The Vatican held this Inuvialuit kayak for 100 years. Now it’s coming home
CBC
Darrell Nasogaluak can look at a kayak and know it’s from his region in the western Arctic.
"It's unique to this area and there's no other area that used them that had the same horn," he said, pointing to curved tips at the bow and stern of the kayak he’s seeing in a photo on a laptop in Inuvik, N.W.T.
"So you can identify one from a distance. When you saw people coming and you saw the kayak, you could tell it was the Inuvialuit." That was before settlements were established over a century ago.
The one in the photo has been sitting at the Vatican Museums now for 100 years.
"So it’s really well used. I mean, look at the oil stains, yeah, it’s … wow. It’s an original."
Now, this kayak is being repatriated to the Inuvialuit — and the years-long negotiations to bring it back led to a historic return of items this week from the Vatican’s vast archives.
In total, 62 sacred and cultural objects from Inuit, First Nations and Métis communities that have been held in vaults thousands of kilometres away in the Vatican Museums are being flown to Montreal arriving Saturday.
Nasogaluak is from Tuktoyuktuk, N.W.T., the area where it’s believed this kayak is from.
"Everything you needed, we had right here," Nasogaluak says of the Mackenzie Delta along the shores of the Arctic Ocean. "Our people were really in a naturally rich area, so they had a lot of time to build culture."
Like the kayak, a type of watercraft invented by Inuit.
"The craftsmanship was second to none."
His grandfather taught him how to build them and now he teaches the craft to youth in schools with the help of elders and women who still know how to sew the waterproof stitch.
Nasogaluak says the Inuvialuit used this style of kayak to chase beluga whales in the Mackenzie Delta. He’s been told stories by his wife’s grandfather how at one time, up to 250 kayaks would be in the water at once, before a pandemic hit that killed many Inuvialuit.
"It was extremely lightweight. You know, with today’s carbon-fibre technology, they can probably finally make a kayak as light as ours was. Long, slender, fast."
