January 1, 2011

Research Assistant Position

*This RA position has been filled. Thank you for your interest!*

Study: “Inuvialuit-Smithsonian Virtual Exhibit Project”.

Start date: Immediate

End date: April 15 2011, with possible extension through Summer 2011.

Hours: 10 hours/week

Position: Research assistant to work with Dr. Hennessy and research team members to develop a virtual museum exhibit featuring a collection from the Smithsonian Institution in collaboration with members of the Inuvialuit community of the western Arctic. The Research Assistant will:

• Log audio and video recordings of interviews
• Catalogue photographs related to the project
• Transcribe English-language selections of recordings
• Work with Dr. Hennessy, team members, and web designers to select and prepare media for web exhibit
• Prepare presentations for community virtual exhibit consultations
• Maintain and administer research activity within the Reciprocal Research Network’s collaborative research spaces

Qualifications*:

• Video editing skills (Final Cut Pro)
• Experience with transcription/media logging
• Previous research or course work related to video, new media images, web design and/or museum studies, anthropology, communication
• Interest in First Nations and Inuit culture and heritage
• Excellent oral and written English language skills
• Excellent organizational skills

(*We are willing to train the right person if they do not have experience in all of these areas)

Research Project Overview:

Objectives: The goals of this project are to facilitate the access of Inuvialuit people of the Canadian Western Arctic to the Smithsonian Institution’s MacFarlane Collection, and to document, disseminate, and transmit their knowledge about the collection.

Background: The MacFarlane Collection is a collection of nearly 300 ethnographic objects purchased by a Hudson’s Bay trader named Roderick MacFarlane from Inuvialuit people of the Canadian Western Arctic during the 1860s. This collection is the earliest from Inuvialuit territory, and was assembled at a time when Inuvialuit populations were still living a vibrant land-based lifestyle. The collection has been the subject of limited research and exhibition, and few of its items have ever been circulated amongst or studied by either Inuvialuit or outside researchers. The collection was recently photographed, digitized, and made available through an innovation online museum collections portal called the Reciprocal Research Network (http://rrnpilot.org).

Project Description: Our team of Inuvialuit elders, youth, educators, and anthropologists from the north and the south conducted a week-long workshop at the Smithsonian Institution in November 2009 to interact with and document knowledge about the MacFarlane Collection. Video producers from the Inuvialuit Communications Society documented the workshop. In June 2010, we conducted outreach activities in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region to share our experiences through school visits and community information meetings, and to determine how best to document more knowledge and disseminate it to the wider Inuvialuit community. In the fall of 2010, Inuvialuit researchers conducted interviews with Elders to document local knowledge about the items in the collection, and produce curatorial descriptions of the objects.

The knowledge generated during documentation activities will be transcribed, analyzed, and used in the production of a virtual exhibit that describes the project, Inuvialuit interest in and interaction with the collection, traditional and curatorial information about the objects in the collection, and create a forum for Inuvialuit and other researchers to view, comment on, and add to the knowledge gathered to date. The web exhibit will be launched in Inuvik in June, 2011.

If you are interested, please contact Dr. Hennessy for an initial discussion of the position: hennessy_kate@sfu.ca. Please put “RA Job Posting” as the subject.