NUNAVUT - The Inuit Heritage Trust has cancelled its summer field schools as they were producing the desired result of beneficiaries pursuing careers in heritage.

Students learned how to properly sketch and document their digging quadrant at a field school held in Hall Beach in 2006. The Inuit Heritage Trust is no longer running the field schools. - photo courtesy of Ericka Chemko

"We are going in new directions and creating more individual approaches and plans for people to pursue heritage qualifications," said Ericka Chemko, project manager with The Inuit Heritage Trust. Chemko said the purpose of the field schools was to introduce students aged 16 to 23 years old to archeology and spark an interest in them in hopes they would study in the field or in a heritage-related career.

Field schools had been run by the trust in communities across the territory each summer since 2002. The last one was held in the summer of 2008. During this six-year period, schools were held in Hall Beach, Pond Inlet, Kugluktuk and Repulse Bay.

Last summer, the trust and the Government of Nunavut's Department of Culture, Language, Elders and Youth conducted an evaluation of the program. This year the trust announced the program had folded. This has left some community members who praised the work the trust was doing disappointed.

"I think the field schools were excellent for young people. They gave them skills they wouldn't have gotten otherwise," said Philippa Ootoowak, community archivist with Pond Inlet Library and Archives Society.

In 2005, the trust was in the community with a group of 10 students from across the territory working on the Qilalukan/Qilalukkat site where Thule houses are located. Students worked as archeological assistants and helped excavate the site, took electronic readings of topography and archeological features to create electronic maps and took photos of artifacts, among other things. At the end of the summer they put together an exhibit for the community.

Ootoowak said not only did the students learn about archeology but that they were able to learn things about their ancestors and culture including about the pre-Dorset people.

She said for the first time, students were going back to their elders and asking them about the past.

"It started a real communication within the community about the site," said Ootoowak.

Five years later, what was learned by the students has resonated. The sites where the Thule houses are located are near a well-used ATV trail leading to a popular fishing area. She said in July during the community's fishing derby, some of the students who had participated in the field school went to hamlet and asked them to tape off the area to help protect the site.

Chemko said the field schools were not working out as planned. The intent was to get beneficiaries involved in the heritage sector.

"They weren't going on to university which was our hope in doing this, it was a question of what exactly were our goals and priorities," she said.

The field schools were also getting expensive. She said when they first started they cost $30,000. Now they would cost at least $60,000 as the students' airfare, accommodations and food was all looked after.

At times she said it was also a question of some of the students' motivation.

With no field schools for students to participate in, Ootoowak said she is worried about what is being done about archeology in the territory.

The trust has taken on other projects. Chemko said they have just started a heritage leadership program, where people who started working in the field will be contacted to find out why they stopped or changed careers.

There is also a plan to offer heritage career counselling. This would be a multi-year program where staff at the trust would help individuals further their education in the field including financial support.

"People often aren't in the position to pay for these courses themselves. Sometimes they need someone to guide them through the process," she said.

An example would be if someone wanted to apply for a program but didn't have the right science course from high school.

There has already been interest from several individuals in the counselling.

Both Chemko and Ootoowak said they agree there are not enough Inuit getting involved in the field.

Chemko said in the territory there are not a lot of professionally-trained heritage workers, no Inuit conservator and others to work in the field.

"We are looking at creating leaders and filling these gaps in this process so we don't always have to contract people from the south to come to do work. That is the way it is now; it doesn't mean it always has to be that way and it is not sustainable," she said.