Ursus partners visit Smithsonian with members of the Inuvialuit community.

In November of 2009, Natasha led a delegation (with Cathy Cockney of Inuvialuit Cultural Resource Centre) of Inuvialuit community members from the Canadian Western Arctic, filmmakers, and anthropologists to visit a collection at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. The MacFarlane Collection is one of the earliest museum collections to be assembled in Inuvialuit territory, in the mid-19th century, by a Hudson's Bay trader named Roderick MacFarlane. The collection has been little studied or exhibited since that time, and the Inuvialuit community is keen to create better access to and knowledge of the collection. Eight Inuvialuit spent a week with the collection, studying the objects, commenting on their uses and manufacture, and identifying other individuals back home who might have further knowledge. These interactions were documented using audio and video, and a documentary about the project is underway by the Inuvialuit Communication Society. Inuvialuit student interns interviewed their Elders about the process and about the significance of the collection. The next step will be to conduct outreach work about the visit and the collection in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region in spring of 2010.