Inuvialuit Piuyausiat Program
Winner of the RGD In-House Design award of distinction 2024
BRIEF:
create a publication that acts as both an event schedule + a tool for cultural revitalization
creative director & designer: Jason Lau/ics
Illustrator: Kyle Natkusiak Aleekuk
Project manager: tamara Voudrach/ics
collaborators: Lucy & Donald Kuptana, The Northern Games Society, Kata Kuhnert
ART DIRECTION
Print DESIGN
design consultation
community consultation
Inuvialuit Piuyausiat (Northern Games) are a category of Inuit traditional sports played to practice survival skills on the land; they have been an integral part of Inuvialuit (Western Arctic Inuit) culture since time immemorial.
In 2023, Tusaayaksat designed the souvenir program for the Northern Games Society’s “Inuvialuit Piuyausiat Youth Development Event”, which took place in Tuktuuyaqtuuq (Tuktoyaktuk, NT) from July 19-24. This momentous inaugural youth event was created to facilitate intergenerational Inuvialuit Traditional Knowledge sharing, in revitalizing and strengthening the Games and its related cultural practices. The goal of this design project was to create and distribute a special commemorative event program that was informative, culturally relevant, as well as appealing and engaging for Northern and Indigenous youth athletes who would be in attendance.
Inuvialuk Elder Betty (Algiun) Elias showing off Kyle’s pictograms and an illustration of the Alaskan High Kick by her grandchild, Panigaq.
While Inuvialuit Piuyausiat (Northern Games) have been around since time immemorial, our team recognized that there has never been a set of visual pictograms created for the Games. Inspired by the rich, creative history of pictogram designs for the Olympic Games, we worked with Inuvialuk illustrator Kyle Natkusiak Aleekuk to illustrate brand new dynamic pictograms for the fifteen youth Northern Games competitions which took place in the July 2023 event. With these pictograms, we designed a cover that was both modern but also harkened back to “vintage” Northern Games competition programs from the 70s and 80s, paying homage to the rich history of the Games and its past athletes and “movers”.
Northern Games historian and archivist Donald Kuptana Jr. shared the histories and tutorials of various games, providing the intergenerational knowledge to connect young athletes to the skill and strength of their ancestors and relatives. This inspired the visual depiction of historic and modern game play photo overlays, creating beautiful reminders of Inuvialuit ancestors’ strength through the continued revitalization of Inuvialuit culture today.
Jacob and Man-Man showing off their program and Northern Games merch.
The completed project saw 750 publications distributed, and more than 7,000 online impressions, to support the competitions and larger intergenerational Traditional Knowledge sharing at the momentous event. The result is a symbol of Inuvialuit joy and pride of culture, identity, and community, which contributes to ongoing efforts to revitalize and promote Inuvialuit culture and language in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region and beyond.