“I woke up very early this morning. I’m all excited,” said Inuvialuit elder Albert Elias about his trip to the Smithsonian Institution to re-discover Inuvialuit artifacts collected from his ancestors in the mid-1800s.
In an interview with Mark Forsythe on CBC Radio’s BC Almanac, aired November 13, 2009, the resident of Ulukhaktok (Victoria Island), Northwest Territories, spoke of the importance the trip holds for the people of the Inuvialuit Settlement Region.
Albert is part of a group travelling to Washington DC from November 13 to 22, 2009, to view Inuvialuit artifacts, gathering information about what Albert calls “the more land-based life” of their ancestors, and bringing it back to share with their community.
Natasha Lyons, a Post-doctoral Fellow at Simon Fraser University, explained elders, youth and cultural experts will view and interpret artifacts from one of the founding collections of the Smithsonian Institution. In the 1850’s and -60’s, Hudson’s Bay Company trader Roderick MacFarlane purchased household items for the Smithsonian from the Inuvialuit people of the Anderson River area in the eastern McKenzie Delta of the Western Arctic. The collection includes pipes, winter footwear, parkas, tools, and drawings on wooden plaques.
From an academic perspective, Natasha called the research ‘knowledge repatriation’, noting the study will contribute to the larger Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage project, an international initiative based at Simon Fraser University. At the same time, Natasha said a website will be created to bring the repatriated knowledge to the broader Inuvialuit community in a user-friendly and accessible format. For Albert, bringing back information for the school curriculum is key.
Both Albert and Natasha are excited about discussing possibilities for parts of the collection to travel to the Inuvialuit Settlement Region for a large elders workshop in Inuvik or Yellowknife. Since the artifacts will require insurance, funding and a curator from the Smithsonian Institution for the journey, Albert and Natasha’s trip is only the first step in realizing this goal.
Mark Forsythe wished Natasha, Albert and their group a good journey.
Photo: Elder Albert Elias tries on ancestral snow googles during a visit to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., part of the IPinCH case study 'A Case of Access: Inuvialuit Engagement with the Smithsonian's MacFarlane Collection' (photo: Kate Hennessy).
