Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I spoke about the artists and the stories behind their artwork and where we live and what my mother has told me in the stories. I can fondly remember her telling me about putting my jacket together and there are many stores out there in the Northwest Territories.
I want to ask the Minister of ITI in his document on supporting the local artists in the Northwest Territories, there is an accounting collection project that’s happening within this department that’s about going to the communities to collect stories. I see there are some communities. Is there going to be an annual report or is he going to each community? You know it would be certainly nice to hear people talk about the moose hair tufting or the birchbark basket making or just know what do they do and how they put this work to life that supports their own culture and their way of doing things. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The department continues to support the advancement of arts and crafts across the Northwest Territories. We have a new program called the High Procurement Program where we can get out and get tanned hides and ensure that they get in the hands of artists and craft makers around the Northwest Territories. This is something that we feel is going to be very successful for artists and artisans across the territory to enable them to get to work with hides and fur products from across the Northwest Territories and incorporate those into their artwork. Thank you.
That’s a good initiative. I want to ask the Minister, in one of the projects do you sit down with an artist that tells you and documents why they do this type of work we call art? For them it’s love of their skill and they develop it. Why do women and men sit and why do they make moose skin boats that go to Deline? Why do they bead? What’s the document? Why do we sit down and make birchbark baskets, or go up to Ulukhaktok and why do they make these prints? What’s the story behind the art? What’s the real meaning?
Thank you. I think what the Member is getting at could be incorporated, and will be incorporated, in our Aboriginal Tourism Strategy. I mentioned this yesterday in the House. It is something that a lot of other jurisdictions across the country are watching as it unfolds.
We want to increase awareness and support for Aboriginal tourism amongst Aboriginal communities. We want to improve skills for Aboriginal businesses involved in the Aboriginal tourism industry. What the Member is talking about fits perfectly into this type of strategy because when people come here to visit the Northwest Territories they want to hear a story. They want to hear why that person sits there and builds a moose skin boat in the community and the community gets together to build a moose skin boat. That’s why the movie played at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre for years on the moose skin boat project and it’s very important that that type of story is incorporated in an Aboriginal Tourism Strategy for the Northwest Territories. Again, that’s why we’re working with communities across the territory to ensure that happens. Thank you.
Mr. Ramsay gets my point and that’s, for example, building a moose skin boat. When I saw that the other day with some of the Members here, I certainly had a sense of sadness and pride in a skill that was once and was our means of survival and our love of the land.
I want to ask the Minister, in the collection and the documenting of our artists and their stories, to date there has been a collection from Yellowknife, Inuvik, Tuktoyaktuk, Ulukhaktok, Aklavik, Tsiigehtchic and Fort McPherson, and over 100 registered artists from these communities had the opportunity to share. Are we going to see some of this documentation such as for the Sahtu or the Deh Cho or Tu Nedhe or any other regions, Tlicho, that have this documentation and we can sit down and say that’s why people in that region do it this way because that’s the meaning behind the art? It’s the meaning behind the art. It’s like finding the meaning behind Michelangelo’s paintings.
When we first brought the Aboriginal Tourism Champions together, one of the first meetings was called Sharing Our Culture. What the Member is talking about is very important. It’s a discussion that I will commit to having with the Minister of ECE. I believe the museum is doing some work in that regard and we’ll certainly report back to the Member on what I find out from ECE. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This can be also an educational process. If you look, for example, in the Sahtu, if you look at the fish scale artwork done in Fort Good Hope or the fish nets made out of willows in Colville Lake or the beading in Deline or the moose skin boat in Tulita, they all have meaning behind it. It would be nice to have a CD at the end of the project so kids can take it and then they can understand. Visitors can listen to it and say this is the meaning behind the art for this region; this is why they do this art.
I’d like to ask the Minister if that’s something that he can bring to the Arts Strategy to look at and say bring up these CDs so we can learn about the artist and the work behind the art.
Again, it’s very important that we keep the stories alive and we keep the culture alive, and that’s only going to be done if we preserve that and get it done one way or another. I know there are maybe opportunities through the school curriculum, maybe, to have that story told over and over again and become, eventually, part of a school curriculum.
Again, I made a commitment to speak to the Minister of ECE. I will do that and get back to the Member.
Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.
