SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - For Barb Cameron, giving away more than half of the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre collection isn't a loss, but rather an exciting opportunity.

Jessica Kotierk, seen here holding a Qulliq – a 300-year-old stone oil lamp - was in Yellowknife from Sept. 27 to Oct. 2, learning how to work with artifacts being prepared for transport back to Nunavut over the next couple of years. - Terrence McEachern/NNSL photo

"Once those objects move, then we're poised to, and have been planning for a few years now, to form a strategy that now we can collect more things from the NWT – we'll have more room in the storeroom. It's a very exciting time for us," said Cameron, director of the centre.

Cameron is referring to the estimated 100,000 artifacts, about 60 per cent of the collection, scheduled to be transferred to a new heritage centre when it is built in Nunavut.

The ownership of the artifacts has been legally transferred to the Government of Nunavut from the GNWT as part of the original division of assets between the two governments when Nunavut was created in 1999.

Cameron described the process of dividing the artifacts as a "huge undertaking" and "very problematic – but done with a lot of care and discussion." The reason is the heritage centre contacted all the donors of the collection to ask for permission before agreeing to transfer the object or objects to Nunavut.

"How do you break up a collection from a teacher or a doctor that travelled as far away as Igloolik to Fort Simpson and they collected things as they travelled?" she said.

It also took about two years of negotiations and discussions to decide how artifacts with "overlapping interests" between the two governments and territories would be divided.

There is no fixed date for the construction of the Nunavut heritage centre, but Doug Stenton, director of Culture and Heritage for the Government of Nunavut, expected it would be built in the next three years. In the meantime, the artifacts will remain at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre.

This delay will give the two governments an opportunity to work together and train government staff such as Jessica Kotierk how to label and categorize the artifacts for shipping and storage, and then manage the artifacts once they're transferred.

Kotierk, 24, was in Yellowknife from Sept. 27 to Oct. 2 to train on one specific part of the overall collection -- more than 2,000 artifacts from a 300-year-old Thule winter site at Hall Beach, Nunavut on the shore of the Foxe Basin, that was recovered by archaeologists between 2006 to 2008.

Kotierk was born in Nunavut but moved to Ottawa when she was three years old. She attended York University in Toronto and graduated with a B.A. in Film Studies in 2008. For her, this training is more than a part of her job as a heritage collections administrative officer with the Government of Nunavut's Department of Culture, Language, Elders and Youth. It is also an opportunity for her to learn more about her culture and her history.

"I get to see the items up close and personal which I think adds a feeling that you can't really get from a piece of paper or photograph. I think I'm very lucky I got to fill this position and get to see these things," she said.

Stenton said the archaeological work at Hall Beach was done jointly between the Government of Nunavut and the Inuit Heritage Trust with about $50,000 in funding.

"We have a very unique collection. This is important for us to put as much planning in place as we can with our staff so the transition is smooth when the collections do come across, whatever year that is. We need to have people in place who know how to deal with them," explained Stenton. "The value of these objects lie in the information about the past and their connection with the people of Nunavut today."

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