100-year-old loon dance hat returned to Cambridge Bay, Nunavut

Yahoo

3 days ago

After a lengthy repatriation process, a valued loon dance hat has been returned to Cambridge Bay, Nunavut.
The hat, made of caribou hide and sinews with loon feathers and a loon beak in its centre, is worn in a freestyle dance called Akkuarmiujut, said Emily Angulalik, executive director of the Kitikmeot Heritage Society.
When you wear it, "you want to become quick like the ermine as you dance…. You want to sound as loud as the loon when the loon calls," said Angulalik. "So that is a harmonious way of living, like we live in harmony with the land and animals."
This particular loon dance hat had been in the possession of Imperial Oil, which has been operating in Canada for about 145 years and has a collection of Indigenous items.
It's unclear how long the company had the hat, or how it acquired it in the first place.
For the last decade, Imperial Oil has been working with Calgary's Glenbow Museum to return the items in its collection to the communities they came from.
When asked how many objects it has, the company didn't directly respond. In an email, a company spokesperson said Imperial Oil doesn't have clear records for each item, but that it is "committed to reconciliation and to working respectfully with Indigenous Peoples. Any future returns will be guided by community leadership and done in collaboration with partners like the Glenbow Museum."
The Glenbow brought the loon dance hat into the museum about five years ago so it could dust it off and properly store it while researching its origins.
The museum estimates that the hat is about 100 years old.
Mackenzie Brown, the Glenbow's executive adviser of Indigenous engagement, said some "telltale signs" pointed them to the Kitikmeot region. They knew it was a loon dance hat, which meant it came from the North. The hat's style — the thickness of the caribou materials and addition of loon feathers — further narrowed their scope.
They showed the hat to elders in the Kitikmeot, who remembered seeing loon dance hats in this style and stories of hats like it. The museum worked with the Kitikmeot Heritage Society to get the hat back to Cambridge Bay.
Cambridge Bay was excited to receive it, and held a repatriation celebration at the Luke Novoligak Community Hall on Wednesday to honour the hat's return.
When the hat was unveiled, elders got to see it first.
"As children, they remember seeing their grandparents, their grandfathers or their fathers, wearing a dance hat, and how they danced wearing a similar loon hat," said Angulalik, with the Kitikmeot Heritage Society. "So it did bring a lot of memories for our elders."
Brown joined the celebration in Cambridge bay. She recalled one man speaking about how his family had a loon dance hat, "and that that was why he got back into drum dance, because he had grown up with these stories, hearing about this sacred hat."
"When you repatriate an item, it's not just bringing an item back home. It's actually revitalizing cultures that have been suppressed or stories that have been missing from community for sometimes 100 years," she said.
The hat will be displayed in Cambridge Bay. Angulalik said an elder had the idea of making replicas of it for the cultural centre, the elders' centre and the school.