Wooden scoop/canoe bailer?

Name (French):
Name (Innu):	akuashkupai / akuashkupan
Date Collected:	unknown
Institutions:	The Rooms, Provincial Museum Division
Catalog Number:	III-B-160
Place Made:	unknown
Maker:	unknown
Collector:	unknown

Description:

Carved wooden scoop, handle short, thick and round. Scoop has high back wall, side walls short, end of scoop and edge of handle trimmed with orange paint.

Innu Narrative:

This object may not be a scoop. The William Duncan Strong collection at the Field Museum of Natural History contains an object closely resembling this one that VanStone labels a “canoe bailer.” “A canoe bailer is made from a single piece of birchwood. It is shovel-shaped at the distal end and has a rounded handle.” VanStone (1985:21)

No Innu elder identified the object as a canoe bailer. Sheshin (Rich) Rich assigned the generic term – mekanapakan (shovel) – to the object, but Nympha Byrne corrected this saying it is a scoop – akanikan.

MacKenzie lists it as akuashkupan.

Other Info:

James W. VanStone. 1985. Material Culture of the Davis Inlet and Barren Ground Naskapi: the William Duncan Strong Collection. Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History. Fieldiana, Anthropology New Series No.7.