Thank you, Madam Chair.
My name is Eva Aariak and I am the president of Inuit Heritage Trust, based out of Iqaluit. Iqaluit is the capital city of Nunavut that was created in 1999. I'm very pleased to be here with our executive director, William Beveridge. Inuit Heritage Trust represents 27,000 Nunavut Inuit and receives its mandate from article 33 of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement between Inuit and the Government of Canada.
I am sorry to say though that I don't have solid information about our museum because we don't have one in Nunavut. I'm going to elaborate a little bit more about that. I agree so much with many of the comments that the first speaker just said, in terms of how lively and inspirational museums are and I'm going to elaborate a little bit more on that as well.
Within the territory, the Inuit Heritage Trust represents Inuit interests on issues that relate to heritage, archeology, ethnographic resources, and traditional place names. William will be handing out, to each and every one of you, the map that this Inuit Heritage Trust has been working on over the last 20 years or so. This also includes spiritual places, of course, in our traditional sense.
The Nunavut agreement is the largest indigenous land claim settlement in Canadian history. Nunavut has 25 communities and the size of the territory is about one fifth of the land mass of Canada, or three time zones. Nunavut is the only jurisdiction without a designated heritage centre. Article 33 of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement identifies the need to promote, protect, and preserve the natural and cultural heritage in Nunavut. The need for the territorial centre has been recognized for decades. It means so much to the people to have such a facility to showcase our rich history and culture. It has a direct impact on education, career development, tourism, and so on.
Our smaller communities have a very small scale of a building that they will showcase what they have in the communities, but in the territory, we don't have such a heritage centre to warehouse over 400,000 artifacts that depict the rich traditional knowledge and skills of our ancestors. Where are all these artifacts stored? They are not in Nunavut, unfortunately. That's the initiative that we've been fighting for.
These artifacts that rightfully belong to Nunavut are housed in various places, such as the Prince of Wales Heritage Centre in Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories, Winnipeg, Ottawa, and other jurisdictions where there is a proper facility to store them. There is no such facility in Nunavut to keep them safe for years to come, so that our own children, grandchildren, and the next generation would have access to.
Museums are very much influencing our young people. What I'm wearing today is inspired by traditional design of our ancestors, but our youth today are very creative in adapting from what was and making it into modern contemporary art per se and design.
Can you imagine? If only these young artists and designers we had in Nunavut had access to see the true traditional designs that our skilled ancestors created. It's only with what they know and can see from their parents and grandparents that they are inspired, creating wonderful garments, jewellery, implements, and so on.
There is much stake in having a place where schoolchildren, youth, and even—I'm not so young any more—mine and William's age group are always intrigued. Every time we go to a jurisdiction like Yellowknife or here, we are invited to see our stuff, our artifacts, and the clothing, tools, and implements that have been kept safe in the dark, in the drawer. Whenever there is a drawer that opens and you see all these artifacts, these beautiful creations of our ancestors, it always hits your heart.
I can imagine how touching it would be for our own children and grandchildren and the next generations to come to be able to enjoy what we have briefly seen in various jurisdictions. It's very important to our territory to have such a facility.
It is our hope and dream to be able to showcase artifacts in our own homeland, when someday a Nunavut heritage centre can finally become reality. Our heritage centre is very much working with Inuit organizations in Nunavut. We are continually trying to outreach to other entities, including the Government of Canada. We had wonderful meetings with government officials a few weeks ago here in Ottawa, explaining what we are doing. We will be providing the presentation that we gave when we were here once it's translated, and you'll have access to that.
We have 25 small communities ranging in population from 450 to 3,000, depending on where you are in the territory. They are trying hard to showcase their culture. To do that, they solicit a little money from the Government of Nunavut; they fundraise and so on, so that they can have a small place for visitors and youth and the community to have a little showcase. That is nowhere near what is needed in terms of a humidity-controlled, well-established facility, where we would be welcoming our rich cultural heritage information and so on. I'm talking more about the fact that we don't have such a facility, but I would very much like to entertain your questions for deeper information on what you want to know.
Thank you, Madam Chair.