Inuit Heritage Trust rolls out new booklets on archeology in Nunavut

You can learn more about how to use your cell phone to snap photos of archeological artifacts and sites — and lots of other things — in a series of new booklets available online at the Inuit Heritage Society website.

You’re out on the land and you see a rock, which, when you pick it up, turns out to be a very old soapstone qulliq.

You take the stone lamp home where it sits on a shelf, but then you decide that you want to know more about its age and who made it.

But you can’t exactly recall where you found the qulliq, so there are few clues to help you out.

Snow is now starting to blanket the North again, and these old objects, things people used in the past to stay warm, hunt, sew or feed their family, will soon be covered up.

But you can take some time out now and go online to read the new Inuit Heritage Trust booklets prepared for Nunavut residents and heritage workers, which you can download free online.

These IHT booklets, written for the organization by the Kitikmeot Heritage Society’s executive director, Brendan Griebel, want to strike a balance between explaining why taking artifacts from the land should be discouraged and informing heritage workers and people who have these artifacts at home how to document where they came from and take care of them properly.

Written in easy-to-understand language, the booklets do state clearly that “the rules in Nunavut do not allow artifacts to be taken home when they are found.”

But, you can take photos, even with a cell phone’s camera, the booklets explain, among many other things.

The booklets show people what details of a site or artifact to photograph so that the information can be submitted to the IHT and its database. That means IHT can tell people about artifacts without having them physically removed from the land.

The booklets also want to change the misconceptions that many Nunavummiut have about archeology: they don’t know what archaeologists do or what happens to artifacts when the items are removed during archaeological excavations.

This lack of knowledge has given root to “deep mistrust” for archeology and why archeologists dig up sites, Griebel says.

“Many informed me that Inuit have a moral responsibility to pick up artifacts on the land as a way of preventing non-Inuit from finding, taking, and owning them instead,” Griebel said in a recent talk on the booklets to the Canadian Archeologists’ Association, shared with Nunatsiaq News.

He’s also heard stories about the strong market economy for Inuit artifacts and even photographs of archaeological sites.

“It is generally understood that non-Inuit profit extensively from both of these,” Griebel said. “It should be pointed out that these beliefs do not just come from community members who have little exposure to archaeology, but also from Nunavut politicians, heritage organizations, and dignitaries.”

To build more awareness about archeology, the final IHT booklet is built as a school curriculum for students in Grades 10 to 12.

It deals with questions regarding the work of archaeologists in Nunavut, rules and regulations for archaeological sites, how to become involved with archaeological projects, and also about academic and traditional Inuit knowledge of the Arctic’s early history and people.

You can download all three booklets here or buy the booklets.

Inuktitut versions of these booklets will follow in summer 2016, the IHT website says.