They are unsure if Western culture, with all its dependencies on technology and rigid systems, will be able to change its ways quickly enough to save itself.

Andre said she is no longer worried about the Inuits’ survival.

“I used to worry about that, but looking at it from their eyes and saying, ‘Well, sure, they’re going to adapt, but, now, can we?’ is kind of a different question,” she said.

A global effort

One Inuit man suggested the cultures work together to make the difference. The concept is not new and is gaining popularity.

“If [the Inuits] can work with Western scientists, they can suggest different ways to ask more questions or collect their measurements or interpret their results, and that can make for better understanding of the environment,” Andre said.

After learning how essential communication was in the Arctic, Andre emphasized the importance of cross-cultural communication to end global warming.

“One of the things that makes international action on climate change so difficult is that you’ve got all different cultures and economic systems – First World and Third World, Western and non-Western – all trying to work out a solution together,” she said.

“In the big scheme of things, the planet is like an Inuit community in a way. We’re not going to get help somewhere else; we’re very isolated. If we have a problem – which we do – we need to work on it amongst ourselves and come up with a solution.”

Andre also stressed that practical solutions already exist.

“There are tangible solutions that are ready now and could be put in place now to slow global warming,” she said. “It’s not hopeless. It’s urgent, but it’s not hopeless; and it’s not easy, but it is possible.”

Online updates were made almost daily on Steger’s Web site, www.globalwarming101.com.