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IQALUIT - An online multimedia atlas is bridging the gap between generations, bringing youth together with elders and combining the traditional with the high-tech.

The Arctic Bay Online Atlas is the product of a three-year collaboration between Inuit Heritage Trust, Nunavut Youth Consulting, Nunavut Arctic College and the Cartographic Research Centre at Carleton University, as well as a long list of partners.

Louis Tapardjuk, minister of Culture, Language, Elders and Youth, talks about the benefits of the atlas project, injecting humour into his speech to the delight of Premier Eva Aariak, left. - Carolyn Sloan/NNSL photo

Launched March 30 at the college's Nunatta Campus, the atlas includes over 300 traditional names, interactive maps, a series of videos and images of different places and people from the community and a section devoted to its artists and their work.

In creating the atlas, which will continue to develop over the next three years, youth were employed to gather information, collecting stories from local elders and documenting their knowledge of the land.

"This is a celebration or research that has been done with youth and elders together because we often hear about the generation gap between our youth and the elders," said Peesee Pitsiulak, Nunatta campus director, at the launch.

Louis Tapardjuk, minister of Culture, Language, Elders and Youth, spoke about the importance of the project and its role in preserving the oral histories of the Inuit.

"In the past, until very recently, the knowledge held by our elders were gone with the death of our elders," he said. "In recent history ... we started collecting oral history through the participation of the young people's interest.

"This, in my opinion, is going to enrich our heritage and our culture for the future generations."

The atlas program began as the Place Name Mapping Project - a literacy program at the college's community learning centre in Arctic Bay. It was aimed at students who had "fallen through the cracks in the high school system," said Ron Elliott, Nunavut Youth Consulting project manager, former adult educator and the current MLA for Quttiktuq.

"What I found was they had amazing land skills, so I wanted to find a way to maybe increase their literacy, put some values to all the land skills that they did have and in the same way, try and bring the elders in as well," he said.

With the elders, "they had so much knowledge that they wanted to share, but they didn't know quite how to link that with what was going on. And the youth were always on the computers," added Elliott. "What we were trying to do was bring that connection of the youth and the elders together."

In addition to being an opportunity for youth to learn about local history and culture, to gain literacy skills in Inuktitut and technology, the project was also a way elders could reconnect to the places and people of their past, he said.

"We have a lot of elders after spending a couple hours talking and sharing their stories, they would say they felt really light and they felt really good," Elliott recalled. "We took that as it was a part of a healing process for the elders because they were going back, reminiscing and talking about stuff and feelings and people they hadn't talked about for years. So it was sort of like coming home for a lot of them."