We Are Here, Sharing Stories
Library and Archives Canada
The 2017 federal budget included funding for initiatives that would help preserve and make accessible documents, photos and recordings held by Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and other collections. This has included documents from Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) and the Rosemary Gilliat Eaton fonds. We spoke to artist Heather Campbell, who has been working as an archivist on the project, to learn about what the holdings have revealed.
As an Inuk artist and former curator, this has been a dream project for me. My favourite part has been going through the old CEAC (Canadian Eskimo Arts Council) files that go back to the 1950s and are very informative about the marketing of Inuit art from between then and the 1980s. The CEAC was in charge of deciding if prints were “fit” for distribution, and I found a document that outlined the requirements for print selection. I also found a report from the first conference in which Labrador Inuit artists were invited to participate, which, as an ar tist from Nunatsiavut, was personally very exciting. Our team has also digitized more photos from the Rosemary Gilliat Eaton fonds. Gilliat Eaton was a photographer who travelled North in the early 1960s and took photos of artists in Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU, and other communities. We have found photos of artists like Kenojuak Ashevak, CC, ON, RCA (1927–2013) and Sheouak Petaulassie (1923–1961) that haven’t been made available before and will continue to post the new material we discover. – Heather Campbell