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Originally known as the Commission on the Indian Canadian, the Commission was renamed the Indian-Eskimo Association of Canada in 1960. (In 1972, the organization was renamed the Canadian Association in Support of Native Peoples). In 1963, the Association, in co-operation with the CBC, began a project called the Delta Community Action Project, or Delcap. The project involved recording Indigenous people telling their personal stories and providing a forum for Indigenous people to speak on issues of importance to them. In 1965, the CBC recommended that the Community Action Program provide educational programs in Indigenous languages. The educational programs intended to specifically assist Indigenous people to achieve a goal that they had established for themselves. Overall, the radio programs were expected to: meet the special needs and circumstances of northern audiences; to stimulate independent creative activity; and to improve the economic, social and educational status of northerners. The Indian-Eskimo Association of Canada funded the project, while the CBC prepared the recordings for airing and then broadcast them.

Victor 'Vic' D. Ingraham (1895-1961) was born December 24, 1895 in Minneapolis, Minnesota to Alexander Ingraham and Eliza (Caldwell) Ingraham. In 1916 he enlisted in the US Army artillery and served from 1917-1919 in Siberia. When he was discharged in 1919 he worked as a boomer breakman for several railway companies in the United States. In 1924 he had a logging contract in Fort McMurray, and in 1927 he had the winter mail route between Fort McMurray and Fort Smith. [Between 1927 and 1929?] He married Florence Wylie of Fort Chipewyan, with whom he had two children, Leonard and Louisa.
In the early 1930s, Vic Ingraham partnered with Gerry Murphy to form Murphy Services in Cameron Bay on Great Bear Lake and moved his family there in late 1932. On October 26, 1933 Victor Ingraham sustained burns and injuries to his hands and legs during an accident on the Murphy Services schooner the 'Speed II', which claimed two lives. For several years he continued his partnership in Murphy Services but had to depart often for medical treatment, which had resulted in the amputation of several fingers as well as his legs. In 1937/38 Victor headed to the Gordon Lake area and on to Yellowknife. Initially setting up a bootlegging operation, Victor established a licenced hotel in 1938, opened the Yellowknife Hotel in 1941, and a new hotel in New Town in 1947. He moved to British Columbia in 1953, establishing hotels in Courtney and Victoria. Victor Ingraham died in Vancouver on November 14, 1961. His many contributions to Yellowknife's early development and business community were acknowledged by naming NWT Highway 4 the Ingraham Trail.

The Inuvialuit Social Development Program (ISDP) is a branch of the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation, which was established to receive and manage benefits resulting from the 1984 Inuvialuit Final Agreement (IFA). The program was designed to promote the social, cultural and educational welfare of the Inuvialuit, focusing on the preservation of Inuvialuit culture. Activities of the ISDP include: participation in Oral Histories projects; involvement in Historical National Park studies; Language and Culture camps; Inuvialuit Genealogy Program; support to Inuvialuit Drum Dance groups; support for Adult Inuvialuktun Language Program classes; assistance in the development of Teacher Education Program of Arctic College in Inuvik and the participation in regional, territorial and national workshops regarding social, health and cultural issues.

Established in 1980, the Inuvik Dene Band Council represented its members as well as other native people who were having difficulties with the law, social development, or housing authorities. Originally financed by the Dene Nation and special fund raising activities, the Inuvik Dene Band sought to establish a program of economic development opportunities. In order to fulfill the designs of this program of economic development East - 3 Denuit Inc. was incorporated on September 3, 1983 and acted as the corporate arm of the Dene Inuvik Band Council.

Fred C. Jackson was born in England on December 2, 1894. He first came north as a school teacher for the Anglican Mission in Hay River. He was a bookkeeper with the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) from 1920 to 1931, and during that time travelled to various Mackenzie River Settlements. He left the service of the Hudson's Bay Company on March 23, 1931. Late in life he became a member of the clergy with the Anglican Church of Canada.

Susan Jackson (formerly Susan Milligan) moved to Yellowknife in 1965 to work for the federal government. She developed a personal interest in the history of Yellowknife, and in 1983 became the City's coordinator for the 1984 Yellowknife Homecoming, a 50th anniversary celebration of the founding of the community. As a result of gathering materials for this project, she founded the Yellowknife Local History Project. In 1986, Susan moved to Sechelt, British Columbia, with the materials she had collected for the Yellowknife Homecoming and the Yellowknife Local History Project, There she began compiling and editing the materials for a book entitled "Yellowknife, N.W.T.: An Illustrated History." Susan Jackson was an active participant in many community groups and was involved in founding an organization dedicated to establishing a search and rescue operation in the Northwest Territories.

Michael Mechell Jacob, known mainly as Mitch Jacob, was born on October 29, 1912, in Roanoke, Virginia, United States. Jacob’s parents, both of Syrian descent, were Najeeb Jacob, a merchant, and Rosa Joseph Jacob, a housewife. Jacob spent the first years of his childhood in Roanoke. In approximately 1932, Jacob travelled to the Northwest Territories and settled in Behchoko (formerly Fort Rae), where he worked as a bookkeeper for independent trader Jim Darwish. Jacob spent approximately four years in the Northwest Territories before moving south to Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States.

On November 29, 1940, Jacob married Louise Veronica Jacob (nee Abdo), and they had three children: Mechell Paul Jacob, Frederick Richard Jacob, and Thomas Michael Jacob. Jacob worked as a salesman for Kaufman Knitting Co. in Minneapolis from 1940 to 1988. Mitch Jacob died October 17, 1988.

Jamadam Records was a recording company established and run by Pat Buckna. Material produced by Jamadam was distributed by Festival Records. In 1983, Jamadam records recorded Pat Buckna's "Bombs Over Heaven" and Moon Joyce's "The Infinite Edge". In 1984, Jamadam Records produced the "Yellowknife Album" to commemorate Yellowknife's 50th anniversary.

William Archibald (Archie) Jamieson was born in Valleyfield, Quebec on July 8, 1888. He studied mechanical engineering in Providence, Rhode Island until 1910 and lived in Rhode Island and later in Maryland before moving to Toronto, Ontario in 1913. He was married to Rosemond Ihley in 1912 and moved to Toronto, Ontario in 1913 where he was employed with Consolidated Steel Company until 1918. He had two children with Rosemond; Malcolm and John. In 1923, he moved to Fort Frances, Ontario after the death of his wife and lived there until 1925, when he returned to Toronto and was employed at the Central Scientific Company. In 1926-1927, he attended the Ontario Training College for Technical Teachers at Hamilton, Ontario and in 1927 he moved to Goldboro, Nova Scotia where he was employed at the Victory Gold Mine as Mechanical Engineer and Foreman. In 1929, he married Edna Peitzsche in Goldboro and they had four children: Archie Junior, David, Bernice and Sheila Anne. In 1933, he left Goldboro for work at Rouyn-Noranda in Quebec. Between 1933-1939, he worked in various locations including the Treadwell-Yukon Mine, Lee Gold Mines in Ontario, the mine in Goldfields, Saskatchewan and at the Noordyn Aviation Company in Montreal. In 1940, he was contacted by J.J. Byrne who asked him to help build a mine on Outpost Island, Great Slave Lake, Northwest Territories. He arrived on Outpost Island on September 9, 1940 and completed his work in July 1941. By the end of July, he returned to Goldboro, Nova Scotia where he worked for the Canadian Car and Foundry Company that built airplanes for the war effort. In 1946, the family moved to Walton, Nova Scotia, where Archie was employed as a Master Mechanic at a barites mine. He died on March 1, 1960.

Robert (Bob) Roy Janes, born in 1948, initially studied liberal arts and anthropology, graduating from the Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin with a B.A. in Anthropology in 1970. He continued his studies, receiving his Ph.D. in Archaeology from the University of Calgary in 1976.

In 1974, Janes was employed by the Northwest Territories Historical Advisory Board as the Chief Archaeologist for the Mackenzie River Archaeological Project. Two years later, in June 1976, he was appointed the first Director of the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife. In 1986, he left the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre to take the position of Founding Executive Director of the Science Institute of the Northwest Territories and Science Advisor to the Government of the Northwest Territories. In 1989, at the conclusion of his term as Executive Director of the Science Institute, he was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer for the Glenbow Museum, Art Gallery, Library and Archives in Calgary, where he worked until 2000. Since 2000, he has been a museum and heritage consultant, advisor, author and independent museum scholar and served as Editor-in-Chief of the “Journal of Museum Management and Curatorship” from 2003 to 2014. He was also an adjunct professor at the University of Calgary from 1990 to 2015.

Dr. Janes has been a Foreign Fellow of the American Anthropological Association, Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Arctic Institute of North America, University of Calgary, Fellow of the Glenbow-Alberta Institute, Fellow of the Canadian Museums Association, Honorary Visiting Fellow at the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester (UK), and Fellow of the Canadian Museums Association.

Dr. Janes has served in various capacities on numerous boards and committees, including the Canadian Archaeological Association, the Arctic Institute of North America, the Northern Jury of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Assembly of First Nations/Canadian Museums Association Task Force on Museums and First Peoples, the Canadian Art Museums Directors Organization, the Canadian Museums Association, the National Selection Committee for NextGen Canada, the Banff Canmore Community Foundation, and the Board of Directors of the Biosphere Institute of the Bow Valley.

He has received many honorary awards and degrees, including being named the first honorary life member of the Canadian Museums Association (CMA), the CMA award for Outstanding Achievement in Museum Management, the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for exceptional contributions to the provincial, national and international museum communities, an International Achievement Award from the International Council of Museums (ICOM/Canada), and an Honorary Doctor of Laws, honoris causa (LL.D.) from the University of Western Ontario. In 1995, he was given the traditional Blackfoot name OTAHKO OHKIPTOPii (Yellow Horse Rider).

Dr. Janes has written several books, including “The Archaeology of Fort Alexander, NWT”, “Archaeological Ethnography among Mackenzie Basin Dene”, “Preserving Diversity: Ethnoarchaeological Perspectives on Culture Change in the Western Canadian Subarctic”, “Museums in a Troubled World: Renewal, Irrelevance or Collapse?”, “Museums and the Paradox of Change”, and “Museums Without Borders: Selected Writings of Robert R. Janes”, and over 100 articles in the areas of archaeology, anthropology, and museology. He has also edited several books and occasional papers. He is a prolific speaker, having given more than 75 public presentations and keynote speeches.
Dr. Janes is married to Priscilla Bickel Janes.

James Jerome was born on July 31, 1949 in Aklavik. He grew up on the east channel of the Mackenzie River at a camp known as Big Rock. His father, Joe Bernard, was a Special Constable with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), as well as a trapper and chief of the Gwichya Gwich'in of Arctic Red River (Tsiigehtchic). His mother was Celina (Coyen) Jerome. James was the youngest of four brothers and two half-sisters. After spending a number of years on the land with his parents, he attended Grollier Hall residential school in Inuvik. Both of his parents died before he completed high school. After graduating from high school, he trained to be a welder and after receiving his certificate, traveled across Canada. Later he returned to the north and began pursuing artistic endeavours. He had received his first camera from his mother when he was twelve years old. Upon his return to the Mackenzie Delta he began traveling on the land and photographing families at fishing camps. During this time he became concerned that Gwich'in culture would disappear as the elders died. He worked for the Native Press newspaper as a photographer for eight months beginning in 1977, and later as a freelance photographer including remote area work, studio, and aerial photography. He used darkrooms at the Science Institute in Inuvik as well as the Native Press offices in Yellowknife for his work. At the time of his death, he was working on a book about Dene elders of the Mackenzie Valley entitled 'Portraits and History of the Dene Elders', which was to include his photographs and stories recounted to him by the elders. James Jerome died in a house fire in Inuvik on November 17, 1979.

Sven Borje Johansson was born in Saffle Sweden on August 29,1924. He served in the neutral Swedish army in WWII. After the war he moved to Lappland in northern Sweden, spending 12 years working with Laplanders managing reindeer herds. During that time he married and had a daughter.

In 1962, he immigrated with his family to Canada and worked from 1963 to 1968 as the manager of the Reindeer Station, for the Canadian Reindeer Project. His wife and daughter returned to Sweden and they divorced. In December 1967 he remarried to Norma Buchanan. They built a cabin named Arctic Mountain House to serve as a big game hunting lodge, and Johansson earned a pilot's license. Between 1967 and 1972, he spent summers chartering out his boat "North Star" for work in the Beaufort area and winters trapping near Arctic Red River. He also worked for the Geological Survey of Canada to study the Polar Continental Shelf.

In 1973 the family sailed from Inuvik bound for Vancouver. A year later, delayed by weather they arrived. In 1982 Johansson outfitted the cutter Belvedere for John Bockstoce for northern expeditions. In 1988 after several attempts Sven captained the Belvedere as the first private yacht to complete the Northwest Passage from west to east.

Sven Johansson was also an accomplished choreographer and theatrical inventor. He incorporated the Discovery Dance Society in Victoria in 1989 and won several awards nationally and internationally. Sven Johansson was invested as a member of the Order of Canada in 1994 and the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal in 2002. He died in Victoria on October 17, 2019.

Ernest Milton Johnston (“Milt”) was born January 27, 1905 as Ejnar Frans Jonsson to parents Alida Kristina Jacobson and Jon Olaf Jonsson. He was one of six children, with three brothers and two sisters. The family resided in Hamra, Sweden until 1908, when they immigrated to Canada and homesteaded south of Parkside, Saskatchewan. His mother Alida passed away there in 1911. The following year, his father, Jon Jonsson, was naturalized as a British subject along with his children.

Milt Johnston began working for the Consolidated Mining & Smithing Company of Canada, Limited (CM&S) around 1928. That year, he witnessed the testing of the Ford Trimotor aircraft at Reindeer Lake, Saskatchewan, where CM&S had a number of exploration sites. By 1936, he was in the Yellowknife area, where he staked a series of claims over the following years for CM&S.

He married Dorothea (Dorothy) Enders on February 24, 1941 in Edmonton. In 1942 and 1943, Johnston moved to Trail, B.C. to cover for CM&S workers who were deployed in the war. They left Trail around March 1943.

He entered into another prospecting agreement with CM&S around the same time, but by 1945 he had entered into prospecting agreements with Gateway Gold, which took him to Horseshoe Bend, Iowa from fall of 1946 to early 1947. By May of 1947, he was again back in Yellowknife, where he would remain until the early 1950s. From there, he worked in Alberta and B.C., prospecting gold and uranium, as well as working as a carpenter.

Johnston died on June 10, 1959.

Born in the 1850s in Bristol, England, Henry (Harry) William Jones went to sea as a boy, traveling to India and the Pacific. In 1898 Henry traveled to the Canadian north with a group of Englishmen for the Yukon gold rush, reaching Fort Smith before the death of the leader broke up the party. He remained in the Northwest Territories and worked intermittently for the Hudson’s Bay Company as a cook between 1898-1906. In Fort Simpson in February 1906 he retired from the HBC, was engaged to work for the St. Peter's Mission in Hay River, and in October 1906 he married Charlotte Sarcelle, a Dene woman from Fort Liard. They had five children: Edward Gabriel, Dora Virginia, Alfred, Henry and Frederick. The family seems to have lived in Hay River for years, but by 1921 had moved to Fort Resolution. An avid photographer, Jones also collected specimens and data along the Mackenzie Valley and adjacent Arctic coast, possibly for the Smithsonian and American Museum. In Fort Resolution, his last place of residence, he operated a machine shop and also did photography developing and printing. Henry Jones died of cancer in 1935.

Born in 1940 in Acme, Alberta, Terry Keim was hired by Transport Canada as a Radio Operator. He began work in Fort Simpson, and after a year there he was transferred to Inuvik. He remained in Inuvik between 1962-1967 and documented his experience there on film.

Alexander Philip (Pi) John Kennedy was born in Fort Smith on December 9, 1926, the first son of Philip Kennedy and Leoni Mercredi. In 1932 his mother died of tuberculosis at the age of 23. Pi went to residential school in Fort Resolution for two years, but his father took him out in 1934 to help trap. In 1936 his father built a cabin near Nataway Lake. Around that time, at the age of ten, Pi started driving a dog team, which would start a lifelong dedication to mushing. In 1944 Pi's father died of tuberculosis.

Throughout his life Pi generally trapped through the winter and spring on his trapline (sometimes partnering with someone else for the spring hunt) and got various seasonal summer work around Fort Smith. This included jobs such as crushing rock, digging and setting power poles, putting in the Fort Smith water system, working for Forestry, or in construction. In years where the trapping was good he did not need to take summer work.

Pi started taking photographs in earnest in the 1960s, and he also documented his life on Super8 film. Not only did he document aspects of life as a trapper and dog musher, but he also documented the community of Fort Smith, parades, fastball tournaments, special events and his extended family. His keen interest in radio, baseball, animals and dog mushing is documented as well. Pi notably trapped exclusively with a dog team until 1986. Even after buying a snow machine he continued to use dogs in the bush.

In 2010 at the age of 84, Pi suffered a stroke out on the trapline. After this, he moved himself and his dogs to Fort Smith permanently. Multiple books have been published about his life, including a series of children’s books in Cree published by the Northwest Territory Métis Nation in the 2000s, and a biography published with Patti-Kay Hamilton in 2023, launched on his 97th birthday.

Eric Kettlewell was born on November 2, 1910. He married Evelyn before spending time in northern Alberta and the Northwest Territories between 1945 and 1947. Eric may have been a professional photographer. Eric and Evelyn compiled a booklet about Yellowknife that was published during their time in the north. Upon their return to southern Canada, Eric worked as a bartender in Toronto, Ontario. Evelyn died in December 1970. Eric then married Lorraine Murphy. Eric died in Toronto on July 1, 1984.