Ottawa museum brings Sanikiluaq to rest of Canada
Canadian Museum of Nature exhibit features interactive displays, Inuit knowledge-sharing in a modern context
A new exhibition at Ottawa’s Canadian Museum of Nature features the culture, history and modern technology of the Inuit of Sanikiluaq. (Photo courtesy of the Canadian Museum of Nature)
A new exhibit at Ottawa’s Canadian Museum of Nature merges the unique biodiversity of the Belcher Islands with Inuit knowledge and modern technology.
Called Qikiqtait: Where Inuit Knowledge and Innovation Come Together, the exhibit invites visitors to explore the Belcher Islands, a 1,500-island archipelago known to Inuit as Qikiqtait. The region is situated in the southeast of Hudson Bay, making it Nunavut’s most southern point.
Visitors to the exhibit can use data collected by people in Sanikiluaq and uploaded to the Indigenous knowledge app SIKU to explore the region’s seasonal cycles, as well as take in videos and dioramas that showcase what life is like for people who live in the area.
SIKU was launched in 2019 by Arctic Eider Society of Sanikiluaq, a community-based registered charity. SIKU looks like Instagram but instead of sharing pictures, users share seasonal and ecological knowledge of their area. There are 40,000 SIKU users in North America and Greenland.
People can use the app to share details about things like soil erosion, the changing diets of seals or changes in floe edges.
There are “a lot of services built first for the hunter. You can check the radar to see through the clouds, you can check the floe edge, you can check how rough the ice is, you can download your base maps,” said Joel Heath, executive director of the Arctic Eider Society.
“It is an Inuit knowledge recording tool, using Indigenous knowledge classification systems,” he said.
The exhibit also shares the story of Lucassie Arragutainaq, the Arctic Eider Society chairperson, and how his work was a key component in the development of the SIKU app.
Arragutainaq pioneered a project in the 1990s called Voices from the Bay, which brought together Indigenous knowledge from all over Hudson Bay.
The project was meant to help people understand changes happening in the region, Heath said, and it eventually evolved into SIKU.
The history and importance of the common eider duck to people in Sanikiluaq plays a major role in the exhibit as well.
“[Eider] not only feeds the people, but it is also [physically] closest to people,” said Lisi Kavik-Mickiyuk, programs manager for the Arctic Eider Society, in an interview last week at the museum.
Eider down has been called the warmest feather in the world, making the duck and its down a staple resource for people in Sanikiluaq for hundreds of years.
“That’s what my mother carried me in when I was born,” Kavik-Mickiyuk said, pointing to a diorama of an Inuk woman wearing an eider parka.
Qikiqtait: Where Inuit Knowledge and Innovation Come Together, was developed in partnership between the Canadian Museum of Nature, Polar Knowledge Canada and the Arctic Eider Society.
It opened Sept. 26 and runs through September 2027.
Would be nice to have our things exhibit in our communities, we never see them in Nunavut.
If you have a Cultural center or visitors center you can always collaborate with the Inuit Heritage Trust or Culture and Heritage to do an exhibit in your community. If you initiate something in your community you can make it happen. Communities deserve to see their own history in their own town with the help of Elders who can transfer knowledge to our younger generation.