Cara Loverock
Northern News Services
Published Friday, February 11, 2008

KUGLUKTUK - When Danielle Adjun had to pick a topic for the Kugluktuk high school heritage fair, she chose something she had experienced - Kekerton Island.

She visited the island, located approximately 50 kilometres south of Pangnirtung, during the summer and kept a journal while there.

Keisha Nivingalok, James Bolt and Courtney Egotak are Grade 7 students who won second place in the fair for their Drum Dancing project. - photo courtesy of Attila Csaba

Kekerton was a whaling camp in the 1800s and is now home to a territorial park.

"I studied the island and took lots of pictures," said Adjun, who earned first place at the fair. "I wanted to find out more about the bowhead whale so I looked on the Internet."

The heritage fair, held on Jan. 31, was a way to celebrate the history and culture of a Nunavut community.

"(It's) to promote Canadian heritage and Canadian culture," said Maurice Randell, a Grade 9 teacher who organized the event. "It's kind of like a science fair."

Topics included historical events, like the story of Uluksuk and Sannsiak, two Inuit who were arrested for the murder of two Catholic priests in the 1920s.

Second place went to three students in Grade 7: Courtney Egotak, Jane Bolt and Keisha Nivingalok.

The group presented a project on drum dancing and dressed in traditional clothing.

Prizes were also awarded to Vicki Niptanatiak and Carmen Aviak for third place and to Ian Taptuna and Kathleen Hokanank and her partner Carla Algona for fourth and fifth place, respectively.

The event was part of the school's social studies program. Fourteen projects went to the competition for judging.

The first and second place winners will be advancing to the territorial competition, and the projects will be uploaded to the Internet.

From there five winners will take part in a national Historica Fair competition in Victoria this summer.

The six judges in the Kugluktuk competition included members of the school board, a community member and an elder.

"I'm very thankful for the judges. They took it very seriously," Randell said.

Randell added that he was impressed with the amount of research and effort the students put into the projects.

"We're going to keep the projects and maybe in a few weeks put them up in the hallway," he said.