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JR’s Arctic Backpack
Arctic Faces & Places: an exhibition
Treasures from Circling the Midnight Sun: The Love Bracelet
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So as the hottest days EVER in the Arctic are reco

So as the hottest days EVER in the Arctic are recorded, ice is disappearing and with it the ways of the ice dwellers, two-legged and four. It’s time we all started living as if we were all—and we are—people of the ice.

✨GIVEAWAY✨ Advance Reader’s Copies of upcomi

✨GIVEAWAY✨ Advance Reader’s Copies of upcoming books are produced well ahead of the publication date so that influencers might read the book and assist with marketing by creating blurbs and/or buzz that would help convince others that this is a must-read. ARCs are also the last editorial go-round with more eyes to find glitches that can be fixed in the final printing. As such ARCs are relatively rare (only a few dozen are printed). They are never sold. With their scarcity and imperfections, ARCs can become something of a treasure, particularly for readers with a collection of that author's other books.
Want to win a coveted & signed Advance Reader’s Copy of Ice Walker? Here’s what you have to do:

1. Like this photo.
2. Follow me! @raffjam
3. Tag 2 friends in the comments below.

This giveaway will be closed on July 1st, 2020 at noon and two winners (one from IG, one from FB) will be chosen at random. I will message the winners directly on Canada Day to get shipping address (international entries welcomed). #giveaway #icewalkerbook #jamesraffan #polarbear #simonschusterca #simonandschuster #sweepstakes #win * This giveaway is not endorsed by Instagram/Facebook.

Today, a shout-out to my friend and hero, Jonathon

Today, a shout-out to my friend and hero, Jonathon Pitseolak, who lives in Mitimatilik, NU and who, during this crazy pandemic, has gone through two very significant rites of passage. He just completed the Environmental Technician’s Program at Nunavut Arctic College (“the longest two years of our lives, lol” says his partner Savanna) but he also just got his first polar bear in the spring hunt. No small feat, either one.

We first crossed paths on the Students on Ice 2016 Arctic Expedition, when this inspiring young man was just 16. Talking to him on that journey, I learned that his dad was long gone, his mom had died when we was 12, as had his grandmother when he was 9. And since then, he had been living, proudly so, with his younger sister at his older sister’s place, with her two children. On that SOI trip, I watched as he engaged the program with total dedication, particularly elders like Hiquaq, who helped him with his drumming and singing.

In subsequent years, stopping in Mittimatalik with Students on Ice and Adventure Canada, I’d see Jonathon proudly wearing his Sirmilik National Park summer uniform but also taking an increasingly significant leadership role in his community.
Jonathan could have gone fifty different ways, growing up in Pond Inlet with the hand that fate has delt him, but he has stayed true to his sisters, to his community, to his culture and to himself.

Two kinds of graduation in one year … what and achievement … from college and, having caught the last, and perhaps most illusive, of the five traditional large mammals he tells me Inuit teachings say that he is now a man and can start using a sound when he is singing ajaajaa songs.

Congratulations Jonathan. This summer’s a bust for visiting but next summer, when I’m passing through your beautiful community (and assuming this Covid thing has moved on), I’ll be looking for you to give you the biggest congratulatory bear hug!

#hero #icewalkerbook #polarbear #jamesraffan #studentsonice #nunavutarcticcollege #youthchampion

I think of all the things I’ve seen and heard an

I think of all the things I’ve seen and heard and done during these tumultuous seven days—except maybe realizing that the salvation of our beleaguered oceans and the sorry state of our of “civil” society are of common origin—nothing has inspired me more than the outpouring of love and concern by Indigenous people across Canada, like 22-year Anishinaabe woman @katia_166 Katia Ferderber, who channelled the rage of racial injustice, that had stemmed her creativity, into positive action. She started to run. Today, starting at 11am, she’s running around her home town of Elliot Lake. Announcing this in a parking lot in local mall, she said: “This is my way of showing condolences for George Floyd … I encourage you to join … I have started this run because it is the only the colour of my skin. But I will never know what it is like to be black. It is important for me to educate myself on black history and to stand with my black brothers and sisters, like they have for my people.” Oh my, Katia, you are an inspiration and a way forward. Doing something different. Awakening. Moving toward a better place. One step at a time. Miigwetch. Animaanimad!

#indigenouslivesmatter #solidarity #natureandculture #nationaloceansday #runforchange

Sitting here in the attic of the most powerful nat

Sitting here in the attic of the most powerful nation on earth is often a wonderful thing but not today, not yesterday, not since basic decency, honesty, shame and civility were assassinated by the leader of the free world. But now, as images of tear gas floating through peaceful crowds asserting their lawful right to protest bring back echos of the ‘60s, I fear that somehow we have summarily lost any gains we might have made in the last 50 years. Here in Canada we might approach problems of racism and human rights differently but the same currents flow through our lives, the same injustices are causing pain, division and death here too. I have spent my life living and learning in cross-cultural circumstances, in mostly out of the way places, and know that colonialism is a hard thing to shake, that privilege is a most insidious form of blindness. I have worked every day of my adult life for fairness and equality in this nation of rivers, in this river of nations, but quite clearly that is not enough. I lament young people who would take their own lives because they feel no control over their own destiny. I celebrate young people who are asserting and reasserting their cultures in ways that their parents and grandparents would not or could not. I feel responsible for hundreds of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. I ache for Regis Korchinski-Paquet, George Floyd, Bronna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and their families, knowing that these are just the tip of an iceberg of wrongful deaths reaching deep into human experience. Enough is enough. It’s time to regroup. As a gesture of that intention, I’m muting my social media accounts to make space for the voices that need to be heard, to make time to listen and to learn.

#muted #amplifymelanatedvoices #listening #indigeouslivesmatter

Kinngait carver, Noo Atsiaq, who died at only 27 y

Kinngait carver, Noo Atsiaq, who died at only 27 years old in 2013, began carving as a teen and quickly made a place for himself on the international lnuit art scene. He was known for his elegant shapes, fluid lines and harmonic proportions which some would take as whimsical interpretation or artistic licence with renderings of bears, particularly. This dancing polar bear, carved in 2010, has the very best of Noo’s verve when it comes to motion and sheer life force captured in dark serpentine. I have a feeling this talented Inuk knew something about the relationships (and similarities) between bears and people that non-northerners might never imagine. This remarkable work is part of the Horwood Collection of Inuit Art at the @cndncanoemuseum
#capedorsetcarvers #kinngait #icewalkerbook #polarbear

Getting ready to launch a book (to do just about a

Getting ready to launch a book (to do just about anything!) in these Covid times is a daunting prospect. I sent the manuscript to my Canada C3 shipmate, John Vaillant, whose books The Golden Spruce and The Tiger I found deeply affecting, in the hope that he might not hate Ice Walker. Grateful (and relieved) that he actually liked the book. Hoping that when it’s launched with suitable social distance this fall that others might come to the same conclusion and spread the word (and not the virus). Thank you John Vaillant.
#thegoldenspruce #johnvaillant #jamesraffan #polarbear #icewalkerbook #simonandschustercanada #climatechange #phewphewphew

Congratulations to my @studentsonice friend and ü

Congratulations to my @studentsonice friend and über young marine biologist, Amy Johnson, who just successfully defended her PhD thesis called Polar Bear Foraging, Spatial, and Energetics Ecology in the Changing Arctic. Amy did her BSc in Marine and Freshwater Biology at the University of Guelph (yay, Guelph!), her MSc in Marine Mammal Science at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and then joined Prof. Andrew Desrocher’s dynamic lab at the University of Alberta to move to the study of polar bears for her PhD. And through it all, she has never lost her sense of humour. Case in point, back in March, as her dissertation journey was working its way to a tumultuous conclusion, she made the following FB post: “Things that I thought might impact my PhD defence: Not writing a dissertation; Lack of skill; Dropping out; Rouge committee member; No available rooms; Really bad presentation skills. Things I didn’t think would impact my defence: Global pandemic.” Well, Dr. Johnson, you have prevailed. Congratulations. Can’t wait to see where you go next. We need your tenacity, your keen mind, your polar bear science and your sense of humour more than ever.
#polarbear #ualberta #climatechange @aederocher #icewalkerbook #simonandschustercanada #studentsonice

You just never know what you’ll find in the jour

You just never know what you’ll find in the journals of early travellers.
#davidthompson #mapmaker #wrestlingbear #icewalkerbook #simonandschustercanada #explorationjournal #jamesraffan #climatechange #grog #sprucebeer #bierelapinette

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