David Serkoak, left, stands with Hugh Adsett, Canada’s Ambassador to the Kingdom of the Netherlands, who holds a drum Serkoak created specifically to donate to the embassy of Netherlands. (Photo courtesy of David Serkoak)
Nunavut elder hopes Ahiarmiut artifacts can return to Canada
David Serkoak hopes a collection of items currently kept in Europe will one day be available for viewing
An Arviat elder who recently went to Europe to view Inuit artifacts from a private collection says he hopes the items will one day be returned to Canada.
David Serkoak left in mid-May to spend 10 days in Brussels, the capital city of Belgium, looking at artifacts collected from the Ahiarmiut from Ennadai Lake by the late Geert van den Steenhoven during the 1950s.
Steenhoven was a Dutch law professor who studied Inuit legal traditions in the 1950s. He died in 1998.
Serkoak’s journey overseas to see the items was years in the planning.
“I think it’s been almost two years from today that I learned there might be some photographs and some artifacts that were traded from Ahiarmiut at Ennadai Lake in the summer of 1955 by Mr. Steenhoven,” Serkoak said in an interview.
The Ahiarmiut were inland Inuit who lived along the Kazan River, near Baker Lake.
A retired school teacher and principal, Serkoak formerly promoted Inuit art from local carvers and was also an instructor at Nunavut Arctic College and a curator at the British Museum of Mankind in England.
He said items in the collection included soapstone carvings, caribou antlers, hunting and fishing tools, clothing, children’s toys and a huge drum.
Items from the collection pictured here include knives, a child’s toy gun, a scraper, and a qulliq. (Photo courtesy of David Serkoak)
During the 1950s, the Ahiarmiut experienced numerous forced relocations by the Canadian government from their homelands in Nunavut’s interior around Ennadai Lake.
In 2018, the federal government agreed to a $5.75-million settlement for the harms the Ahiarmiut endured. In January 2019, Carolyn Bennett, then-minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, apologized to Ahiarmiut on behalf of the federal government.
Serkoak said that according to Ahiarmiut elders, Steenhoven stayed with a family at Ennadai Lake for approximately six weeks in a little tent.
The family he stayed with couldn’t pronounce his name, so they called him “Tupilik,” meaning the man with the tent.
During that time, Steenhoven managed to collect the many items which now are usually kept carefully stored in a unit in Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
Serkoak said the length of time leading up his visit helped him to mentally prepare, and he enjoyed viewing the artifacts.
He recognized the work of the soapstone and antler carvings, and said a few are likely the signature work of his late father, Andy Miki.
“A few times I sort of feel many of my elders that are no longer with us today, and I know a few things that were made by Ahiarmiut elders I know from the past,” Serkoak said of the items.
“So I hope to see them again and help them to put them on display somewhere.”
He said he hopes the artifacts can be brought to a community that has a proper facility and is accessible to Nunavummiut, such as a gallery in Manitoba or Ontario.
“I think all of these items are not being viewed by the general public at the moment,” Serkoak said.
“But I think if something could be arranged officially, like getting some of these items on a loan basis, at least to Canada.”
He’s a friendly guy. David is cool guy.
The Ennadai relocation is definitely a black spot in Canada’s history. My understanding is that the people of Ennadai Lake were located in a caribou migration route and existed largely on that source of nutrition. They were moved at one point to the Henik Lakes where food was scarce and Inuit died. Eventually, any remaining Inuit from the Ennadai area ended up on the coast, mostly in Arviat.
“Steenhoven managed to collect the many items” is cagey journalist speak to cover up the fact that he almost certainly purchased them, or perhaps traded for them.
Stop trying to manipulate people into thinking there is a grievance where there isn’t one. Having artifacts in the museum collections and dispays of other countries is a plus, not a minus, people can learn about inuit and their lives that way. If those artifacts had stayed in Canada, they’d be long gone by now, they were just daily items to the people who sold them. The only reason the activists can want them back now is because someone from the outside world bothered to purchase and preserve them.
You are lashing out at a phantom here.
The article quotes Serkoak saying “there might be some photographs and some artifacts that were traded from Ahiarmiut at Ennadai Lake…”
It also mentions that he would like to see some of them loaned to a gallery in Ontario or Manitoba, a common practice with historical items such as these.
Reality; it sounded that you are lonely and angry person.
I was 4-5 yrs old during the extreme difficult years i the interior mainland, military was partly to blame took our traditional land wanted us out of the immediate area so Diefenbaker Conservatives did the dirty work, many starved, if Saskatchewan Cree did not help our tribe, we would had been classified as stone age people vanished. Our remaining ppl, our fathers and mothers worked hard to survive, when you’re at death’s doors, you do anything to survive, and lately; thank you David my friend for keeping this hardship era alive. History is not forgotten. It has an voice.
Ennadai Lake is “QAMANIQJUAQ: in our language, this elder should take advantage of his career background and visual history education as a way of bringing it home.
Wrong name.