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From sea to school
Nova Scotia University will archive Inuit Legend

Darrell Greer
Northern News Services

Kivalliq (Oct 23/00) - One of the oldest Inuit legends could have far-reaching academic effects.

Filmmaker and Baffin native John Houston is currently travelling throughout Kivalliq conducting interviews on Inuit tales of the legend of Nuliajuq -- the mother of the sea beasts.

Houston's film on the sea beast, which is currently being shot in the region, is the second instalment in his trilogy on the Arctic.

The information about the sea woman will be sent to St. Mary's University in Halifax, N.S., which will supervise an archiving project.

Houston says a position will be created at the university to oversee the project.

"We're creating a position called an Inuit archivist intern, which will be a three-month position with us in Halifax with Triad Films."

"This position will be for someone to make sense of material we're covering.Then, when this has all been done, it will be given to St. Mary's University for ongoing scholarly use for Inuit and Qablunaaq to work on in the future."

Houston says the combined efforts of Inuit and Qablunaaq on deciphering the legend is a unique approach he hopes will pay big dividends.

"Knud Rasmussen travelled across Arctic America, which means Arctic Canada, Alaska and so forth, in 1921-24 and he got a lot of amazing stuff written down about this.

"Many others have as well, but most of them didn't ask Inuit to interpret the story and what it really means. If Inuit and Qablunaaq can use their expertise together to work on the meaning of this story, then we're going to get further than either group might on its own."

When the film, which is called Nuliajuq, is completed it will be aired nationally on both the Vision network and the APTN.