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By now, other voices are coming into the ongoing conversation aboard ship and elsewhere. Writer and photographer Lekha Singh talks about "sparks" that drive activism. She begins her presentation with a quote from Victor Hugo, "There is one thing stronger than all of the armies in the world and that is an idea whose time has come." Looking around the room, at young people who've been moved by the experience of being on this ship so far, you can almost see the light bulbs going on. There are connections being made, future plans being drawn, all on this little floating enclave named after a Russian diva, Lyubov Orlova.  

"Activism," Singh says quietly, "is not a straight arrow. It can start right now. The best way to change the future is to invent it." A voice from inside the room, in response to the follow up discussion, says: "You shouldn't be waiting for the world to inspire you. Inspiration is something you find inside yourself." Amen, B. J. Bodner from Casa Rio, Saskatchewan!  

At lunch I meet Laura Anne Carroll, a young Inuit woman from Inukjuaq in Nunavik, who has spotted her birth mother and grandmother in a photograph on a decorative northern poster on the dining room wall. She's delighted to see something of herself in this unfamiliar place. But as we talk, she tells me she has been inspired by what she has seen and heard aboard ship and is anxious to get back to her community to see what she can do about building its future.

In the southern Baffin Island hamlet of Kimmirut, we are given a warm welcome by the entire community. They lay out a multi-stop tour for us that culminates in a demonstration of drum dancing, throat singing, storytelling and some shared fun with Inuit games including "airplane" and "one-foot high kick." Later we hike to a point overlooking the town where we get a great sense of the rough rocky topography of Baffin Island. On the way down I run into a geologist who's on a hunt for sapphires. Arctic sapphires. Jobs for northerners? Great to watch that evening, back aboard ship, as some of the Inuit girls in the group run an informal workshop on throat singing. It starts to dawn on some of the southern and international participants that these songs are as much about telling musical stories from the land as they are about singing for singing's sake. Maybe language should be in the northern conservation strategy after all.