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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/19/canada-indigenous-arctic-military>
"Warrant officer Jim Davison had spent a full day travelling the sea ice off
the coast of Baffin Island when his group decided to set up camp for the night.
The Canadian soldier ran through a mental checklist of what was needed: shelter
in the forest, wood for a fire and a source of fresh water.
“I look around and I’m a kilometre offshore. The only trees are more than one
thousand kilometres away,” he said. “I realize at that moment: I don’t know
what to do.”
But the combat veteran was traveling with the Canadian Rangers, a group of
reservists largely drawn from Indigenous communities who serve as scouts and
guides for Canada’s military in the north.
During that trip in 2023, they explained to Davison how to find shelter and
food in a landscape that, to the unacquainted eye, looks both homogenous and
hostile.
“When they talk, I listen,” he said. “And when they say stop, I stop.”
In recent years, Canada has realized the deep vulnerabilities of a land mass
spanning nearly 4m sq km (1.5m sq miles) that makes up nearly half the country.
With renewed threats to its territorial claims coming both from foes and
allies, the country’s government has pledged to devote far more resources to
holding the north.
But those efforts are meaningless without the help of the region’s inhabitants
– long seen as pawns in a greater geopolitical game, and yet whose knowledge of
the lands and waters is irreplaceable."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
