C U LT U R E
Hiking in the British Mountains. L-R: Cassidy Lennie-Ipana, Starr Elanik, Jason Lau, Ashley Piskor and Angelina Joe. © Lisa Hodgetts
Inuvialuit Living History Project promotes on-the-land activities We are flying low over the British Mountains, their bare peaks and ridges streaked with pink and grey. Fingers of green vegetation reach up from the valley bottoms. The summits feel almost close enough to touch. Suddenly, they give way to a broad green valley. The twin otter banks left and descends to follow the deeply etched line of Qikiqtaruk Kunga (the Firth River). We crane our necks to look for game and catch a glimpse of the airstrip — a stretch of open flat ground amid the scattered spruce trees. We have arrived! It is the summer of 2019 and we are a group of Inuvialuit Elders, Knowledge Holders and youth, along with university‐based anthropologists and archaeologists, and a videographer from the Inuvialuit Communications Society. We have come together at Imniarvik (Sheep Creek) in Ivvavik National Park, Yukon Territory, as part of the Inuvialuit Living History (ILH) project. Parks Canada, who maintain a beautiful base camp at Imniarvik, helped to facilitate this on‐the‐land culture camp, along with project partners from the Inuvialuit Cultural Resource Centre, Inuvialuit Communications Society, Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, University of Western Ontario and Ursus Heritage.
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We will spend the next week engaging in traditional Inuvialuit activities and skills, sharing time and knowledge, visiting cultural sites, exploring Inuvialuit artifacts, laughing and learning together. The youth will learn to document their experiences in different media, producing materials to share on the Inuvialuit Living History website (www.inuvialuitlivinghistory.ca). Over the course of the week, the Elders teach us to make spruce medicine and sour‐ dough pancakes. They share words and songs in Uummarmiutun, a dialect of Inuvialuktun Starr Elanik’s embroidery project in progress. © Becky Goodwin
A B O V E & B E Y O N D — C A N A D A’ S A R C T I C J O U R N A L
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