Grants and Contributions

NSERC encourages qualified Aboriginal students to apply to this program.

NSERC encourages qualified Aboriginal students to apply to this program.

The Alexis Nakota Sioux Nation will catalogue and digitize video and audio interviews with local knowledge keepers, many of whom have left this world. Archives help to support language revitalization, assertion of land rights, reclamation of aspects of identity, and recovery from attempted genocide. The project team will clarify objectives, receive archival training and implement new skills to catalogue, digitize and process archival materials for future access. The team will include staff, community members and leaders (including members of the Archives Society of Alberta), and invited archivists. The organization will acquire an archives consultant to help build local capacity and develop a plan to establish the organization’s archives.

This project highlights the contributions and cultural resilience of Inuit artists, and it will enhance public appreciation for their art. Inuit artists face unique and systemic barriers to visibility by the Canadian public. Their art form is poorly understood despite being a key piece of Canada’s national artistic identity.

The Inuit Art Foundation (IAF) archive spans the development of modern Inuit art and represents artists from all media. The archive includes every community within Inuit Nunangat (Inuit regions) and reflects the incredible range of cultural and artistic practices among Inuit artists. This project will increase awareness of and access to a greater proportion of the IAF archive.

The Pitquhirnikkut Ilihautiniq/Kitikmeot Heritage Society will digitize 1,000 35-mm slides that capture unseen moments in the lives of people, past and present, in the Central Canadian Arctic. The Laserich Collection offers insight into life in remote Inuit communities. These images span decades and capture everyday lives, people and places.

No other collection offers this volume of information and such a broad context of life in the North. It will enhance Canadian understanding of northern communities and help them to preserve and share their documentary heritage. The organization will share images through its Inuit Knowledge Bank and engage with community Elders to identify the peoples, places and content in the photographs.

As part of an audio archive preservation and access strategy, the project will digitize sound recordings from several processed archival fonds. A total of 244 recordings (133 cassettes and 111 tapes), totalling 244 hours, will be digitized and their descriptions verified. The project will ensure that metadata are entered. Low-resolution copies will become available online, and the preserved versions will be stored in a reliable digital repository: the ArchivesCanada Digital Preservation Service (ACDPS).

The Syilx Language House Association serves the Syilx Nation in training newly fluent speakers and recording Elders in the critically endangered Nsyilxcn language. For five years, the organization has successfully recorded Elders speaking in the Nsyilxcn language, and it has shared these recordings on its website and in print at schools and libraries.

The current project involves training two community members to record, interview, collect and archive several hours of spoken language. This collection will include narrative, cultural information and traditional stories in the Nsyilxcn language. The project will improve upon current archival processes, to include digital backup for long-term preservation.

The Pitquhirnikkut Ilihautiniq/Kitikmeot Heritage Society will digitize 1,000 35-mm slides that capture unseen moments in the lives of people, past and present, in the Central Canadian Arctic. The Laserich Collection offers insight into life in remote Inuit communities. These images span decades and capture everyday lives, people and places.

No other collection offers this volume of information and such a broad context of life in the North. It will enhance Canadian understanding of northern communities and help them to preserve and share their documentary heritage. The organization will share images through its Inuit Knowledge Bank and engage with community Elders to identify the peoples, places and content in the photographs.

This project highlights the contributions and cultural resilience of Inuit artists, and it will enhance public appreciation for their art. Inuit artists face unique and systemic barriers to visibility by the Canadian public. Their art form is poorly understood despite being a key piece of Canada’s national artistic identity.
The Inuit Art Foundation (IAF) archive spans the development of modern Inuit art and represents artists from all media. The archive includes every community within Inuit Nunangat (Inuit regions) and reflects the incredible range of cultural and artistic practices among Inuit artists. This project will increase awareness of and access to a greater proportion of the IAF archive.

This contribution supports a project that uses existing data collected from remote wildlife cameras, inside and outside national parks, to map occupancy and ecological connectivity for multiple focal species in a region of the southern Rocky Mountains and adjacent areas extending from Waterton Lakes National Park, north to Banff, Yoho, Kootenay, and Mount Revelstoke and Glacier National Parks.