We’re the bran muffin of journalism.īut you know what? We change lives. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.” My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. “Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. Many former Farc members have since become politicians.Ībout a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”: Organized into a political force, they played a key role in shaping the deal and softening the stances of the two sides. During talks that cemented a 2016 pact with a larger guerrilla group known as Farc, tens of thousands of victims of that war were at the table. The guerrillas might end their violent tactics if the deal begins to fulfill the social and economic goals that inspired them to take up arms in the 1960s.Ĭolombia already has experience in bringing civilians into a negotiated peace agreement. “Let this be the people’s agreement,” said ELN chief negotiator Pablo Beltrán during the signing ceremony in Cuba.Īllowing civilians to monitor the cease-fire would set the stage for them to participate in the details of a final peace agreement, which Colombian President Gustavo Petro expects by 2025. Last Friday, the Colombian government and the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas signed procedural agreements that not only plan for a 180-day cease-fire but also open a way for civil society to track and verify the deal. One of the world’s oldest violent conflicts could be near an end because of a novel idea in peacemaking: Let civilians participate. But this National Indigenous Peoples Day, they are doing so under a banner that recognizes their traditional Inuit language and culture, as Taloyoak’s “umarulirijigut.” Young children, bundled in hats and gloves, are chasing one another at a playground in front of the home where we’re staying.Hunter Abel Aqqaq explains that up here daily patterns conform to light and darkness, not mealtimes or work hours established from the “south.” “We eat when we are hungry and sleep when we are tired,” he says.That means these hunters might ice fish until midnight or later, when the fishing is better. As we return in all-terrain vehicles well past dinnertime in the high sun, many locals are just setting out.As I write this, it’s exactly midnight, the first minute of “summer.” Up here the sun won’t ever set. But June 21 in the Arctic doesn’t exactly feel like the first day of summer.Joining the hunters to fish lake trout and landlocked char, we suit up in fur-lined parkas, seal-skin mitts, snow pants, and insulated rubber boots and head to the ice. Ullikatalik’s organization was tasked with harvesting the food for a community barbecue.National Indigenous Peoples Day coincides with the summer solstice because it’s the longest day of the year and marks a new season of life. Today, Canada marks National Indigenous Peoples Day, and Mr. The Inuktitut name means “large caribou hunting blind.”It’s part of a reclamation of Indigenous language across Canada, and the timing couldn’t be more perfect. Taloyoak was once known by its colonial name, Spence Bay. In Inuktitut, “umarulirijigut” means “wildlife managers.”The name change “has been a dream of the members of the community for 20 years,” he says, ever since the town changed its name in 1992. Ullikatalik just received notification that his organization has officially been renamed Taloyoak Umarulirijigut Association. We’re on assignment for a climate project. “Wow, man, I can’t believe it.”Photographer Melanie Stetson Freeman and I are here in his office in the northernmost community in mainland Canada. “We did it,” exclaims Jimmy Ullikatalik from his office at the Spence Bay Hunters and Trappers Association in Taloyoak.
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