"Our names - Atiqput - are very meaningful. They are our identification.
They are our Spirits. We are named after what's in the sky for strength,
what's in the water ... the land, body parts. Every name is attached to
every part of our body and mind. Yes, every name is alive. Every name
has a meaning. Much of our names have been misspelled and many of them
have lost their meanings forever. Our Project Naming has been about
identifying Inuit, who became nameless over the years, just
"unidentified eskimos ..." With Project Naming, we have put Inuit
meanings back in the pictures, back to life." Piita IrniqFor over two
decades, Inuit collaborators living across Inuit Nunangat and in the
South have returned names to hundreds of previously anonymous Inuit seen
in historical photographs held by Library and Archives Canada as part of
Project Naming. This innovative photo-based history research initiative
was established by the Inuit school Nunavut Sivuniksavut and the
national archive.Atiqput celebrates Inuit naming practices and through
them honours Inuit culture, history, and storytelling. Narratives by
Inuit elders, including Sally Kate Webster, Piita Irniq, Manitok
Thompson, Ann Meekitjuk Hanson, and David Serkoak, form the heart of the
book, as they reflect on naming traditions and the intergenerational
conversations spurred by the photographic archive. Other contributions
present scholarly insights and research projects that extend Project
Naming's methodology, interspersed with pictorial essays by the artist
Barry Pottle and the filmmaker Asinnajaq.Through oral testimony and
photography, Atiqput rewrites the historical record created by settler
societies and challenges a legacy of colonial visualization.
