Century-old loon hat brought home to Cambridge Bay
Commemorative event attracts 200 people hoping for a glimpse of the hat
Elders gather during a community event Aug. 6 dedicated to the repatriation of a loon dance hat in Cambridge Bay. (Photo courtesy of Mackenzie Brown/Glenbow)
The loon dance hat is on display during an Aug. 6 celebration that brought together 200 people in Cambridge Bay. (Photo courtesy of Mackenzie Brown/Glenbow)
After a nearly decade-long repatriation process, a 100-year-old dance hat with loon beak has been returned to Cambridge Bay, which was cause for celebration.
“It brought childhood memories for our elders,” said Emily Angulalik, executive director of Kitikmeot Heritage Society.
The hat, made of caribou hide with a loon beak in its centre, was displayed Aug. 6 during the community celebration to mark its return. More than 200 people came out to commemorate the event.
The elders remembered their fathers and grandfathers who used to wear hats like this one while performing Akkuarmiujut, a festive “freestyle” dance that required the dancer to be as quick as an ermine and as loud as a loon when it makes its howling call, Angulalik said.
It’s unclear at what point the hat had left Inuit Nunangat, but it wound up in the collection of Imperial Oil, an oil company based in Calgary.
“A lot of people over the last 150 years have acquired things from Indigenous communities, whether it came through Indian agents or priests, or residential schools, or people doing nursing,” said Joanne Schmidt, curator for Indigenous studies and world cultures for Glenbow Museum in Calgary.
Often, communities would be pressured into selling their ceremonial pieces for financial reasons or because they were discouraged by the government from maintaining their traditional practices.
The hat was brought to Glenbow Museum in 2016 with the goal to give it back to Inuit, Schmidt said. Representatives of the museum worked for years trying to identify the origins of the hat.
“We looked through our collections and reached out to other museums,” Schmidt said.
“It’s researching in books, it’s looking at online articles, checking for photographs of similar things or of people wearing similar things.”
It’s still unclear which community would be the closest descendant of the Inuit who made the loon hat, but researchers identified that it came from the Kitikmeot Region.
The hat will soon be on display at the library of the Kitikmeot Heritage Society — Angulalik is still setting up the right spot for it.
The society also hopes to make a couple of replicas of the hat for there future projects.
“This would really enhance more cultural interest and possibly a way of cultural revitalization,” Angulalik said.
“Often, communities would be pressured into selling their ceremonial pieces for financial reasons”
The flip side of this is that visitors to the community, to this day, are pressured into buying things for the seller’s financial reasons. Inuit have been offering items for sale, to anyone who will buy them, for a long, long time. In some communities the sellers can be quite aggressive, and are very reluctant to take no for an answer. It’s nice to know that the buyers who hand over the cash will be posthumously guilt-tripped for having made the purchase to help the seller out.
Great that the hat is back in Nunavut. But what’s up with all those plastic water bottles on the table? Expensive to bring them in; limited capacity — if any — to recycle them. Are there no glasses or clean water in Cam Bay?
It may have been made by Inuit that historically lived in the area, namely Cambridge Bay, Bernard Harbour, Reid Island or Kugluktuk. Many of those affiliated and make the decisions with this special occasions are settlers from another areas. It would be wonderful to trace the artifact or repatriate it back to the descendent. History acquired from the originators of that land, they should share what they know. It’s an interesting piece.
That’s a Yellow-billed Loon beak on the hat. That alone would exclude the eastern Arctic from its origin.
Baffin Island, for example, has three loon species: the Common Loon, the Black-throated or Arctic Loon, and the Red-throated Loon. They all have dark beaks, and the Red-throated Loon is a much smaller bird.