Thank you for the invitation to appear before you. I considered speaking in English, but I am now going to speak in Inuktitut, since you have an interpreter. I'm very proud that I'll be able to talk in my language, in Inuktitut, while I'm in Ottawa.
There are two things I'll be talking about in regard to Bill C-391 and respecting Nunavut. Briefly, I will say that when I'm reading this bill, it indicates that artifacts can be used for educational purposes. This is very important, in my view. It is very important to us Inuit that Inuit artifacts be inside Nunavut, which they are not. They are housed somewhere else.
The young people should see their own way now in Canada. There is a history of shame for being indigenous people. When we see up close the intricate stitching of the Inuit and how they put tools together—for example combs and other tools—it reminds us how indigenous Inuit were distinct from other people. They were ingenious. This would be the case in Nunavut.
This is a commendable aspiration, as we have nothing in Nunavut. This plan would be very useful to us if there were to be a museum in Nunavut. At the moment, how are we going to use the repatriated cultural property? My concern is that despite the national strategy, there is no facility, and no appropriate measures to protect this cultural property have been implemented.
As we know, Nunavut became a territory in 1993 as a result of the Nunavut agreement, specifically article 4. It's been 25 years since the Nunavut Act and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act received royal assent from the Canadian Parliament.
In Nunavut, there is no territorial heritage centre that can house Inuit cultural property. As such, there are more than 140,000 Nunavut artefacts in storage, including here in Ottawa. The Government of Nunavut has been spending millions since 1999 to store them outside of Nunavut. The need for such a facility was included in the Nunavut agreement. Article 33.2.4 states:
There is an urgent need to establish facilities in the Nunavut Settlement Area for the conservation and management of a representative portion of the archaeological record.
In addition, to highlight the need for facilities, the Nunavut agreement established the Inuit Heritage Trust, which is tasked with the safekeeping and safe use of property entrusted to it.
The establishment of a territorial facility has been in the works with the Nunavut government since 2001. In 2006, Nunavut Tunngavik, the Inuit Heritage Trust, and the Nunavut government announced that the territorial facility would be located in Iqaluit. With many competing infrastructure needs, the project was shelved in 2011, and funds that had been budgeted for this were redirected to other projects.
The sense of Inuit is important to us. In 2014, the Inuit Heritage Trust had been working with the Qikiqtaaluk Corporation on the heritage centre project with the intention of bringing home Nunavut Inuit artifacts and building the facility on the Inuit's own lands.
Currently, the creation of the Nunavut heritage project is estimated at a cost of $70 million to $90 million. At our annual general meeting in 2017, Nunavut Tunngavik committed $5 million toward this project, and the Qikiqtani Inuit Association committed the same—$5 million for this new heritage centre to be built inside Nunavut.
Thank you very much for listening to my comments.