• About
• The documentation center
  • Archival Centre
  • Library
  • Archival storage & donations
  • Consultation and reproduction
• Genealogy
  • About genealogy
  • Charts of kinship terms
  • Dictionary of names
  • Methodology
• The collections
• Place names
  • Nunatop : Inuit place names
  • Activities

Research, Library and Archives

Archival Centre

The archival centre contains texts, most of which are from anthropology collections, audio archives (oral histories based on about 500 interviews carried out between 1959 and today), visual archives (Super8 movies from the 1970s), photographic archives (25,000 historic photographs dating from 1870 to 1985), and 1,200 drawings by Tuumasi Kudluk on the theme of traditional life and knowledge of the Nunavimmiut. It also contains transcriptions of materials from the Library and Archives Canada, the Hudson Bay Company Archives, and the archives of Revillon Frères. Together, these materials give a picture of the history and traditional life of the Inuit of Nunavik, and the many changes their lives have undergone since the beginning of the 20th Century.

Key components of the Archival Centre:

• Oral History :
  TIKI oral history project, (1977-1979)
  Avataq Oral History Project (1985-1986)
  Interviews concerning traditional medicine (1983-1990)
  The Puurtaq Project (1996-1999)
• Drawings by Tuumasi Kudluk (Kangirsuk) (1984-1987)
• Original collections of photographs by: Peter Murdoch, Gerald McKenzie, Corp. C.K. McLean, Donat Savoie, Frederica Knight, Louis Mercier, Père Kees Vespeek
• Reproductions of texts by Père Jules Dion, Docteur William Willmott, Professor Bernard Saladin d’Anglure. More than 80 Nunavimmiut have also contributed documents, including some entire collections: Dorothy Mesher, Daisy Watt, Betsy Kasadluak, Ida Watt
• Reproductions of materials from institutions such as the Hudsons Bay Company Archives, the Library and Archives Canada, the Archives of Révillon Paris, the Notman and Deschâtelets Archives, and Queen’s University

Did you know? The movie "Nanook of the North," filmed by Robert Flaherty in 1922 in Inukjuak, is generally considered the first full-length "documentary" ever made. Descendents of the Hudson Coast Inuit who starred in the film are still living today in communities all along the coast. The photography collection in Avataq’s documentation centre Include photographs of these first Inuit "movie stars."