‘Most at risk on the planet’: Polar heritage sites are slipping into the sea – but can one island live forever online?

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With no historic written language and a pragmatic and deft way of using the land, the legacy of the Inuvialuit physical presence can easily be missed. Their sod houses, or igluryuaq, once had cooking hearths and sleeping benches and were hollowed out of the land. What remains of these structures, some of which date back to 1200, appear now as bow-shaped impressions on the land crowned with tundra flowers and grasses.

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The areas include the island’s only airstrip and the collection of whaling buildings used to host research teams from Canada and Europe. Last summer, there were 19 floods during the summer research season, including 11 consecutive days in August, which Team Shrub captured using virtual reality. Half the buildings are sitting on wood cribbing, with others occasionally inundated with sea water.

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With uncertainty looming over the future of the settlement, Dawson, working alongside the Inuvialuit and computer scientists, has spent the past few years creating a meticulous digital archive of the island’s human structures. Each building is reconstructed using millions of laser data points – known as a point cloud – ensuring the structures live on in perpetuity online, outlasting their real-world counterparts.

For the team, the work is particularly important because it gives Inuvialuit residents of Aklavik – the closest community to the island – a chance to revisit the place. Many have strong ties to Qikiqtaruk, either from their youth or through stories from elders. Using the data points, the team has printed out 3D models of the island and its structures.

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