Recovering Indigenous knowledge

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"The important thing is to have the collection available for Northerners to see so that people in Nunavut can use the collection in school, so they can better understand their history."

Norman Vorano, Queen's University art history professor

Recovering Indigenous knowledge

How can our museums play a vital role in the recuperation of Indigenous knowledge, culture, and well-being? In 1964, the artist and arts advisor in Cape Dorset, Terry Ryan, travelled around North Baffin Island and invited Inuit men and women to draw anything. The result—more than 1,800 drawings—is an incomparable snapshot of Inuit history, thoughts, and traditional knowledge, created during a time of profound upheaval.

Queen’s University professor of art history, Norman Vorano, is working with North Baffin communities and the Canadian Museum of History, where the collection is now held, to develop an exhibition, followed by a digital network that enables cross-cultural, intergenerational research on this collection to promote Indigenous language, cultural research, and knowledge.