New video installation captures youth perspective on Nunavut

10-year-old École des Trois-Soleils students Anais Moore, left, Aura Kwon and Emmy Gauthier helped make a video for a new exhibit called “Voices from Nunavut” which opened at the Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum, May 30. (PHOTOS BY BETH BROWN)

Nunavut Education Minister Paul Quassa speaks in Iqaluit May 30 at the opening of a video installation which shows life in Nunavut’s 25 communities.

Deborah Qitsualik, left, and Patrick Aula listen to a video from Cambridge Bay at the Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum, May 30.

If you’re in Iqaluit, you can now learn what’s best about Nunavut, according to students in the territory, through a series of 27 short videos.

A video installation, called “Voices from Nunavut,” which opened at the Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum in Iqaluit May 30, shows life in Nunavut’s 25 communities.

“The videos are representative of what Nunavut students have to say about what is special about their community,” said Cathy McGregor, chair of the museum society board, at the opening.

As many as 5,800 photographs and videos were submitted for the project—sometimes as much as three hours of footage from certain communities, lead video editor Cathi Saunders told Nunatsiaq News. So the content was condensed into videos that run between five and six minutes, she said.

“We decided no child or elder would not make it in. We held to that,” she said, even though there were around 62 children in footage submitted from Baker Lake.

In the 27 videos, loaded on tablets—with three devoted to Iqaluit—viewers can see what it’s like to go ice fishing in Kugluktuk, learn how to skin a duck in Sanikiluaq, hear Cambridge Bay students sing “O Canada” in Inuinnaqtun and listen to an interview with an elder in Gjoa Haven that is translated by the woman’s young granddaughter.

“Some have no speaking in them and they are still lovely. You hear the crunch of the snow, dogs barking and people laughing as they sew,” she said.

A $288,000 portion of Nunavut’s Canada 150 fund, allotted by the federal government in October to help the territory celebrate the country’s birthday, helped pay for the exhibit.

Nunavut’s departments of education and economic development and transportation also gave money to the project.

“What a joy it is to know that youth of our communities continue to be proud of our culture and heritage,” Education Minister Paul Quassa told the audience at the opening, which included Nunavut Commissioner Nellie Kusugak and Nunavut’s health minister, George Hickes.

The exhibit will be on display in Iqaluit for the month of June before it is sent to the Yukon in early July. Exhibit curator Gyu Oh told Nunatsiaq News the video installation may also travel to larger centres such as Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal and Winnipeg.

All videos contain subtitles in the four languages of Nunavut: Inuktitut, Inuinnaqtun, English and French.