Dominion Diamond stops funding Lutselk’e archiving project – CBC
Nov 14, 2014
Band expects delays to program launch after company nixes funding renewal
A project aimed at creating a database of traditional knowledge gathered from elders in Lutselk’e, N.W.T., is now absent its main funder after Dominion Diamond declined to provide a second round of funding.
In a Nov. 10 letter to the Lutselk’e Dene First Nation, Dominion Diamond Corporation confirmed it has declined to provide more funding in the amount of $148,000.
Dominion and BHP Billiton, which owned the majority of the Ekati diamond mine before Dominion took over last year, have already provided a total of $326,998 for the project.
But the band says it needs more money to complete the project’s final phase: storing around 15,000 digitized files (collected over several years from VHS tapes, CDs and film strips) in an easy-to-browse computer program run off of a local server. The material would then be made available to schoolchildren and residents, and perhaps incorporated into the curriculum at Lutselk’e Dene School.
