Saved from trash in 1980s, these photos are going home to Kugaaruk

Photographs taken in the 1960s are heading back to one of the Kugaaruk families they depict, thanks to help from an amateur historian based in Nashville.

Lucy Immingark of Kugaaruk plans to display the photos at the hamlet office. (Photo courtesy of Lucy Immingark)

Jim Miller’s late grandmother discovered the photos in the mid-1980s in the trash room of her Burlington, Ont., apartment building. The nine colour images show Inuit building an igloo, drying fish and enjoying the warmth of a qulliq.

Miller said his grandmother knew they meant something to someone, but decades before the internet, finding their origin was not a simple task. The photos ended up mounted to wooden plaques and displayed on the family’s wall before Miller inherited them.

“They’ve been in our house since I was a teenager,” Miller said. “When I moved out, I took them.”

This summer, Miller took the photos out of storage at his home in Peterborough, Ont., and posted them on his wall — and on Reddit. He wanted suggestions for finding them a good home.

“I’ve often wondered if I could find out if the family is still in the community,” Miller said.

Enter Elliot Jakes, an airplane mechanic in Nashville, Tenn.

Elliot Jakes, an amateur Arctic historian based in Nashville, Tenn., shed light on photographs taken in Kugaruk in the 1960s, despite never having travelled north of Chicago. (Photo courtesy of Elliot Jakes)

Jakes, who has never been north of Chicago, describes himself as a curious Tennessean who has become somewhat of an amateur Arctic historian by exploring social media and documentaries. 

Jakes said his curiosity about the North was piqued the first time he saw videos of narwhal online. The narwhals led Jakes to dive deeper into Arctic history.

“I realized that there are a lot of people up there and I started started studying all the geography and all the villages up there,” Jakes said in a phone interview. “I just kept following everybody.”

One of the people he followed, and ultimately befriended, was Lucy Immingark, a Kugaaruk woman who maintains a popular TikTok account.

Jakes recalled a series of documentaries Immingark had shared with Jakes about the lives of Netsilingmiut, filmed between summer 1963 and winter 1965. Some of these films feature Immingark’s mother, Sidonie Nirlungayuk.

Jakes recognized the photos from the documentary series and connected Miller to Immingark.

Reached by phone in Kugaaruk last week, Immingark said she is excited to receive the collection.

“For me they are significant because in one of those photos is my father and my grandfather and the rest of the people I knew who I grew up with are also in those photos,” she said.

The photos document tender moments shared by Netsilingmiut Inuit living in the area around Kugaaruk — families that practised a nomadic lifestyle until 1968. 

One photo shows Immingark’s late father, Barthelemy Nirlungayuk, and late grandfather, Fabien Oogark, hunting seal.

They were taken while filming 21 educational films that were directed by the late filmmaker Quentin Brown, said Marc St-Pierre, collections expert with the National Film Board, in an email.

Released in 1968, the series was produced by the Education Development Center, a Massachusetts-based institution dedicated to advancing science and mathematics education.

Although the centre produced the films, editors with the National Film Board pieced them together, St-Pierre said.

The films screened in U.S. elementary schools in the 1970s as part of a program titled Man: A Course of Study. They remain available to watch for free on the National Film Board website.

Miller said he planned to ship the photos to Immingark in Kugaaruk over the August long weekend.

When she receives them, Immingark is planning to share the images with her community.

“I’m going to ask if I can display them at the hamlet building,” she said.