IKALUKTUTIAK/CAMBRIDGE BAY - The Kitikmeot Heritage Society learned how to better preserve and promote Inuit culture and artifacts recently, as a museum conservator from the south visited Cambridge Bay.

Paul Billowes, left, of the Kitikmeot Heritage Society and Sheilah Mackinnon of the National Gallery of Canada inspect artifacts from the Stephen Angulalik exhibit as part of the conservator fly-in project. The Inuit Heritage Trust initiative allows curators from the south to inspect and advise museums in the North. - photo courtesy of Renee Krucas

Sheilah Mackinnon, assistant conservator of sculpture and decorative art at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, visited the society's collection from Sept. 26 to Oct. 1 under the Inuit Heritage Trust conservator fly-in project. She gave the society advice on storing and handling artifacts, on positioning display cases and on ways of storing and archiving materials

Kitikmeot Heritage Society staff have some experience and training in the heritage sector but by no means do they have formal training, said the society's executive director Renee Krucas.

"We're not conservators. We're not archivists. We're not formally trained so the opportunity to have someone come up to help us with our collections was just fantastic," she said. "It's always really good to have someone who knows, who is trained to be able to ensure that everything is OK and to suggest how to do things differently, in a better way."

Krucas said the collection was evaluated globally, including a kayak made out the seal the society was concerned about. She added they wanted to ensure it is neither drying nor deteriorating and to seek advice on building a new case to protect it.

But overall, Krucas said the society received advice on improving the way they store artifacts, learned different ways of storing and archiving material, how to take temperature and UV readings, for instance.

"I think the most helpful pieces of advice were how to store things, how to position the cases, how to handle the artifacts because that is so important," she said. "We're up here on our own and sometimes it is hard to know if we are doing things properly, so it was really reassuring to have that confirmation."

Mackinnon stated via e-mail that improvements could be made to storage and information preserved on formats going obsolete. But she also stated the society has made a "valiant effort" to rebuild its collection following a 1997 fire.

The program was started to fill a void of available conservators in Nunavut and help museums preserve their collections, according to the Inuit Heritage Trust's website. IHT's project manager Ericka Chemko said the two-year-old program will continue if they have the funding.

"It's been extremely successful," she said. "Nunavut doesn't have a conservator anywhere on staff … so a lot of the collections don't receive the attention they need to."

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