Jennifer Geens
Northern News Services

Ottawa (May 24/04) - A majority of the people in the 50,000 Nunavut photos stored in Canada's national archives are unidentified.

But beginning in 2001, Library and Archives Canada and Nunavut Sivuniksavut college in Ottawa joined forces in a bid to discover the identities of the unknown subjects.

Beth Greenhorn, the project co-ordinator, said the effort was rewarding on many levels.

"Many people up North have never seen these photos of their family members," she said.

"It's like a family album stored in Ottawa that's been remote and inaccessible for decades."

For Greenhorn, there was also the driving motivation of a frustrated archivist.

"As a historical researcher, I find it frustrating when you find a document and you don't have any information attached to it," she said.

The project was the idea of Murray Angus, an instructor at Nunavut Sivuniksavut. Angus used to take students down to the national archives and have them look up a photo from their community.

"With the new technology, it suddenly became possible for people in the North to see these pictures without coming to Ottawa," said Angus.

There was also a sense of urgency. Some of the photos are more than 50 years old, and every year there are fewer people left who know the people in the photos.

With money from the Government of Nunavut's department of Culture, Language Elders and Youth, "Project naming" got underway. Students from Nunavut Sivuniksavut and youth groups in Nunavut obtained laptops to show the digital photos (compiled onto CD-Roms by the archivists) to elders and gather information about who was in the photo, what they were doing, where and when.

The information collected then went back to the archives, and Greenhorn is in the process of compiling a database that will be available online in June.

A student's experience

Mathewsie Ashevak of Cape Dorset wrote about his experience as a youth volunteer showing photos to his grandmother, Kenojuak Ashevak, his step-grandfather Pauta Saila, and his wife Petalusie Saila. His letter will be on the Web site.

"When I clicked on each picture, I watched their eyes," he wrote.

"As they recognized an individual, they would have a big smile on their faces. They acted as if these pictures were just taken yesterday. When I saw the happiness in their faces, all I could do was smile back at them and be thankful for doing this."

Library and Archives Canada held a launch celebration for the project's Web site last Friday. Even though the database won't be online until later in June, the archives held the party Friday to thank Nunavut Sivuniksavut students who graduated last week and were leaving for home.