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By now, with all that has happened along the way, I'm sure heads are spinning. In addition to the wonderful scientific lectures, which tell us the facts of climate change and about the life cycles of plants and animals we're encountering on our travels, for me it is the contributions from some of the Inuit leaders aboard that cause the most generative thinking. Being in the North, having those voices aboard, being able to greet community leaders along the way in their own language and having a working sense of more traditional ecological knowledge as part of the ongoing conversation is a delight. More to the point, watching, listening and occasionally participating in conversations among the students, I'm learning of a dawning awareness of a northern perspective on all of this. For example, in a session led by Mary Simon and Robin Anawak on Inuit perspectives on climate change, they talk about climate change impacts on the health of northerners, about persistent pollutants in the environment and about how this, in concert with climate change, is affecting food and the security of food, as well as the social and mental health of northerners.

So when we stop at the 19^th-century whaling station on Kekerton Island, in Cumberland Sound, there is a discussion about whaling and how that industry and the demand for its products decimated the bowhead whale population of Davis Strait. But, as people stroll on the boardwalks, soaking in the ambiance of the place, looking at old Inuit houses, old foundations of whalers' houses and work stations, iron tools, pots and storage bins, the conversation is only partly about the demise of the whales themselves. Because of the path we have taken to get here, and the voices of northerners, on the ship and in communities along the way, there is an emerging understanding that northern peoples, be they First Nations or Inuit through the circumpolar world, cannot be separated from the land or the animals that make up this northern world. Someone asks: how it is that a bowhead whale skull could be at Kekerton Island, when every other piece of bone evidence of whaling has long since been removed or weathered away?  We learn that this bowhead skull is from a fairly recent rotating hunt that is part of modern-day life for the people of Nunavut. On this expedition, that piece of information makes perfect sense.