Sachs students examine history
Banks Island archaeology project gives community members direct role in artifact preservation
Shane Magee
Northern News Services
Monday, June 15, 2015
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
As a small group of Sachs Harbour students examined objects thousands of years old collected from Banks Island their minds wandered, creating stories to go along with the pieces of history before them.
A group from Sachs Harbour examine an arrow head from Banks Island at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre last week in Yellowknife. Shown from left are Beverly Amos of the Inuvialuit Cultural Resource Centre, museum curator Joanne Bird and Jasmine Keogak, 15. - photo courtesy of Mervin Joe |
A broken driftwood bow, a faceless doll, harpoon heads and a polar bear tooth were some of the artifacts the students looked at during a visit to the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre last week in Yellowknife.
"It's been really cool," said 15-year-old Jasmine Keogak, one of the students who arrived in the city June 7 and returned to the community June 12.
They were in the capital city as part Western University anthropology professor Lisa Hodgetts' research that began in 2012 into the history of human occupation of Banks Island over the last 3,500 years.
Hodgetts, during a presentation about her work June 10, said in the past researchers have dropped into a community and studied the people or the area and then leave with little meaningful discussion or input from the residents.
Her approach was to first listen to Sachs Harbour residents to gather their thoughts about the work. It's resulted in an effort to bring her results to the community and to document the progress of the work on a Facebook page and with things like the student trip to the museum last week.
As well, there's been an effort to directly involve residents in the research. Using smartphones and iPads to take dozens of photos from every angle of objects both in the field and in the museum, Hodgetts and community members have been documenting and creating 3-D models of Banks Island's history.
"We empower youth from the community to make the models themselves," she said.
One such artifact examined by students last week was a seal skin boot with fur inside and is too small for an adult.
The students talked about how it was made and who would have used it. They decided it must have been for a child, likely around five-years old. Sitting in a group, the six students joked about the 2,500 year-old boot.
"It's older than Lisa," cracked 13-year-old Casydie Kudlak, causing Hodgetts to laugh.
"They're a great bunch," Hodgetts said about the students.
The stories the students wrote or illustrated about the artifacts will be used with photos and 3-D models on a planned website for the archaeology project. For now, updates will still be posted to its Facebook page.
