INUIT VOICES
Short Title: Inuit Voices Project URL: http://nsidc.org/data/docs/arcss/arcss122/index.html Proposal URL: http://classic.ipy.org/development/eoi/proposal-details.php?id=410 Inuit Voices is an exhibit to be designed collaboratively by the University of Colorado's Museum of Natural History (CU Museum) and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), with advisors from the Iqaluit Museum in Nunavut, Canada, Inuit elders, and the US. We propose to prepare an exhibit that displays Inuit observations of environmental change in the Arctic. This exhibit will be based on research by Dr. Shari Gearheard and illustrated by objects from the CU Museum collection of Inuit artefacts. It is scheduled to open in April 2008 at the CU Museum. As one component of her research in Nunavut, Dr. Gearheard produced a highly popular interactive, multimedia CD-ROM on Inuit observations of environmental change, entitled When the Weather is Uggianaqtuq (or unpredictable), distributed by NSIDC. This product has appealed to a variety of audiences: social scientists, climate change researchers, indigenous communities, cryospheric scientists, K-12 educators, and the general public. The popularity of this product and Dr. Gearheard's extensive research inspired the collaboration between the CU Museum and NSIDC. We plan to create a temporary 'Inuit Voices' exhibit to be displayed at the CU Museum, and also two sets of travelling exhibits, one in English for the US and one translated into Inuktitut for Nunavut, Canada. Traveling museum exhibits are an effective and creative way to expose a wide range of audiences to information and perspectives from various world cultures. The exhibit size will be suitable for display in small museums, tribal colleges and libraries with limited space and budgets. The exhibit will display the Uggianaqtuq CD-ROM and allow visitors to interact with the data and information it contains. Inuit artefacts and objects will be displayed as well, so that history and present technologies are joined in one exhibit.
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