KUGAARUK/PELLY BAY - A half-dozen men and women from Kugaaruk and Repulse Bay made a significant contribution to a diamond exploration project close to their community this year, and there may be more opportunities for other residents to take part in the future.

Lena Sigguk of Kugaaruk tends to dishes in the kitchen at the Amaruk camp. - photo courtesy of Diamonds North

Diamonds North is seeking diamonds - as well as nickel and gold - in its Amaruk early exploration project, located just 40 km south of Kugaaruk. This past summer, the company hired around eight men from the hamlet to assist with prospecting and running the Amaruk camp.

"They run the camp. They do all the construction. We're always building and rebuilding camps. They help with the environmental side of things," said Mark Kolebaba, president of Diamonds North.

Most impressively, some of them have an eye for prospecting, he added.

"Some of our best prospectors are from the local community. They're trained. We've had them up there for years and they've done a great job of finding kimberlite.

"The larger the programs, the more opportunities there are for all people. This year was a small program." The company spent $1.5 million this year, compared to more than $10 million in 2008.

"So yeah - a huge drop-off in expenditures," said Kolebaba, but he added that "rather than going out and raising money, we're going out and spending money in a tough market."

The focus of this year's program was also different. In addition to diamonds, participants are following up on nickel and gold showings.

"We believe we're going into a metal cycle," said Kolebaba. "We're diamond explorers, but over the years, we've had very big land positions - up to 27 million acres of land (in the NWT and Nunavut). We've identified a number of metal opportunities within that and just inventoried it."

Besides drilling for nickel, the company "also looked at the gold potential," said Kolebaba. "Early this year we announced a gold result in bedrock. We also had a number of gold showings in our till samplings. We spent some time and money tracking these down and trying find more bedrock sources of the gold. Those are results that are still pending."

With the company now searching for gold, more Kugaaruk prospectors will have to be trained on site.

"If we're going to start looking for gold, we need to start training again for gold prospecting," said Kolebaba.

Even though the company expects to mount a larger program next year, he said, that will depend in part on the diamond results from a kimberlite sample collected at Amaruk in 2008.

"Even if they would come in really positive, we still would be probably two years away before we had a resource estimate," Kolebaba said.