In frozen north, soldiers rely on Inuit survival skills

With Canada facing new threats to its sovereignty, the country's Arctic territories have again become a strategic priority

- By Leyland Cecco INUVIK

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 realise at that moment: I don't know what to do." But the combat veteran was travelling 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 realised the deep vulnerabilities of a land mass spanning nearly 4m sq km 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.

Mark Carney recently made his first major domestic visit as prime minister to the far-north city of Iqaluit in a bid to "reaffirm" Canada's Arctic security and sovereignty, adding that the region was a "strategic priority" for his government.

"Canada is, and will forever be, an Arctic nation," he said, flanked by Canada's top soldier, the country's defence minister and the Nunavut premier.