Last week my colleague Vanessa drew my attention to the Atiku portal, and I spent an enjoyable afternoon looking through it.
Atiku is a multidisciplinary international resource for researchers and students, members of northern Indigenous communities, public and private sector stakeholders, and Web users who want to learn about Northern and Arctic issues, Hosted on the Institut nordique du Québec website, you can access it in either English or French.
So what does the word Atiku mean? In Innu, Atiku (Atikw in Naskapi and Cree) means “caribou”, an animal that plays a central role in Indigenous cultures in many northern communities. The project’s logo is a stylized caribou on a blue background.
Atiku was created as a collaboration between l’Institut nordique du Québec (INQ) and the libraries of Concordia University, Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), McGill University, Université Laval, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM), as well as Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ).
Resources are grouped into three thematic collections; Studying The North, First Peoples of the North, and General Public.
Studying the North is a great place to find general histories, research guides, databases, and books on racism, colonialism, indigeneity, and many other topics. In some cases, it offers a link to a PDF of the resource, in other cases, it directs users to a library where it can be found.
The First Peoples of the North collection was developed for Indigenous communities and students and researchers in Indigenous Studies. Here one can find books, statistical collections, language resources, films, visual arts, and photo collections.
The General Public collection includes general interest resources about the North and the Arctic, including Indigenous literature, travelogues, climate change resources, encyclopaedias, atlases, essays, maps, and films.
What an amazing resource!
Catherine Fisher, blogger
Image: Blizzard in the Antarctic, U.S. Antarctic Service, 953111. May 14, 1941. La Press Collection, BAnQ Archives: Photographs: Antarctica and expeditions of various explorers
