Grants and Contributions

Avataq recently acquired the archives of Janet and George Diveky, two educators who devoted their careers to working with Inuit and Dene communities in Nunavik, Nunavut, and the Northwest Territories starting in the 1960s.

The Diveky collection at Avataq contains documents produced and collected by Janet and George when they lived in Kuujjuaq and Inukjuak in the 1960s, and in Kimmirut, Kugaaruk, Kugluktuk, and Kangiqliniq in the 1970s. It includes audio recordings of interviews with Inuit, original documents and publications pertaining to Janet and George’s educational work and anthropological research, nearly 1 000 photographs, and dozens of artifacts.

This project aims to fully process and digitize the audio and textual records to ensure their long-term preservation. By doing so, it will make these invaluable resources accessible for the first time to Inuit community members, responding to the strong interest expressed by Nunavimmiut.

This project will create mobile digitization units staffed by post-secondary students to assist local Elders in transferring their media from cassettes, VHS tapes, film negatives, and historical documents into digital form. Intellectual property protections will be sought, and the owners of the material will be requested to participate in providing their material to a digital museum of our local history.

The key activity of the Alkw Media Society is to administer Nuxalk Radio with the mandate of promoting Indigenous language use and fluency, contributing positively to physical, mental, spiritual and emotional well-being, and providing information regarding Indigenous identity, history and culture. This project involves creating a digital library system to catalogue and store digitized items for Nuxalk community access, digitizing an estimated 100 hours of audio materials and texts and transcribing and broadcasting the materials over Nuxalk Radio.

This project includes the history of Anishinaabe communities in remote northern Ontario, located approximately 600 kilometres north of Thunder Bay and accessible only by plane or seasonal winter roads. The project aims to create a digital pathway to our history by offering online training in digital preservation skills and prioritizing the digitization of our most fragile and high-priority records, supporting our Nations’ return toward self-governance.

The materials identified for digitization include approximately 800 photographs, 150 cassettes (equivalent to roughly 75 hours), 100 film clips in mixed media formats (Super 8, 16 mm, totalling about 50 hours), 1 500 loose pages featuring text, hand-drawn maps, diagrams, and notes in ink and pencil, as well as 40 notebooks and journals containing an estimated 1 200 pages.
These records in particular capture an exceptionally dynamic time-frame in the area's history, including locations of traditional trap-lines, historical movements, cultural and archival value. Some of the stories within the audio recordings are also of particular cultural importance, containing knowledge from Elders who have passed, making these materials previously inaccessible, digitizing will provide for a deeper understanding of our history and traditional territory. These materials will also provide valuable context and commentary towards decision making as in areas where we otherwise have no documentation at all to support negotiations.

Training program consists of two deliveries of a set of four Courses.
How it works: Our courses use an on-line course management system. Courses are taught asynchronously along with scheduled virtual class meetings. Activities involve on-line and off-line participation. Our strong emphasis is on interaction between the participants and the instructors. Each course involves 3.75 hours per week (fifteen hours of work) with tutorial/coaching support to assist participants as needed to keep class actively engaged in the learning process.
Training program consists of a set of four courses which are as follows:
(1) Planning for digitization: foundations of context for cultural record
(2) Introduction for digital preservation: structure and deterioration of paper-based and multimedia materials
(3) Preservation reformatting: Creating digital collections
(4) Digital repository fundamentals, ethics and long-term sustainability
Culminating celebration of training activity; participant certificates

Building on a previous project, the Yukon Native Language Centre (YNLC) will continue the digitization of priority materials identified by 10 Yukon First Nations (YFNs) and to work with the four YFNs that were unable to participate in the initial program. This project will continue to identify and digitize priority recordings of their First Nations languages.

The project’s main goals:
1) Through collaboration with experts in digitization, the project will strengthen local YFN capacity for digitizing and archiving audiocassette recordings of YFN languages at the YNLC, an established regional hub for First nations language revitalization, documentation, and education in the Yukon.
2) Through continued collaboration with all 14 YFNs, the project will identify and improve access to high-impact audio language recordings by Elders and speakers in YNLC’s archival collections, providing valuable resources for First Nations language revitalization and education initiatives throughout the territory.

This project's main goal is to purchase digitization equipment to start the digitization process of preserving over 60 large family history scrolls, which contain handwritten family trees and the xwelmexw names found on the charts and in the family history records housed in the Stó:lo Genealogy Office. These records include handwritten interview notes, place name information, Stó:lo veteran records, and more. Digitizing and cataloguing these materials will enhance the efficiency of family research and improve accessibility.

The project focuses on preservation and skill building at the Gesgapegiag Interpretation Centre. A small steering committee of four members will be established to guide the project, along with the involvement of eight Elders. Together, they will build a network of resources to support different aspects of the project. Mentors and technical experts will also participate to assist with skill building and training in widely used preservation methods, including media migration, proper storage and handling of materials, document and photograph classification, and the use of software to restore or repair images. The project will prioritize items at risk of being lost and systematically categorize the digital collection.

As a continuation of a previous project, the next phase of Honouring our Ancestor's Gifts (HOAG2) will focus on digitizing 2 000 photos and 1 000 slides cared for by the Manitoba Indigenous Cultural Education Centre (MICEC). The collection documents the history of Indigenous advocacy and cultural revitalization in Manitoba from those who came before us. HOAG2 will resurrect the voices and knowledges of Elders, Ancestors and our teachers who have been working for generations to preserve and protect our ways of knowing and being.

Dominique Rankin, Algonquin hereditary chief and co-founder of the Kina8at organization, is the custodian of a significant archival collection, including audiovisual material, 150 audiocassettes and 40 video cassettes entirely in Anicinape. These recordings document meetings and interviews with different Elders and cultural transmitters of the Algonquin Nation of Quebec and Ontario. The collection also features approximately 2 500 photographs (prints and negatives), 700 slides, and at least 2 300 linear metres of textual documents, chronicling decades of community, cultural, and museum activities from the past half-century.

This project will digitize and describe audiovisual materials and some of the photographic and textual materials. The focus will be to prioritize the most vulnerable resources with the support of Elders who can describe them and associate them with the activities that they document, which will create opportunities for intergenerational dialogue. The initiative includes several components: completing an inventory, digitization, transcription, acquiring equipment, recruiting and training personnel in digitization and description, and making the archives accessible to the public through the Kina8at website.

The Société d’histoire du Lac-Saint-Jean is seeking to digitize and publish approximately 22,000 photos from the Jean le Photographe fonds, in order to preserve these visual archives, which bear witness to sixty years of regional history, and make them accessible to the public.
The images will be filed in the photo module of the Société d’histoire du Lac-Saint-Jean’s database, on the organization’s website. This will give researchers access to the photo bank online.

This project will ensure the preservation and accessibility of records recently added to the Stó:lo Library and Archives, for the purpose of increasing access to, and awareness of, the history of the Stó:lo Nation. The Stó:lo Nation is an organization of Stó:lo communities, which has its roots in several forerunner organizations focused on Stó:lo governance and rights and title, including participation in the modern treaty process, dating to the 1970s.