The New Social Network Helping Inuit Navigate the Climate Crisis

SIKU is the first social media app and web platform by and for Inuit. Launched in December 2019 and tailored towards the outdoor lives of people in the Arctic, this is a space where community members can post wildlife sightings. They can share stories from their trips. In their own Inuktitut language, they can tag terms for all the different kinds of sea ice, and for traditional location names. Knowledge and observations are being passed on — but it’s just that now that traditional knowledge is received digitally.

Vitally, this is also a space where people can document sea ice conditions and share them in real time.

For example, if a SIKU user chooses to publicly share dangerous sea ice conditions while they’re out, other community members can look at their post. They can see satellite imagery of the area, the marine forecast, approaching weather conditions – all on a single page. Having all this information together, a person can recognize that this is definitely not a safe area to take your snowmobile out on.

“In this way, a simple post can have a much bigger impact than you might ever have thought was possible,” says Joel Heath, Executive Director of the Arctic Eider Society, the Hudson Bay Inuit-driven charity that launched SIKU.