 | |
Former name | Eskimo Museum |
|---|---|
| Established | 1944 |
| Location | Churchill, Canada |
| Coordinates | 58°46′14″N94°10′01″W / 58.770421°N 94.166910°W |
| Type | Ethnographic museum |
The Itsanitaq Museum is a museum located in Churchill, Canada dedicated to Inuit culture. [1]
| | |
Former name | Eskimo Museum |
|---|---|
| Established | 1944 |
| Location | Churchill, Canada |
| Coordinates | 58°46′14″N94°10′01″W / 58.770421°N 94.166910°W |
| Type | Ethnographic museum |
The Itsanitaq Museum is a museum located in Churchill, Canada dedicated to Inuit culture. [1]
The intention with the creation of this museum was by Catholic missionaries to preserve the various artifacts of the native people of the northern part of Canada in 1944. [2] [3] The museum was founded by Jacques Volant, who held the position of curator until 1987. [4]
The museum contains some 1,300 items dating from the 1930s to the present day including sculptures, [5] artwork, tools used by the natives of this area of Canada. Some artifacts are made of stone, whale bone or ivory. [6] The museum has exhibits about the Dorset and Thule cultures. [7] [8] Among the Inuit-related exhibits are antique weapons, hunting equipment and wooden kayaks designed to navigate the Arctic Ocean. [9] [10] The museum also has exhibits on Arctic wildlife including animals such as Polar Bears, Muskox and Walrus. [11] [12] The museum has a section of books about the animals that inhabit the Arctic. [13] [14] The museum also preserves archaeological remains. [10]
Baffin Island, in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, is the largest island in Canada and the fifth-largest island in the world. Its area is 507,451 km2 (195,928 sq mi) with a population density of 0.03/km²; the population was 13,039 according to the 2021 Canadian census; and it is located at 68°N70°W. It also contains the city of Iqaluit, which is the capital of Nunavut.
The Iñupiat are a group of Indigenous Alaskans whose traditional territory roughly spans northeast from Norton Sound on the Bering Sea to the northernmost part of the Canada–United States border. Their current communities include 34 villages across Iñupiat Nunaat, including seven Alaskan villages in the North Slope Borough, affiliated with the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation; eleven villages in Northwest Arctic Borough; and sixteen villages affiliated with the Bering Straits Regional Corporation. They often claim to be the first people of the Kauwerak.
Churchill is a town in northern Manitoba, Canada, on the west shore of Hudson Bay, roughly 140 km (87 mi) from the Manitoba–Nunavut border. It is most famous for the many polar bears that move toward the shore from inland in the autumn, leading to the nickname "Polar Bear Capital of the World," and to the benefit of its burgeoning tourism industry.
The Dorset was a Paleo-Eskimo culture, lasting from 500 BCE to between 1000 CE and 1500 CE, that followed the Pre-Dorset and preceded the Thule people (proto-Inuit) in the North American Arctic. The culture and people are named after Cape Dorset in Nunavut, Canada, where the first evidence of its existence was found. The culture has been defined as having four phases due to the distinct differences in the technologies relating to hunting and tool making. Artifacts include distinctive triangular end-blades, oil lamps made of soapstone, and burins.
The culture of Greenland has much in common with Greenlandic Inuit tradition, as the majority of people are descended from Inuit. Many people still go ice fishing and there are annual dog-sled races in which everyone with a team participates.
The Sadlermiut were an Inuit group living in near isolation mainly on and around Coats Island, Walrus Island, and Southampton Island in Hudson Bay. They survived into the early 20th century and were thought by some to have been the last remnants of the Dorset culture as they had preserved a culture and dialect distinct from the mainland Inuit. Despite their culture and local traditions seeming to show combined elements of both the Dorset and Thule societies, genetic studies show no Dorset admixture and prove a sole Inuit ancestry leading many to conclude the cultural difference may be entirely due to their isolation from the mainland Inuit. Research published in 2015 found that the Sadlermiut were genetically Thule who had somehow acquired Dorset cultural features, such as stone technology. It remains a mystery how they acquired Dorset technology in the absence of obvious genetic admixture such as through intermarrying.
The Manitoba Museum, previously the Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature, is a human and natural history museum in Winnipeg, Manitoba, as well as the province's largest, not-for-profit centre for heritage and science education.
Wapusk National Park (; is Canada's 37th national park, established in 1996. The name comes from the Cree word for polar bear.
Assiniboine Park Zoo is an 80-acre (32 ha) zoo at the west end of Assiniboine Park in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. It has been best known for decades for its polar bear exhibit, of which the old enclosure was replaced in 2013 with Journey to Churchill.
Inuit art, also known as Eskimo art, refers to artwork produced by Inuit, that is, the people of the Arctic previously known as Eskimos, a term that is now often considered offensive. Historically, their preferred medium was walrus ivory, but since the establishment of southern markets for Inuit art in 1945, prints and figurative works carved in relatively soft stone such as soapstone, serpentinite, or argillite have also become popular.
Based on archeological finds, Brooman Point Village is an abandoned village in Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada. It is located in the central High Arctic near Brooman Point of the Gregory Peninsula, part of the eastern coast of Bathurst Island. Brooman was both a Late Dorset culture Paleo-Eskimo village as well as an Early Thule culture village. Both the artifacts and the architecture, specifically longhouses, are considered important historical remains of the two cultures. The site shows traces of Palaeo-Eskimo occupations between about 2000 BC and 1 AD, but the major prehistoric settlement occurred from about 900 to 1200 AD.
Inuit are a group of culturally similar Indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, and Alaska. Inuit languages are part of the Eskimo–Aleut languages, also known as Inuit-Yupik-Unangan, and also as Eskaleut. Inuit Sign Language is a critically endangered language isolate used in Nunavut.
The Inuit are an indigenous people of the Arctic and subarctic regions of North America. The ancestors of the present-day Inuit are culturally related to Iñupiat, and Yupik, and the Aleut who live in the Aleutian Islands of Siberia and Alaska. The term culture of the Inuit, therefore, refers primarily to these areas; however, parallels to other Eskimo groups can also be drawn.
The Paul H. Jensen Arctic Museum was a museum focused on the culture and environment of the Arctic in Monmouth in the U.S. state of Oregon. Located on the campus of Western Oregon University (WOU), the museum opened in 1985 with 3,000 artifacts collected by its late founder and namesake. The museum housed 5,000 artifacts and had exhibits on the wildlife of the Arctic along with displays that demonstrate the culture of the Inuit and Eskimo peoples of Alaska. The museum was one of only two museums focused on life in the Arctic located in the lower 48 states, and the only one on the West Coast. In 2013, WOU announced that the Jensen Museum would close its doors and the collections would move to the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History (MNCH) at the University of Oregon in Eugene, which also has substantial Arctic collections.
The Southern Hudson Bay taiga is a terrestrial ecoregion, as classified by the World Wildlife Fund, which extends along the southern coast of Hudson Bay and resides within the larger taiga biome. The region is nearly coterminous with the Hudson Plain, a Level I ecoregion of North America as designated by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) in its North American Environmental Atlas.
Iola Abraham Ikkidluak (1936–2003) was an Inuit sculptor from Kimmirut, Nunavut.
The Way of the Eskimo is a lost 1911 American silent drama film that portrayed the Inuit or "Eskimo" culture of northeastern Canada along the coast of Labrador. Directed by William V. Mong and produced by Selig Polyscope Company, this "photoplay" was based on a love story written by Columbia Eneutseak, a young Inuit woman who was born in the United States in 1893, in the "Esquimaux Village" exhibition at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. She, fellow Inuit performer Zacharias Zad, and William Mong costarred in the film with a supporting cast that included members of Columbia's immediate family and other Inuit players. While this production was promoted in 1911 as being filmed on location in northern Canada, it was actually shot that year at the snow-covered port town of Escanaba, Michigan, along a frozen stretch of shoreline of Little Bay de Noc, which connects to Lake Michigan.
Lost in the Arctic is a lost 1911 American silent drama film that portrayed the Inuit or "Eskimo" culture in the northern coastal area of Labrador. Directed by William V. Mong and produced by the Selig Polyscope Company, the "one-reeler" costarred Columbia Eneutseak, J. C. Smith, and also Mong. The film was not, as advertised by Selig and in trade publications in 1911, shot in the Arctic or even farther south in Labrador. It and another Selig release, The Way of the Eskimo, were produced at the same time in the same location in the United States, in Escanaba, Michigan. Both "Arctic" stories were filmed there in less than two weeks during the early winter months of 1911, staged along the frozen shoreline of Little Bay de Noc that connects to Lake Michigan.
Mark Tungilik (1913?–1986) was an Inuit sculptor from Nunavut who specialized in miniature ivory carvings.
There is a long historical tradition of research on Inuit clothing across many fields. Since Europeans first made contact with the Inuit in the 16th century, documentation and research on Inuit clothing has included artistic depictions, academic writing, studies of effectiveness, and museum collections. Historically, European images of Inuit were sourced from the clothing worn by Inuit who travelled to Europe, clothing brought to museums by explorers, and from written accounts of travels to the Arctic.