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Museum of Civilization visits Delta

Lynn Lau
Northern News Services

Inuvik (Nov 05/01) - The Canadian Museum of Civilization in Hull, Que., is planning an exhibit on Inuvialuit culture.

Staff members from the museum were in three Delta communities recently to seek the opinions of elders regarding the exhibit's draft plans.

David Morrison, an archaeologist and curator for the exhibit, and Jennifer Elliott, an interpretive planner, visited Inuvik, Tuktoyaktuk and Aklavik on a one-week long tour.

Although their community meeting in Inuvik failed to draw any interested people Tuesday night, Morrison says scheduled visits with elders were more successful.

The visit was a follow-up to last September, when the pair came to Inuvik to meet with elders from the communities in a briefing organized by the Inuvialuit Regional Corp. That first trip was to receive direction from elders on what they'd like to see in the exhibit. With the help of the information gathered, Morrison and Elliott have developed the exhibit's content and general outline.

"The main theme of the exhibit is the relationship between the Inuvialuit and the land over the last 200 years the way it's changed because of contact with the Europeans, and the way it's still important," explained Morrison. "I think they liked that tack."

The temporary exhibit is scheduled to open for one year, beginning in 2003. After that, the show will likely travel to other museums, either in whole, or in part, depending on how much space the host museums have. Although neither Inuvik, nor Yellowknife, have enough space to accommodate the exhibit's full 6,000 square feet, parts of the exhibit will likely travel north, Morrison says.

The exhibit will feature clothing, hunting and fishing gear, boats, and artwork in the form of painted wooden boards.

Some of the artifacts will come from the museum's own collection, but Morrison says he's also hoping to borrow an extensive collection of artifacts from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The Smithsonian acquired many articles in the 1860s from fur trader Roderick MacFarlane, and the collection has never yet been exhibited it in its entirety. Other materials are expected to come from the McCord Museum in Montreal, which also has some MacFarlane artifacts, as well as Inuvialuit items collected by outpost RCMP officer Forbes Sutherland in the early 1900s.

This will be the first time the Canadian Museum of Civilization has dedicated an entire exhibit to the Inuvialuit, or Inuit of the Western Arctic. In a survey of museum visitors that Elliott completed in August, not one of 50 respondents had heard of the Inuvialuit.

"They didn't know a lot, but they were interested," Elliott says, especially about traditional culture, values and ways of life.

The idea of having an Inuvialuit exhibit came from Morrison who has been working in the North on Inuvialuit and other Inuit digs since 1974. "I think the Inuit are the most amazing people who ever lived on earth," he says. "I've always admired Inuit culture because it's so intelligent, so adaptable. And from what we can tell from the archaeological evidence, they've always been that way."