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KANGIQTUGAAPIK/CLYDE RIVER - An ambitious new project has started up in Clyde River which will create a visual display of the community's heritage and history on the land.

The plan is for a photographer from Ilisaqsivik Society, a prominent health and wellness group in Clyde River, to take high-quality photos of every person in town and use them to assemble family tree diagrams.

From left, mapper Philip Iqalukjuaq, project co-ordinator Gordon Kautuk and photographer Robert Kautuk plan to create a display about the community of Clyde River. - photo courtesy of Ilisaqsivik Society

At this point the project is in its pilot stages and is concentrating on a single family: the Piungituq family. Next year, Ilisaqsivik co-ordinator Jake Gearheard hopes the project can expand to include the entire community.

In the meantime, Phillip Iqalukjuaq has been interviewing members of the Piungituq family. Using coloured pencils on a Mylar overlay of a map of the region, family members are marking where their elders used to live, where they hunted and fished and any other places on the land with traditional cultural significance.

"We'll be listing everything from that perspective," said Ittaq Heritage and Research Centre co-ordinator Gordon Qautuk.

The Piungituq family tree and map will be part of a display at the renovated Ittaq centre, which will re-open this spring. It will serve as an example of what the Ilisaqsivik Society hopes to do for the rest of the community.

The hope is to have photographer Robert Qautuk snap photos of everyone, from elders to newborns. He would set up his camera at Clyde River's Quluaq School and the Ilisaqsivik Society and would also visit the homes of the elderly and others who don't leave their homes. Gordon Qautuk said he has been promoting the project on community radio and is putting up announcements in town to inform as many people as possible.

Once the entire community is photographed and interviewed the results can go on display at Ittaq, but also can be archived as a comprehensive history of the people of Clyde River and their deep connection to the land around them.

For the display, "we're going to take the photographs and lay them on the wall under the Plexiglass so everyone can see," Gordon Qautuk said.