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IKALUKTUTIAK/CAMBRIDGE BAY - In Cambridge Bay, Emily Angulalik has been assisting a team of archeologists in making the connections between her ancestors' relics and the living culture of their descendants.

Emily Angulalik has been assisting archeologists in working with local elders, schools and students as part of a series of projects in Cambridge Bay. - photo courtesy of Renee Krucas, Kitikmeot Heritage Society

Angulalik is the executive director of the Kitikmeot Heritage Society - an organization that has championed the preservation and promotion of Inuit language and culture for the last 10 years.

"We can learn by understanding how our ancestors have lived," she said. "We as a younger generation may not live it, but it's important to know that it was part of our history, part of our connection."

While there has been archaeological work going on in the community for many years, Angulalik has recently been assisting doctoral scholar Brendan Griebel from the University of Toronto in collecting oral histories that belong to the Cambridge Bay area.

Griebel is working with the heritage society and the high school to develop course modules on the links between the lives of ancestors and the people of today.

"With enough diverse information about how things were in the past, students have a better platform from which to make decisions about their own futures," Griebel said. "I would like to create a situation where people can begin to use it as a means of reflecting on what they see around them in their present-day lives."

While archaeology tends to fragment time into episodes of history, the school program will focus on "timeless" themes such as food, housing, travel, technology and belief, which can be explored through archaeological data, traditional knowledge and the students' own experiences.

"Students, for example, can learn how archeologists decipher what people ate from the artifacts and bones they left behind," said Griebel. "This can be combined with elder knowledge on what land foods are available in the area and the best and proper ways of obtaining them.

"Through trips out on the land where ... archeological sites such as fox traps and fishing weirs abound, students can learn to see and interact directly with the resources they are talking about.

"Students can then take a look at their own diets, asking where it comes from and what has changed."

As a kindergarten teacher, Angulalik sees the programs being developed as opportunities to give young people a means of connecting with their ancestors.

"It would help, though their education, to understand their identity, to understand who they are as Inuit," she said. "It's almost like a sphere... It's ongoing."

Angulalik uses an example to illustrate that sense of connection that comes with an understanding of tradition.

"I am grateful to have a little kindergarten student that is named after my mother, so often times I would respect her and then sometimes it seems like in her character my mother would come out," she said.

"The name is also a respect. You respect them, not only as kindergarten students, but also as, you know, your mother or your aunt. It's not only the name. You have a connection towards them."