Pitseolak: Pictures Out of My Life 0773525653, 0773525726, 9780773571204, 0773571205

Table of contents :
Preface to the Second Edition
Pitseolak: Pictures out of my life
Remembering Pitseolak Ashoona, (ca 1907-1983)
Photographs from the Bowdoin
About the Interpreters
Acknowledgments and Sources
Notes
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
W
Map.

Citation preview

Pitseolak: Pictures out of my life

Pitseolak Pictures out of my life From interviews by Dorothy Harley Eber With the drawings and prints of Pitseolak Ashoona

Second Edition

McGill-Queen's University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca

Cover: Felt pen drawing for (at left) Eskimos on Sealskin Boats. Stone cut, 1972 Frontispiece: Journey to Too/a. Stone cut, 1973

> Dorothy Harley Eber ISBN 0-7735-2565-3 (cloth) ISBN 0-7735-2572-6 (paper) Legal deposit second quarter 2003 Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec

Second Edition McGill-Queen's University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for its publishing program. It also acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for its publishing activities.

Printed in Canada on acid-free paper

Nationa l Library of Canada Cataloguin g ni

First Edition Published in Canada by Design Collaborative Books, Montreal, in association with Oxford University Press, 1971; in the US by University of Washington Press, 1972. Published in French by Le Cercle du Livre de France, Montreal, 1972. First paperback edition, 1978.

Pitseolak, c1907-1983 Pitseolak: pictures out of my life I from recorded interviews by Dorothy Harley Eber; with the drawings and prints of Pitseolak Ashoona = Pisiulak : unikatuak inusiulautumik / apikasunisuni nipiliatilautaga uma tasi igapu. - 2nd ed.

Designed by Rolph Harder and Ernst Roch, Design Collaborative Books, Montreal. Pitseolak: Pictures out of my life was selected as one of the fifty books of 1972 by the American Institute of Graphic Arts. The first edition of Pitseolak: Pictures out of my life was made possible through the assistance of the Department of Indian Afffairs and Northern Development, the Canada Council, the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative, and the good council of Mrs Alma Houston. The drawing "A bird for the doctor'' was reproduced with the kind permission of Dr and Mrs Samuel Adams.

Publication

ISBN 0-7735-2565-3 (bnd) ISBN 0-7735-2572-6 (pbk) 1. Pitseolak, 1907-1983. 2. Artists, Inuit - Northwest Territories - Biography. I. Eber, Dorothy Harley. II. Title. III. Title: Pisiulak : unikatuak inusiulautumik. E99.E7P5 2003

769.92

C2003-901983-7

Contents Preface to the Second Edition Pitseolak: Pictures out of my life

vii 3

Remembering Pitseolak Ashoona, (ca 1907-1983) Photographs from the Bowdoin About the Interpreters

139

Acknowledgments and Sources Notes

142

Index

143

Map

147

134

140

95

I knew a man who didn't put on his akulisaq and he died. Felt pen, 1971.

Preface to the Second Edition In August 1971, about a year after we finished the interview sessions that led to Pitseolak: Pictures out of my life, I was able to show Pitseolak the first copy of our book. As her grandchildren looked on she turned every page and then, when I asked what she thought, with the help of our interpreter she said, "I am not ashamed of it." That was good news. But in spring 2002 in Cape Dorset, one of those grandchildren Pootoogook Toonoo, a young girl when I interviewed her grandmother and now an administrative liaison officer with the Municipal Housing Office, told me that Pitseolak had had other things to say. "After I'm dead," she remarked to her family, "the book will be here." She would have been delighted to learn that our book is appearing in a new edition more than 30 years after it first was published.

"Today we live like white people" Pootoogook explained. "Pitseolak knew we were going to have different lives than the one she lived back then. She thought that in the future people might think of the old Inuit way of life as just some kind of a myth." In thousands of drawings filled with vivid detail Pitseolak worked to prevent that possibility. Her daughter-in-law Mayoriak Ashoona, now a well-known artist herself, used to look on in the early days of her marriage as Pitseolak did her art. "Before we had a house of our own, when Kaka and I lived together with Pitseolak, I used to watch my mother-in-law do her drawings. She made into pictures the exact stories I heard as a child. When Pitseolak drew it was exactly the way it used to be. Their clothing, how they travelled, it was there on the

Pitseolak shows her grandchildren the first copy of her book, summer, 1971. Photograph by Dorothy Harley Eber.

paper. She drew exactly how the Inuit lived in the old days - how I heard it from my parents. The stories we used to have told to us came alive on the paper." This is Pitseolak's achievement. Her pictures make what Inuit call "the old way" come alive for all of us: for her family, her people, for lovers of Inuit art, and also for social scientists. For students of the old way, Pitseolak's drawings enhance, and sometimes correct, the historic record. Anthropologists, for instance, have sometimes thought that South Baffin Island Inuit never used the akulisaq - the waterproof jacket made from the gut of the bearded seal that attached to the opening of the kayak. But there is Pitseolak's drawing to prove the contrary: "I knew a man who didn't put on his akulisaq and he died." Pitseolak was a master of word pictures, too. "She would be very quiet when she was doing her drawings," remembers Pootoogook. "Then afterwards she would tell

VIII

us stories." It was word pictures and stories I hoped to hear when Pitseolak and I began to work together. For this 2003 edition I have added a new section that includes drawings and prints, many made by Pitseolak between the publication of our book in 1971 and her death in 1983, as well as more stories about her life collected since our original interviews. This new edition also gives me the opportunity to provide some background on how Pitseolak and I worked together, how the appearance of our book affected Pitseolak's life, and how life and artmaking in Baffin Island have changed in the past thirty years. Except in the material added in 2003, all English spellings of Inuit words and proper names are phonetic, as was commonly the case through the early 1970s. In 1976, the report of the Inuit Language Commission established ground rules for a standard roman orthography and while

Overleaf and page following Spirit of summer caribou. Lithograph, 1984 Walking inland in summer. Felt pen, 1970s Winter camp. Coloured pencil and felt pen, ca 1967

for many years spelling of Inuktitut words in English continued in flux, these rules are now in general use. Proper names, however, both first and last, often break the rules, people frequently preferring to continue to use a spelling to which they have become accustomed. On the other hand, artists whose names frequently appear in print have often acquired numerous spellings for their names as southerners tussle with the prescribed orthography. The names of Pitseolak's sons Kaka and Kiawat have been spelled Qaqaq, Haka, Qaqak, Hakkak, Quga and Kiowak, Keeower, Kioga. Canadian Inuit began to adopt surnames only in the early 1970s following "Operation Surname," a government-

mounted initiative. Consequently, some people mentioned in Pitseolak's story and some early artists have no surnames. Since Pitseolak's story first appeared, the new Canadian territory and homeland of Nunavut - "our land" - has come into being. Inuit has replaced Eskimo in general use, and many communities have adopted the original Inuit place names. Frobisher Bay is now Iqualuit - where there are schools of fish - and Lake Harbour, Kimmirut - heel, its name arising from a distinctive rock formation. The map at the back of the book shows some of the places in Baffin Island and Arctic Quebec mentioned by Pitseolak and provides a key to their Inuit and English names.

IX

Pitseolak; Pictures out of my life

Travelling by sleigh (detail). Coloured pencil and felt pen, ca.1967

Preface to the First Edition It is mid-July, 1970, and brilliant Arctic summer, when I ask Pitseolak if I may tape her autobiography. I have come to Cape Dorset on Baffin Island especially for the purpose and, very soon after the Nordair Otter touches down, I go looking for Quatsia Ottochie, Quatsia, nineteen and a modern Eskimo beauty, knows at firsthand the story of the Cape Dorset art movement. Her father, Ottochie (whose name she has adopted now that Eskimos need surnames), has worked in the craft shop of the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative since shortly after print-making began, in the late fifties. Her English has been perfected by a typing course in the south, and she agrees to interpret and help put my proposition to Pitseolak. So, with tape recorder, a big bag of tapes, notebooks and coloured pens and drawing paper, we present ourselves at Pitseolak's house. At the beginning of the sixties most Baffin Island Eskimos still lived on the land in igloos and skin tents but now, like Pitseolak, they live in clapboard bungalows.

3

Bird, Slonecut. 1967

Pitseolak and i have met two years earlier and, with the help of Quatsia, we exchange greetings. Quatsia and I take off our rubber boots and walk into Pitseolak's warm kitchen. Quickly I realize that since our first meeting "acculturation," as the sociologists say, has proceeded at a speedy clip. Then, Pitseolak sat on the floor and drew as we talked; now she sits on a couch, there is a telephone on the wall and across the room is a bowl of plastic flowers. But there is soon no doubt that Pitseolak herself is the same: wise, humorous, a sage commentator on the sociology of change and, of course, the possessor of a remarkable talent which allows her to draw as many as six pictures a morning of vivid interest and beauty. After preliminaries, Quatsia explains there are people in the south who would like to make a book with some of Pitseolak's drawings and prints and her life story, tofd in her own words. There is brisk talk back and forth and then Quatsia says, "She doesn't mind to do it but she is getting old now. She is getting kind of shaky and the drawings 4

Joyful owl. Stone cut, 1961

are sometimes shaky. And she doesn't remember everything though she remembers many things." All is arranged. For the next three weeks I spend nearly every afternoon at Pitseolak's house. There are frequent interruptions to these taping sessions. There are telephone calls, and Pitseolak's grown-up children and her grandchildren often come in to listen or to visit. One day a son brings ice cream tubs, the greatest treat of the year. They have arrived that day on the long awaited sea-lift. He also brings molasses which Pitseolak says is to put in the tea. "I used to like it in the camps and I still like it," she says. All conversation stops while these good things are relished. Each day, when I arrive, Pitseolak brings out a large sketch book and we look at the drawings she has done in the morning - they are rarely shaky and always they show Pitseolak's distinctive line and style. Then we move on to reminiscences. Pitseolak's memories do not 5

usually concern the hunt or the harsh times many Eskimos experienced in the old days. Many of the hours we spend together are 'how-to' sessions - how to sew a sealskin tent, how to make mukluks, how to catch a goose without a weapon. She also speaks of domestic felicity and homelife in the camps. In fact, when Pitseolak speaks of difficulties, they are usually the ones the new times have brought along. Like people of the older generations ali over the world, she often worries about her grandchildren and whether they can make their way in today's world. But Pitseolak's story is also an account of how Cape Dorset, a remote point on the Hudson Strait, became an internationally recognized artists' colony, (Today there is hardly a European or North American public art gallery without a Dorset graphic.) Pitseolak makes mention of many of the Dorset artists; and she also speaks with great affection of two white men: the almost legendary James Houston, now an executive with Steuben Glass, New York, who during the fifties was the first civil administrator for 6

Ancient slone dwelling. Stone cut, 1966

West Baffin Island; and Terrence Ryan, art director of the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative. Both have played major roles in the Cape Dorset story. It was James Houston who first encouraged Eskimos to send their carving south. They have a centuries-old tradition of craftsmanship in stone and bone; and in the nineteenth century they sold many small ivory carvings, often with incised drawings, to the crews of the whaling ships. Houston first saw their carvings in the late forties on a sketching trip he made to the North. He brought back examples to the Canadian Guild of Crafts and then, on expeditions he made to camps and settlements, first for the Guild and then as a Canadian government officer, he asked for carvings to sell in the south. He first visited Cape Dorset in 1951 and, perhaps impressed by the talent of the people, from 1957 until 1962 when he left the Arctic, made his headquarters there. In 1957, he and a small group of Dorset artists began their exciting experiments in print-making.

7

Going after fish (detail). Felt pen, 1970

Terrence Ryan came later to Cape Dorset, He arrived in 1960 as a summer art student and remained when the Eskimos asked him to stay. Under his stewardship the Co-operative has strengthened and demand and interest in the Dorset graphics have greatly increased. As a result, the Co-operative helps sustain the community as Eskimos move from a hunting culture to the computer age. Like Pitseolak, many of the artists feel great loyalty to their 'Co-op'. (The Co-operative's headquarters, a small building in the centre of the community with a dazzling white, yellow and blue optical colour scheme, is always crowded with carvers and print-makers bringing in their work and, like artists everywhere, looking quite critically at the work of others!) As art director, Ryan, who doubles as the area's justice of the peace, has made it his policy to restrict his influence and, in assessing the accomplishment of the print-making years, he says, "Perhaps for the long term the great achievement has been in saving a record of what the Dorset people have been able to say graphically at this time." 8

Bringing home the catch. Coloured pencil and felt pen, ca. 1967

The first Dorset graphics were offered for sale in 1958 at Ontario's Stratford Festival; each year since has seen an edition of stone cuts, stencils and, after 1962, copper engravings. The Eskimos' radically new style of life means that for the first time they need paychecks and Pitseolak makes no bones about what the prints have meant to her: they have brought her money. But just as emphatically she says they have made her happy. In these difficult times they have provided the sense of pride that goes with work well done, Readers may notice that in her story Pitseolak never uses dates. Like most Eskimos of her generation, she relates all events to other important happenings - the building of the first Hudson's Bay Company buildings (1913); the sinking of the Hudson's Bay supply ship, the 'Nascopie' (1947); the completion of what in Cape Dorset is known as Pootagook's church (1953). Thus, the white people began to appear in great numbers in the North in the fifties after the Nascopie went down. 9

The invaders. Stone cut, 1970

Three translators worked on Pitseolak's story. After the first day, Quatsia retired, explaining that she didn't know the Eskimo words for the old things and the old ways. Another young Eskimo woman, Annie Manning, took her place. Annie didn't know all the old words either, but she liked the work. "It's interesting," she remarked, "finding out about the old way," Finally, in order to preserve flavour and nuance as completely as possible, the taped interviews were re-translated word for word by Ann Hanson, justly famous in the Northwest Territories as an interpreter. Related to many of the Cape Dorset people, Ann was born in Lake Harbour and, after her parents died, went to school in Toronto. She translated for the Royal Family during their 1970 visit to Frobisher Bay. As preparations for the publication of Pitseolak's story proceeded, it was decided that the book should appear in an Eskimo/English edition. The Eskimo text was prepared by Sarah Ekoomiak and Harriet Ruston of the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.

10

Readers may be interested to know that syllables, the phonetic system of writing used by the Eskimos, was introduced by the missionaries in the late nineteenth century. Long before schools came to the Eastern Arctic, nine out of ten Eskimos could read and write in their own language. Perhaps, in fact probably, not all the people mentioned in Pitseolak's account of her extraordinary life will remember events exactly as she does. But, hopefully, many books will come out of Cape Dorset. This is Pitseolak's story. Dorothy Harley Eber Montreal 1971

11

Birds of summer. Engraving. 1964

My name is Pitseolak, the Eskimo word for the sea pigeon. When I see pitseolaks over the sea, I say, "There go those lovely birds - that's me, flying!" I have lost the time when I was born but I am old now my sons say maybe I am 70. When Ashoona, my husband, died, my sons were not even married. Now they are married and having their children, I became an artist to earn money but I think I am a real artist. Even when they are out of papers for drawing at the Co-op, they find papers for me. I draw the things I have never seen, the monsters and spirits, and I draw the old ways, the things we did long ago before there were many white men. I don't know how many drawings I have done but more than a thousand. There are many Pitseolaks now -1 have signed my name many times. I was born on Nottingham Island in Hudson's Bay, The year i was born my parents and three brothers began a long 13

Woman with doll. Stone cut, 1964

trip. They left their camp in Sugluk on the coast of Quebec and set out for Baffin Island to join relatives. They left in the spring and reached Nottingham Island where I was born. The next spring they crossed the Hudson Strait and arrived in the Foxe Peninsula, in the piace where Cape Dorset is today. But our journey was not quite ended for, the next spring, we continued along the Hudson Strait and reached Frobisher Bay, That was when there were no white men there at all. These were long journeys and dangerous, too, when the waters were rough, but I didn't know - I was still being carried on the back of my mother. We made all these travels in a sealskin boat. Such boats had wooden frames that were covered with skins. They used to be called the women's boats because they were sewn by the women. Many women sewed to make one

14

Mother with child. Felt pen, 1970 Crossing the Straits Slonecut 1970

boat. Some boats had sails made from the intestine of the whale, but we had no sail and we had no motors then so my father and brothers rowed all the way. Later, 1 often heard them say the boat was very full! But even in my childhood these sealskin boats were already disappearing. My first memory of life is when we stopped in Lake Harbour, on our way back from Frobisher Bay to Cape Dorset, to buy a wooden boat. There were many there. It was while my father bought the wooden boat that I first saw houses and that I saw the first white man. I was scared. Only as a child was I ever in a sealskin boat, but I have put these boats into my drawings. Perhaps these boats were not really so big but to me, as a child, they seemed very big and I remember them well. I have been drawing the old ways since 'Sowmik' - Jim Houston - came, and many of the drawings have been put on the stone and turned into prints. Did I live all my remembered life in 16

A drawing out of my mind. Felt pen, 1970

the Foxe Peninsula? 'Ahalona!'... Very definitely! And most of my life I lived in the camps, I remember Cape Dorset when there weren't any houses, I remember when they were building the Hudson's Bay post. The same warehouses that are here now were built when my father and mother were still alive - when I was just a little girl. Timungiak was my mother; Ottochie was my father. I had a happy childhood, I was always healthy and never sick, I had a large family - three brothers and a sister - and we were always happy to be together. We lived in the old Eskimo way. We would pick up and go to different camps - we were free to move anywhere and we lived in many camps. Sometimes they were near Cape Dorset and sometimes they were far away . . . it depended whether a person wanted to go far or to be near a settlement. My father hunted in the old way, too - with a bow and arrow. He had a shotgun but he didn't use it. Sometimes there were bad winters and we would go hungry but there was no starvation,

18

Tattooed woman. Stone cut, 1963

In those days many of the women had tattoo marks on their faces and my mother had them, too. They used to do it with a needle and caribou thread soaked in oil and soot from the 'kudlik' - the seal oil lamp. They used to pull the thread through the skin and the skin would be swollen for many days. I don't know exactly why people had tattoos but 1 believe the women did it because they thought it was pretty. I did, too. When I was young I tried a few marks on my arm, as you can see, My father used to tell stories about how he was once almost killed by a powerful shaman. My father was a very good hunter and that is why the shaman tried to kill him he was jealous, I don't know very much about shamans - I don't like to think about them - but my family and my mother's family all believed in shamans because we had heard so many stories. They were Eskimos just like other people but they had these strange powers. They had power over the hunt - they could bring the animals - and they had power to kill. Just as it is today, a long time ago 20

From skins we made buckets to carry water. Coloured pencil and felt pen,

ca 1967 In summer I lived in a great big sealskin tent (details. Felt pen. 1970

Composition. Engraving, 1964

there was often hatred among people. When a shaman was jealous or hated another Eskimo, he would try to kill him and, sometimes, I think, if an Eskimo had an enemy in camp, he would go to a shaman friend and ask him to kill this man who hated him. But they were very good-looking people - you would really never believe they were shamans. There were good shamans and bad shamans but most people feared them - in the old days there were many things to fear. Some people feared the animals, even the animals they ate, I always feared polar bears - they were scary. When we were children we played lots of make-believe. We used to play igloo, we used to play dog-team, I think everybody plays these things. Perhaps children everywhere play the same things. We played a game in which other children would run after you; if they could catch you they would pretend to eat your eyes. 24

Inukshuk builders. Stone cut, 1968

From my father we used to learn the Eskimo legends. There were many such stories and all children learn them, but I have forgotten most of them now. I remember the one about the blind boy who got back his eyesight when a bird took him on his back and dived with htm under the sea three times. This blind young man lived with his mother who was cruel to him and, when he returned home and she saw he could see, this wicked mother was so frightened she jumped into the sea. Eskimos believe she became a white whale and is there still - they really believe it. There were no teenagers in those days. The young people got married so early they didn't have time to make any trouble. Now there are so many young boys and girls and very often they are troublesome, The year 1 married was the year my father died. He had a bad sickness - it was something with the lower back and he died in our camp at Idjirituq. The year he died, 25

Blue insect. Felt pen, 1970

I remember, there was a ship caught in the freeze-up in the ice just outside our camp. It was a beautiful ship, all white, and owned by Americans. They lived in their ship and the white men spent the time trapping for white fox. They used to send my brothers to the Bay in Cape Dorset to sell the skins and get the money. In the spring when break-up came, after my father died, the ship left, After my father died, Ashoona's father came to get me on a dog team. Ashoona had told my brothers he would marry me; Ashoona and ! used to be little children together. I don't remember how old I was when I married but girls got married very young then; now they are older. Ashoona's father took my mother and me on the dog team to Ikirasaq which is near Sakbuk, a one-day trip from Cape Dorset. We were married in the summer here in Cape Dorset. At that time of year all kinds of people from all the camps in the area used to come into Cape Dorset to see the ship

26

Safe in »he tent. Felt pen. 1970

that would bring the supplies to the Bay. When we arrived there were many people camped all over the hill where the Hudson's Bay post is, and all around the bay. We were married outside, by the flagpole near the Bay, by the Anglican clergyman whose Eskimo name is 'Inutaquuq', which means 'a new person'. All the people from the camps were there. Because Ashoona was an inland hunter, at our wedding I had on caribou skin clothes - but they were just ordinary clothes. Here in the Arctic we did not bother with special dresses. But all through my married life, because Ashoona was such a good hunter, he brought rne beautiful skins all kinds of seal and caribou. Many women used to be jealous of me because I had such lovely clothes. For a short time after we married, we lived in Ikirasaq but, before my first son was born, we moved to Akudluk Island. It was a long journey but it took us only one day by sail. It was windy and there was a good breeze on 28

This is how we played tennis. Felt pen, 1970

our necks. I remember it was autumn and it was snowing but there was no ice on the water. My husband's two brothers and their families came with us and we were in camp together for one year at Akudluk, When Namoonie, my first son, was born, three women held me. It was like that in the old times - there were always women who helped. Afterwards, they would make magic wishes for the child - that a boy should be a good hunter, that a girl should have long hair, and that the child should do well at whatever he was doing, I don't know if it is easier to have babies in a hospital, Ahalona! At any time it is hard. There is a saying, "It is hard but it is well," I had 17 children - every year I had a baby - and many of them died as little children. In the Eskimo way, two sons were adopted, one by Peter Pitseolak and one by another Eskimo couple, and they died, too. Later, a daughter died from having a baby. My living children are Namoonie, Kaka, Kumwartok,

31

Engraving, 1962

Kiawat, Ottochie and Nawpachee. Among those who are living I have only one daughter, Nawpachee. Except for Kaka who lives in camp in the old way, they ail live here in Cape Dorset, and now I live with Kumwartok and his wife, On Akudluk Island, where Namoonie was born, there was good hunting. There were no caribou but there were polar bear, walrus and seal. But I did not care for Akudiuk- my relatives were all around Cape Dorset, and it was too hard to get the white man's food from the Bay. We had no tea, only meat. After a year we went back to Cape Dorset for a short time, and then to Ikirasaq where we were in camp with Peter Pitseolak and lots of families. I don't remember them all or how many there were; in those days we didn't bother counting people. But my husband used to be a very busy man with the hunting and he didn't like to live with other people. There are many days in the year and we moved many times maybe ten times a year. We would often camp at Natsilik, 32

Woman and dogs. Engraving, 1967

a place about a week's journey from Cape Dorset, near many lakes, it had the most beautiful drinking water, the most beautiful water I have ever found. We often went to Natsilik to hunt fish; and at Natsilik, too, there were many geese. Later on, white people we met from the Department of Transport used to go there, too, and some of them called it 'Ashoona's Land'. Today, sometimes Namoonie still goes to Natsitik - but now he flies by plane. Sometimes we went to the islands near Cape Dorset for seal and walrus. Spring and autumn are the best times for this kind of hunting. Both in summer and winter we used to move a lot. In summer there were always very big mosquitoes. I have made many drawings of moving camp in summertime and I always put in the mosquitoes. I do not like insects. Sometimes, when we camped in a place for the first time, we would put up an "inukshuk". My father and Ashoona

34

Woman with geese. Engraving, 1967

both built them from time to time, and Kumwartok built one a few weeks ago when he camped for the first time at a new place near Akudiuk Island. A few years ago people from the Co-op built inukshuks above Cape Dorset, and these reminded me of the ones we used to make and I drew some for the prints. In the old days we had different kinds of housing for the different seasons. We had the igloo, the 'kaamuk', which is a tent-hut, and the summer tents. In winter I didn't mind whether we had an igloo or a kaamuk so long as we had a shelter for our family, To build an igloo you have to have the right snow, but what kind of snow I don't know. Men built the igloos, I remember when I was a little girl I once built an igloo myself, but it was a funny-looking igloo - skinny and tall! Perhaps they take an hour to build, but in those days we didn't have watches. It is better to know the time. It used to be okay 35

It was good to have a new snow house. Felt pen, 1970 Around the igloo. Engraving, 1964

without clocks, but it is okay with clocks, too. Now I am used to watching the time. The igloo would last al! winter but often it would melt and drip inside from the heat of the kudlik. We used to dig a trench around the base to catch the water, and the women would scrape the soft snow from the wails inside with their 'ulus', the women's knives. It was good to have a new snow house built because they were easy to clean - and very clean. But sometimes, if it was windy, the wind blew holes in the snow house, so perhaps the kaamuk was more comfortable. To make the kaamuk, we would put up a tent and line the inside with wood. Between the tent and the wood we would put little bushes - sometimes blueberry bushes to make it warm. I remember when Kumwartok, rny son, got married. He and his wife were building the hut and she was carrying the bushes on her back. They were too heavy for her and she fell down, covered in bushes. They laughed. They were happy, building the hut together. 36

Bird attacking fish. Coloured pencil and felt pen, drawing for stone cut, 1969.

in the kaamuk we put a window. We made the window from the intestine of the whale. We would clean it and blow It up with air and hang it up to dry in long pieces. This made a good window. It was also from the whale intestine that we made sails for the sealskin boats. In the summers before I was married I lived in a great big sealskin tent made from the 'udjuk', the square-flipper seal. These tents were so large they used to be used by two families. Inside there was a great room and usually the children slept on the 'kilu', the sleeping platform, at the back of the tent and far away from the door, The grown-ups slept just in front of the kilu on the 'ilukatigit', which means 'both sides of the tent'. This was a sleeping platform for two families or four grown-ups. The sealskin tent was changed every summer because it would dry out and then it was very hard to use. I used to see my mother make these tents. She would scrape the udjuk three times with the ulu and sew the skins on 38

Talilayu who keeps the sea animals away from the hunters. Felt pen, ca. t967 We used to hang up the intestine of the whale in long strips to dry. Felt pen. ca. 1967

the ground. These skins could dry out very quickly, too, so damp moss would be brought from the tundra to cover them as she worked. The first year I was married I made a sealskin tent just for our family, I made only this one because, at the time, my mother used to stay in turns in our camp and in the camps of her sons. She would help me with all the sewing. Every year she made us a tent. Then, when I had four children, they began to sell canvas at the Bay. Ashoona was always able to buy canvas and so, after this, I made canvas tents. The last tents I made were for Jim Houston when he was here. One summer a group of white people -1 think they were the first tourists - came and spent all summer camping here outside Cape Dorset, Eskimo families went and lived with them. I made about six tents. In the old way, of course, women also made the boats. I never sewed for a sealskin boat but I used to sew for the 42

We would sew covers for kayaks with sinew from the caribou leg muscle. Coloured pencil and felt pen, ca, 1967

kayaks, In the old days, usually the women would row the sealskin boat and the men would go in the kayaks. In one drawing, I have shown the women's boat towing a kayak. If it became rough they would take the kayak-man aboard. In this print, all around the boats are little pests. What are they doing there? It is their business to be there. Did Eskimos believe in spirits and pests and monsters? Maybe they did. In the old days there was much to fear. In the old days I was never done with the sewing. There were the tents and the kayaks, and there were all the clothes which were made from the different skins - seal, caribou and walrus. From skins we also made cups for drinking and buckets for carrying water. And when we caught geese we used to make brooms for cleaning from the wings which we bound together. If we had enough brooms we would throw the wings away. As soon as I was finished sewing one thing, I was always sewing another. Sometimes, when I was very busy with 43

Happy girls, Feftpen, ca. 1967 A bird from my mind. Felt pen, 1968

Three birds. Felt pen. ca. 196?

the sewing, my husband would help me. He used to help me with the parkas. This is how we used to make our clothing, The men would take the skins from the animals and the women would scrape them with the ulus. When I was a young girl and had just married, I did my first sealskin, which was a young, square-flipper seal, I was scraping this seal very quickly and, when it was finished and I stretched it for drying, I saw hundreds of holes! The skin had not been done properly. But I did not do that twice, I tried hard to learn how to sew because I envied the women who could sew nicely. We bought needles from the Bay but we made thread from the whale muscle which was soaked in sea-water and we also used strips of the caribou skin. The clothes could be made out of any kind of skin - caribou, seal or walrus - but I liked the lovely caribou best. We also had duffel, i do not remember exactly when the duffel came, but I remember having a duffel parka as a 46

Overleaf: Both in summer and winter we used to move a lot. Felt pen, 1970 In summer there were always very big mosquitoes. Felt pen, 1970

little girl. Probably, when the Hudson's Bay post came here, the duffel came along with the company. The duffel was used for the inner parka and for the duffel socks, Each person wore two parkas. Before the duffel came, the first parka, the one nearest the skin, had the fur touching the skin, while the outer parka had the caribou hair outside. When the duffel came, we used it inside. We didn't have money often - we bought the duffel with fox skins. When I made a parka I used to try to make it the way I wanted it to look. I would try to make it look very good. It was not easy and I used to sew on a parka for many days. We always used the finest skin of the young caribou for the head of the parka and, on top, we would put little ears from the baby caribou. It looked very nice. I would also make patterns and designs with different-coloured skins, Before we started living in one place, as we do now, we used to walk very long distances and the boots would wear 47

On lop of the parka we put Irttte ears from the baby caribou. Felt pen, 1970 Engraving, 1962

out quickly. I was never finished with making mukluks. I also would make new soles and sew them on the worn boots- For boots we used only sealskin and, once the skin was cleaned, we would chew it so that the mukluks would be soft. It was hard to do but it worked well. I also made 'qutugut', which were worn above the boots and covered the legs. This is how it used to be with qutugut - there was string with a knot on the end, which went up and hooked over the pants above. When James Houston, whom we call Sowmik - the lefthanded one - came to Cape Dorset and told me to draw the old ways, 1 began to put the old costumes into the drawings and prints. Some days I am really tired of the old ways - so much drawing. But many liked my parkas many people really used to like my clothes. I am too old now to make any more and my eyes are not good. But every year I still make sealskin pants for Kaka. 50

Overleaf: A bird for the doctor. Felt pen, 1971 Thoughts of a bear. Felt pen, 1970

Bearded seals around ice. Felt pen, ca. 1967 Travelling by dog team (detail). Coloured pencil and felt pen, ca. 1967

Like his father, Kaka does not want to live with other people and he stays in camp. Like his father, Kaka is a very good hunter and every year he gets the most beautiful skins from a special seal - the 'kasigiak'. The skins are lovely and dark, and he brings them to me and I must make these pants. I liked the old clothes but I like the new clothes, too. In the old days men were very good hunters. They had to keep busy to feed the dogs and the family. We depended on the dogs and Ashoona always had a very good team. Dogs would have puppies and there were always from five to ten. They never had to be trained, they knew by instinct. They were clever and dangerous, too, but when they were full and happy, they went fast. Sometimes in the camps in a bad winter, the dogs used to starve, but Ashoona always brought lots of food. Some days he would bring ten seals from one day's hunting. He would cut meat for the dogs even in winter. 54

There seemed to be more animals in the old days. There were more whales and more seals and, just quite recently, there were lots of narwhales around Cape Dorset, But today the animals don't seem to come into the settlements much. Now they have ail these motors and the animals hear them and run away. Now there are motors everywhere, but dogs were safer than skidoos. Skidoos can break down out there, far from Cape Dorset; and dogs will bark when they see a polar bear. In the old days, when men left the camp, they would always give the women something that killed - a gun. But I used to be very poor at shooting and I remember one day, although we had lots of food, I wasted a whole box of ammunition trying to kill a little seal. I knew it would get away. But though I have never shot a caribou, there are very few birds that I have not caught. When I was a little girl my father and mother taught me how to catch a goose. Four people would corner a goose 55

My parenls taught me how to catch a goosa (Pitseolak, lower left; her father, top left: her mother, top right; and a woman from the camp). Felt pen, 1970 Man trying to catch a goose. Stone cut. 1964

and then my parents would tell me to run up behind it, hooting and shouting, and put my foot on its neck. I'd run and I'd catch the goose and I'd stand there waving my arms like a bird. Sometimes we'd all have headaches from shouting and yelling. in 'isha', the season when the geese lose their feathers, they are very easy to catch. They can't fly then and you can catch them easily on the grass. Just before I was born they used to drive the moulting geese into stone pens, but we didn't bother with pens. Geese are best found in mossy areas. Their feet are very sensitive and they won't go on the rocks. They always go where it's mossy or where there's grass. Sometimes an Eskimo man will take a long rope with a loop on the end and place the loop on the ground. Then the Eskimo man will hide behind a rock and, when a goose passes over the loop, he'll pull the rope and he catches the goose. 56

Flower spirit. Engraving, 1968

It's fun to chase a goose and it's always fun to be around animals - they are meat. I can't remember the first time I tasted the white man's food, but I do remember one incident. At the time, they were building the Hudson's Bay post's big warehouse and I was just a little girl. I remember watching people unload the supply boat, and I was crying very hard, They gave me a pilot biscuit and I really liked it. I like the white man's food but I think the old food was better for Eskimos. In the old days we had more food from animals and we didn't get sick so much. We ate the food raw. We used to eat seal, whale, caribou, ducks and ptarmigan all raw, though we used to cook the goose, and goose cooked is very good. We also used to cook the polar bear, though some people ate it raw, We had fruit in the summer. We used to pick the berries on the tundra, and something else we ate was dulse. We 58

Eskimo camp scene. Engraving, 1967

used to hunt for dulse around the beaches. Sometimes, when the men went hunting, they would bring back dulse for the women. Eskimo people believe that it has some medicine in it; when they are sick they feei better if they have some. Sometimes in the winter it was boring in the igloo but we never stayed inside much. We had warmer clothes in those days and it used to be fun when It was windy. The fathers would make toy sleds for their sons and daughters to slide on and, when the children had their sleds and their toy whips, they would play outside most of the day. Now they are in school all day and they have the habit of staying indoors. Very often in those days when we felt happy in camp, Ashoona and I would play the accordion. My favourite brother once gave me an accordion and we both could play. The little children would come and dance. Kaka used to dance a lot.

59

Women would row the sealskin boats; men would go in the kayaks. Coloured pencil and felt pen, ca. 1967 Sometimes, just for two seconds, I could keep three stones up. Felt pen, 1970

Ashoona used to like to juggle. He could keep three smal! stones in the air and sometimes, just for two seconds, I could keep three .stones up there, too. We played lots of games. One game was 'illupik* - jumping over the 'avatuk', the sealskin float that hunters used to tie to the harpoons so the seals would stay on the water after they were killed. I hear young people in Cape Dorset still try to jump the avatuk at the youth club meetings. Another game was the Eskimo tennis! This is how we played this game - we threw a ball underhand and tried to catch it in a sealskin racket. The racket was called an 'autuk'. We made the ball from caribou skin and stuffed it with something. We used to play this game a lot, even in winter. It was a good game, but they don't play it now; they are following the world. It was always most joyful when people came together in Cape Dorset, Every year we would make three trips to

60

One game we played was 'illupik' jumping over the sealskin float. Felt pen, 1970

Cape Dorset with the dog team. When the nights were light we would travel after midnight and build an igloo when we stopped. It used to be cold when it was windy! We would go to Dorset to sell the fox skins to the Bay and get supplies. We got good prices for the fox then; fox used to be worth a lot. We would buy in exchange what we call the grub - the white man's food - tea, flour, salt, baking powder and shortening. We always made one trip in summer to see the Nascopie. This ship used to bring all the supplies for the year to the Bay. We were always happy to see the Nascopie. One year the Nascopie went on some rocks coming into Dorset and was wrecked. Many people got things from the wreckage. I remember my son, Kiawat, got a primus stove and some blankets. He saw other people getting things and decided he should have something, too. In those days, a lot of people and families would spend a long summer in Cape Dorset and then, before the weather 62

In the old days there were good dancers. Felt pen, 1970

got cold, they would look for new camps inland. We used to be happy to be together, There would be dances at the Bay residence and at the warehouse. I only danced when I moved into the settlement after my husband died, but there were many people in Cape Dorset then who were good dancers. I don't remember the drum dances; I only remember the accordion dance. They danced Eskimo dances that went on for a long time - there were no drunks in the dances then! This was the old Eskimo way of life; you couldn't give up because it was the only way. Today I like living in a house that is always warm but, sometimes, I want to move and go to the camps where I have been. The old life was a hard life but it was good. It was happy. My husband died at Natsilik, That year I hadn't wanted to go to Natsilik and neither had Namoonie. But Ashoona begged us to go and so we did, The week my husband became sick we heard that his brother had died in Cape

64

Packing a sleigh (detail). Coloured pencil and felt pen, ca, 1967

Dorset, but we didn't tell Ashoona because we were afraid it would make him even sadder. He died of a very bad sickness. Many people died at that time in the camps and in Cape Dorset. There was no doctor then and nobody knew what the sickness was. For a long time after Ashoona died we were very sad. Sometimes I thought I would lose my mind. Whenever a dog team came to the camp, Ottocnie would go and look for his father. He thought he would find him. In the spring after Ashoona died, we came out of Natsilik on a dog team. We came here to Cape Dorset just for a little while. But my relatives were no longer here. My eldest brother had died on the water; he was on a kayak and didn't return. My other brothers, with my mother who lived for a long time, had gone to Resolute Bay - some of them died around there just last year, I hear. Now I am the only one left and I often think that I will not live much longer, now that rny relatives are all dead. 66

After Ashoona died we were very poor and sometimes we would be out of oil for the kudlik. Things were given to us by other people; we used to get oil from Qshaweetok, We lived in camps near Cape Dorset and my eldest son, Namoonie, did the hunting and sometimes Kaka helped. But for a long time, we were very poor and often we were hungry. We were poor until Sowmik and the government houses came. Before Jim Houston came to Cape Dorset we had the people at the Bay who were here for the furs, and we were grateful to have them and very pleased to be able to get tea, sugar and flour. But I think Sowmik was the first man to help the Eskimos. Ever since he came, the Eskimo people have been able to find work. Here in Cape Dorset they call him The Man'. When Sowmik came to Cape Dorset we had moved into the settlement and were living here in a snowhouse. This is how we first met him, A boat was coming in from Lake 67

Bringing a gift. Felt pen, ca. 1967

Harbour and we went over near the Bay to see who was on it. That was the first time I saw Sowmik. We didn't know he was coming in and we had never heard of him before but, immediately, he began to ask for carvings and sewing. After this visit he came often to Cape Dorset, and then he built his house and the government office. At first, after Sowmik carne, I did lots of sewing. I made parkas and duffel socks with designs. Lots of women began to work - any kind of women so long as they could sew. I used to embroider animals and ail kinds of living things. But it was always $12 for a parka - even though it was hard to do. Two winters - two years - after Jim came to live in Cape Dorset, he began to ask for drawings. Many people had been doing the drawings before I started. It was only just before Jim went away that I heard people were drawing to make money, I heard that Kiakshuk was drawing, and he was my very close relative - my mother's sister's son.

68

Nighl demons of sky and earth Stone cut, 1961 Perils of the sea traveller. Stone cut, 1960

Kiakshuk was drawing a lot and f wanted to do drawings, too, to make some money. I bought some paper myself and i think I made four small drawings. I think I drew little monsters. I meant the drawings to be animals but they turned out to be funny-looking because I had never done drawings before, I took these drawings to Jim's office, I was scared to go there at first but he gave me money I think it was $20. I began to think, maybe someday I can be like Kiakshuk. Maybe I will, Kiakshuk was working really hard on the prints when he died, He worked right up to the time he died. I am still doing the drawings and perhaps I will die like Kiakshuk, doing the drawings right up to the end. Because Kiakshuk was a very old man, he did real Eskimo drawings. He did it because he grew up that way, and I really liked the way he put the old Eskimo life on paper, I used to see Kiakshuk putting the shamans and spirits into his work on paper. Were the shamans useful in 70

Happy family. Engraving, 1983

any way? I don't know much about shamans because ! don't like to think about them. Did the Anglican clergymen tell people not to be shamans? I have never heard of a single minister telling an Eskimo not to be a shaman, People just didn't like to give instructions to these powerful people. Jim Houston told me to draw the old ways, and I've been drawing the old ways and the monsters ever since. We heard that Sowmik told the people to draw anything, in any shape, and to put a head and a face on it. He told the people that this drawing was very good. Some people saw the monsters, somewhere, some place, but I have never seen the monsters I draw. But I keep on drawing these things and, sometimes, when I take Terry a monster drawing, I say, "Perhaps when I die I'll see these monsters." Terry Ryan came to Cape Dorset just before Jim went away. Terry, whom we call The Printer', came to run the 72

Some people saw the monsters, somewhere, some place. Felt pen, 1970 Bird spirit and fish. Stone cut, 1968

Co-op. The Co-op sends the carvings and prints to the south, and it is owned by Eskimos. I don't know exactly how it works but there is a board of directors who are Eskimo, Terry gives out the pens and the papers for drawing, and later when we bring him our work, he pays for the drawings and carvings. I don't do drawings when Terry has gone somewhere; when Terry's away I get tired of waiting for him, A lot of people miss him when he's away. Since the Co-op began i have earned a lot of money with my drawing, I get clothes from the drawings, and I earn a living from paper. Because Ashoona, my husband is dead I have to look after myself, and I am very grateful for these papers - papers we tear so easily. Whenever I am out of everything, I do some drawings and I take them to Terry at the Co-op and he gives me money with which I can buy clothes and tea and food for the family. He is paying well. I am happy to have the money and I am glad we have a Co-op. 74

The woman with the blue fish spear. Felt pen, 1970 Pitseolaks, Felt pen, 1970

Does it take much planning to draw? Ahalona! It takes much thinking, and i think it is hard to think. It is hard like housework. The other day I drew an Eskimo woman with a blue fish spear. I did not want to leave the fish spear alone; that is why I put the bird on her head. There's a baby hidden inside the parka, too - you can tell by the shape of the parka! When i first started doing the drawings I did all the work in black and brown, and I still like these two colours, although now we are using many coloured pens. Jim said to draw the old ways in bright colours. After Terry gets the drawings, some are put on the-stone and made into prints. The drawings are carved into stone by Nawpachee's husband, Eegyvudluk, and by lyola, Lukta and Ottochie, After they are put on the stone, they are always better. Sometimes we make prints, loo, with 76

Girl on a windy day. Coloured pencil and felt pen, ca, 1967

stencils and with copper plates, Now some of the drawings are also arranged on material and, when it is carefully done, it looks very well. Sometimes, when I see pictures in books of my drawings and prints, I laugh, I laugh to think they have become something. But even when they are waiting for papers from the south, Terry Ryan is giving artist's papers to me. Sometimes, when I am the only one who is given papers to draw on, I am scared that the other women will become jealous of me. Sometimes I feel sorry when other people don't have papers - papers which I can get. But many Cape Dorset people have done well with the prints, I don't know who did the first print, but Kiakshuk, Niviaksiak, Oshaweetok and Tudlik were all drawing at the beginning. I liked the first prints - I liked them because they were truly Eskimo. Others have worked well, too. Parr was an old man when he began to draw, and he died last year, but I really loved the way he drew, Kenojuak 78

Woman hiding from spirit. Stone cut, 1968

made the owl which, I hear, became famous in the south. Lucy is good sometimes and I have seen something of Pudlo's which I like. My children are working for the Co-op, too. Kaka and Kiawat are carving. Kiawat has also done prints - he once drew a muskox with big horns - but he has been carving since he was a young boy and is good at the carving. Kaka also makes good money carving, Nawpachee does sewing, drawing and carving, and Kumwartok and Ottochie and Namoonie carve sometimes. But Kaka and Kiawat are best. Once, Kiawat and Nawpachee's husband, Eegyvudluk, went to Ottawa to do some carving and meet the Queen, Jim Houston arranged it. But they didn't go to Frobisher Bay to see her there when she came this year. They had seen her already. I know I have had an unusual life, being born in a skin tent and living to hear on the radio that two men have landed on the moon, i think the new times started for Eskimos 80

Caribou and birds. Stone cut, 1963 The knives, the drying rack, the things we made to use. Felt pen, 1970

after the white people's war, when the white men began to make many houses in the Arctic, Eskimos began to move into the settements and then the white people started helping us to get these houses, That's why life changed, I don't think everybody was too fond of moving from the camps, but they still came anyway, Now they just stay here in Cape Dorset, They are working for the white man now, Kaka didn't want to move away from his camp so now his camp has a real house. He had it moved down the shore, In some ways I like living in a warm house, but in the old days, before all these things happened, we were always healthy, I was never sick, not even with all the children I had. In these late years I have been sick most of the time and I have felt each year harder to bear. Now that we all live in one place we get sick a lot. My worry now is over one of my sons who was very sick in the spring. He is down south now and I do not know how he is doing.

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The little owl. Stone cut, 1968 Fishing in front of the snow shelter. Felt pen, ca. 1967

A few years ago, too, there was a great loss in our family, Nawpachee and her husband, Eegyvudluk, were at church and they left their young children at home, The house caught fire and they died. But I think the new ways would be better than the old, except that nowadays the young people make so much trouble, A long time ago when I was bringing up my children they would do what you told them to do. If you gave them something to eat they were grateful and happy about it. Qttochie, especially, was always thankful for everything. If he asked to do something and i said yes, he'd be really pleased; if I said no, he wouldn't do it. Now, all that has changed. They don't listen at all. People get worse when they all live in one place. The young people are always in trouble; if they were out of trouble, it would be much better the new way, I have heard there is someone - not a human being but a spirit - in the moon. When I heard that the two men had 84

In summer we hunted dulse on the beach. Fell pen, ca. 1967 Fishing through the ice. Coloured pencil and felt pen, ca, 196?

Spirit of happy women. Coloured pencil and felt pen, ca. 1967

landed on the moon I wondered what the spirit thought of these two men landing on his land. We have an Anglican church here in Cape Dorset and every Sunday I go there. The missionaries came to the Arctic a long time ago and I was married by the Anglican clergyman, Inutaquuq. But for a long time we had no church in Cape Dorset. Then Pootagook, the father of Eegyvudluk, Nawpachee's husband, told the missionaries that they should bring a church to Cape Dorset. He said the Eskimos would give fox skins to pay for materials. The missionaries brought it and Pootagook had them put it over at the end of the bay where the children wouldn't get at it. He told them to put it there. Pootagook and other Eskimos led the services but, later, a clergyman came and lived here for a time. The women in Cape Dorset sewed sealskin cushions and we also embroidered hangings for the altar. Many women embroidered birds and seals and other animals in bright colours on small 88

Waiting. Felt pen, 1970 The old life was hard - but it was happy. Felt pen, ca. 1967

squares of cloth. But we did much more embroidery than is there in the church today. What happened to it? Well, we think one of the missionaries' wives stole some of it. When all the squares were sewn together they looked very nice. I have heard that they like my drawings in the south and I am grateful and happy about it. Nowadays, when very special people arrive on the plane to visit the Co-op, I am always invited. I am usually very shy but often they shake hands. Last week a very important minister was here from Ottawa and they gave him the stone which was made from one of my drawings. It was a sealskin boat I did iast winter. To make prints is not easy. You must think first and this is hard to do. But i am happy doing the prints, After my husband died I felt very alone and unwanted; making prints is what has made me happiest since he died. I am going to keep on doing them until they tell me to stop. If no 90

Summer journey. Stone cut, 1970

one tells me to stop, I shall make them as long as I am well, If I can, I'll make them even after I am dead. My son, Kumwartok, wants me to do some drawings to put around the house. But I think I will probably do some and take them to the Co-op,

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She is carrying her children on top of the kayak and her husband is pulling the kayak with the rope towards him so they can land. Felt pen, 1966-76

Remembering Pitseolak Ashoona (ca 1907-1983) "I know I have had an unusual life - being born in a skin tent and living to hear on the radio that two men have landed on the moon," Pitseolak tells us in her story. What a remarkable life, indeed, she lived and what skills she brought to the telling of it. You may still take a small plane into Cape Dorset - our pilot called ours the Bandit - but it's a different journey from the one I made when Pitseolak and I first met in 1968. Now Cape Dorset has all the modern services: an airport, scheduled flights, good housing - the "matchboxes" are gone - and state-of-the-art schools where children learn to use the computer - 'qaritauyaq' "like a brain." In 1968 the plane landed on the sea ice on a runway marked out by oil drums. The old way lingered in the air: families were new to settlement living, one or two camps still existed. (The graphic artist Pitaloosie Saila

remembers the spot where the last igloo stood while latecomers to community life waited for qallunaat accommodation: "You could see its light shine out at night.") Now every year new roads enlarge the town. There are eateries like the Uksivik Coffee Shop - "the place where you bake" - where people say hamburgers taste better than in Iqualuit (formerly Frobisher Bay), the fast-growing capital of Nunavut. There's TV and Inuit programming and some residents have bought the video of Atanarjuat - The Fast Runner- the first Inuit feature film. My trip in 1968 was the direct result of having seen in 1960 the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' famous exhibition of the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative's first catalogued edition of Inuit prints.1 I was working as a reporter at the time and from that moment I longed to visit

95

Nest of eggs. Felt pen, 1966-76

Cape Dorset and meet the artists who had emerged so unexpectedly out of the Canadian Arctic, a territory as large as India, about which most of us in the south knew remarkably little. What would they have to say for themselves? It took eight years, but with a commission to write an article for the Globe and Mail I arrived and spent three days. The time was short because of fears of "weather" but I hired an interpreter and after making a number of visits arrived at Pitseolak's front door. Even though we spoke to each other through an intermediary I knew immediately that Pitseolak was highly articulate, that she would be what reporters call "a great interview." She had a gift for homey detail. "Sometimes it would get quite dark," she said speaking of an Inuit leader in the days when powerful men had several wives, "and that poor man would still be building the igloos." And you could count on Pitseolak to complain a little - to tell you her real feelings. "We used to be happy to see the white man - in the days before there

96

were too many white men." No journalist could hope for better interviews than those Pitseolak provided. At that time the lightweight portable tape recorder was just beginning to be recognized as an essential reporter's tool. Its possibilities had been demonstrated at Columbia University in New York, which established the first oral history program in the United States in 1948. Under its auspices important books were published; great journalists showed how the tape recorder could enhance reporting to make it possible to put together a new, exciting sort of book. I had read some of the British journalist Henry Brandon's recorded interviews with the great and the good of Washington that appeared in The Sunday Times of London - they were a novel form of reportage at the time - and had dipped into Harlan B. Phillips' Felix Frankfurter Reminisces. Later on, an important model for me was Merle Miller's lively and innovative Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry Truman. These models from the highest levels of American statecraft may seem a bit too remote from Arctic life to be useful but I found the

Egging. Felt pen, 1970

contrary: whether with presidents, supreme court justices or grandfathers, oral history is gathered through the interview and reporters try to make interviews their specialty. In these books, remarkable interviews were put to work in masterful ways. Many of the advantages tape recorders have for journalists are obvious. They record what is actually said, providing a record and an invaluable check. But, just as important, they capture the vitality of the vernacular, catch the flavour of personality through words and emphasis, and retain the intimacy of conversation. When I met Pitseolak I already had a tape recorder but I had never used it. I knew immediately that I had to think of a way to come back up North to tape some interviews with Pitseolak. In 1970, with the help of twelve hundred dollars from the Canada Council, I got the chance and I stayed in Cape Dorset for almost a month. My knowledge of Inuit life was limited in the extreme but in our question and answer sessions Pitseolak gave me master classes. The Bible was the only book Inuit of

Pitseolak's generation had known and sometimes Pitseolak appeared bemused as to what I had in mind, "What is she going to do with all this material?" "She's going to put it in a book." Why?" "People in the south spend all their time reading." ("Oh, how I wish that were true," said the publisher down south to whom I repeated this conversation.) But our interviews moved along with, for me, many happy and revealing moments. This was the result of Pitseolak's courtesy and willingness to answer my questions and help from Annie Manning and Ann Meekitjuk Hanson, our interpreters. In Montreal, while I was making plans for my trip, the question of how well I would actually communicate with Pitseolak, since I spoke no Inuktitut and she no English, was a worry at the back of my mind. Pitseolak had much to say, I knew, but how easy would it actually be to talk across the language barrier? Was it even reasonable to expect a meaningful exchange? But, as I had hoped, the tape recorder made our interviews possible - and the

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Our camp. Stone cut, 1974

great patience of Pitseolak and the skills of our interpreters rendered them productive. Many questions were asked again and again - and then again. "She's asking those old questions again," I heard once. There were many stupid questions but there were also clever answers. Towards the end of my stay I learned that the community had begun calling me Apirsuqti - "she who asks questions." Later the Inuit art curator Jean Blodgett came to work in Cape Dorset and I hear we became "She who asks questions No. 1" and "She who asks questions No. 2," respectively. In free time I typed up the transcripts on my Lettera 22, sometimes, when the flies were not too ferocious, sitting out on the tundra rocks. When our interview sessions came to a close (and each interview gave rise to more and more questions), I went back to the south and began to try to tell Pitseolak's story. I took sentences and paragraphs out of the transcripts and, using direct quotes only, put

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them together to form a continuous narrative. I selected material at random but it turned out that the first questions asked - "What is your name?" "What is your age?" produced the opening lines: "My name is Pitseolak ... I have lost the time when I was born ..." When I typed these lines I was thrilled with their lyricism and it was many visits to Cape Dorset later that I discovered that I had not asked enough questions after all: Pitseolak told me she had once had a notebook with the date of her birth written in it but it was lost when a strong wind blew away the family tent. With Pitseolak's beautiful drawings and prints as illustrations our book appeared the following year, in 1971. In 1975, with the publication of Diefenbaker: Leadership Gained, Peter Stursberg established oral history and the oral biography as a genre in Canada. Nowadays tape recorders are routinely used and art historians have preserved the authentic voice of many of the great Inuit artists.2

The Shaman's wife. Stone cut and stencil, 1980

As soon as the books were in the book stores Pitseolak came down south for the publishing party, which coincided with an exhibition of her work at the Canadian Guild of Crafts in Montreal. Pitseolak had been to the south before but only for a hospital stay. We drove around town past the great Henry Moore sculpture, at that time newly installed on a plaza outside the CIBC bank building (it has since moved indoors). Curious bystanders sometimes asked what it represented. Pitseolak looked at it and said, "It is a woman and it is good." We visited the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, where among the exhibits was a magnificent African sculpture - it appeared to be an African king. Pitseolak stopped before it and said, "It's good." Our visit to Montreal's Alcan Aquarium was not so satisfactory. She felt sorry for the seals in captivity. "They are unhappy, I can tell from their eyes." She felt the same when we visited McGill's agricultural school, Macdonald College, and the livestock in their stalls. "The poor bull." Ann Hanson, who accompanied Pitseolak to interpret, told us that on her own first visit to the south she had expected

that she would see animals ranging freely everywhere just as in the Arctic. Perhaps Pitseolak too had thought that that was the way it would be. Our publisher arranged for Pitseolak to stay at the Ritz. "It's remarkable how the people in the south live," Pitseolak said and Ann Hanson told her, "You are living in the best part of town." The TV in the hotel room (television in the North was still some years in the future) caused huge surprise. "I never imagined I'd have so many pictures in my bedroom." But how did the pictures get there? In Cape Dorset at the time three young Inuit operated the projector for the weekly movie from a makeshift projection room at the back of the community hall. Were there little men at the back of the set? "Try explaining electricity," suggested Ann Hanson. But none of the hosts were able to do that. When Pitseolak was about to go home I asked if I could commission a drawing of her "down south" impressions and she said she would send something when she got

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Bountiful summer. Felt pen, 1971

back. What would it be, I wondered? Perhaps a picture of telephone wires and tall buildings? Her fellow print artist Pudlo Pudlat drew me such pictures a few years later. But Pitseolak sent a picture of summer's abundance (opposite): a drawing of plenty to eat - two big geese, a walrus, all the sea creatures and - a favourite motif that year - a sprinkling of huge mosquitoes. She appended a note: "Goodbye to you all. There were so many of you. I was so welcome. Thank you for your hospitality. Thank you to all."

There was one official function during Pitseolak's visit. We went up to Ottawa where Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who was then the minister of Northern Affairs, presented a copy of our book to the National Archives. After a few words he asked Pitseolak to take a bow. "I never thought I would stand up before white people," she said afterwards. On such occasions Pitseolak always professed to be very 102

shy. But make no mistake, Pitseolak had strong confidence in her creative powers. "Nothing is too difficult to try. I've done a lot of moving figures: walking, running, jumping. I've even done skipping." She believed her skills were constantly improving and dismissed an early print she saw up on a wall, saying, "I did it before I got good." She was proud too that she always drew freehand and had no need of "patterns." Her least favourite mode of expression - and some of her most delightful work - were copper engravings.3 "I wanted to quit doing the copper and I did," she said. "I didn't want to keep doing copper because I used to get very tired afterwards. I think I used all my muscles because I used to get sore all over. And I was very afraid of the tool. That very sharp tool used for scratching the copper is like a needle: it is like a needle with an angle. The tool used to slip and one time I got cut on the finger. It went right through. When I worked on the copper I was always expecting to cut myself." Then speaking of Terry Ryan,

The critic. Graphite, 1963 Photo courtesy National Film Board of Canada.

long-time art director for the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative, she added, "I told Terry I wouldn't do any more and Terry didn't blame me." Pitseolak liked most to work with brightly coloured felt pens, which allowed her rapid completion of a vivid image. "Some of those pens will spoil the paper but I always choose the better ones. I don't like the coloured crayons they take a long time." Pitseolak could dash off a drawing in five minutes - often brilliant, though she did her share of pot boilers. (Pitseolak well knew the difference.) Granddaughter Pootoogook remembers that occasionally she was called in to help with the colouring "when she had to get to the Co-op to sell her drawings before it closed. She didn't make a lot of money but she made enough to feed us." In the 1998 book Inuit Art, author Ingo Hessel says, "Pitseolak could create an entire world on a sheet of

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paper." And she peopled her world with her young self, her mother and father and brothers and sisters. She gave us scenes, too, from her married life when her children were young. In one beautiful series the family is on the inland trek to the giant Netsilik Lake where her husband, Ashoona, and her eldest son, Namoonie, loved to go. It has frequently been supposed that Inuit have rarely created portraits, self or otherwise, but this idea is due for revision. Pitseolak's drawings are highly autobiographical and she sketches herself, with her heart-shaped face and narrow distinctive jaw line, in many drawings. Even when not identified, people in Pitseolak's pictures as often as not turn out to be members of her family. "That's my 'anana' my mother," she said when I asked her questions about her 1963 stone cut print Tattooed Woman (page 21). And in her 1968 stone cut Inukshuk Builders (page 25), for instance, it is her father, Ottochie, putting the top stone on an Inukshuk built in 1913, the year the Hudson's Bay Company established itself at Cape Dorset.

Mother and daughter. Felt pen, 1970

The arrival of the HBC above the Hudson Strait in 1911 at Kimmirut - formerly Lake Harbour - and two years later at Cape Dorset changed Inuit life decisively: Inuit became trappers bartering furs for trade goods. "I remember my father helping to build an Inukshuk just after the white man came to Cape Dorset," she told the National Film board in 1971 when a crew arrived to make an animated documentary from her drawings. "The white man came in the summer and the Inukshuk was built that fall. Many men built it. I do not know why my father and the other men made it but I think it was so that people coming to Cape Dorset would know the way in. When my father put on the top stone all the rocks trembled - but it didn't fall down." Pitseolak, who was about four years old at the time, added, "I did not help build the Inukshuk but I was there to run around." On early drawings, Pitseolak makes the occasional brief syllabic note but these become frequent and fuller on later

drawings, perhaps the result of the captions in our book. These syllabic notations give us her own explanations for her drawings and often add to our knowledge of Inuit technology and culture. In her last years, as her strength fails, a sad and pressured note occasionally creeps in, sometimes actually in the midst of remarks about a drawing: "I am tired again," "As usual I am tired," and once, on drawings made in the 1970s in hospital, where she had been encouraged to try acryllics as a means of passing the time, "So much is expected of me ..." "In here I'm not going to do drawings because I feel uncomfortable ... I'm not here to do drawings." But such low moments are rare. By a large margin, Pitseolak is the most prolific of all Cape Dorset graphic artists. Till the end of her life she rejoiced in her work and in the increasing recognition it brought her. When she was about to leave Cape Dorset for the premiere of the NFS film and well wishers gathered round, asking if she felt nervous, she told them, "I am very hopeful."

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They are pulling each other's hair and whoever pulls the opposite one closest wins. Felt pen, 1978 They are trying to stand on their heads but one of them can't do it and has fallen down. Whoever stays up longest wins the game. Felt pen, 1966-76

Up to today I've never seen a sea dog. I've heard their furs are all different kinds of colours - like the Eskimo husky dogs. Felt pen, 1970s

In Three Women, Three Generations, a study of the works of Pitseolak, her daughter Napatchie Pootoogook, and her granddaughter Shuvinai Ashoona written for the 1999 exhibition held at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario, curator Jean Blodgett says there are 8,702 documented drawings by Pitseolak in West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative archives and probably a small number of uncatalogued drawings in private collections and elsewhere. A total of 238 drawings were turned into prints and released in regular yearly Cape Dorset graphic editions, while a small number appeared in occasional northern editions or as special commissions. A few prints have been held unreleased by the Co-op. In addition Pitseolak created a considerable number of the copper engravings she disliked so much. (In recent years, copper engravings have enjoyed heightened interest on the part of collectors and art historians because of the recognition that they represent an immediate expression of an artist's graphic skills.) Pitseolak's output was vast but she never

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worked her material dry. She developed an idea, created a number of drawings around it, and moved on to fresh topics. Few Arctic artists have matched her for range of subject matter, verve and vitality, and skillful execution.

For some years after the summer Pitseolak and I worked together, I returned rather frequently to Cape Dorset to work on other projects. Always Pitseolak and I did interviews, sometimes so that I could ask her help with new work in progress and sometimes just for the pleasure of talking together. Usually, after that first summer, the interviews took place in Pitseolak's bedroom. At times people at the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative suggested that she might like to work at the studio they placed at the disposal of certain star artists but Pitseolak always pleaded she got tired easily and anyway liked to work at home. "The best place for me to work is in my bed which

My brother Kavavow and older brother Napatchee used to practise bow and arrow shooting. They are targeting the vertebrae of a bowhead whale. My older sister Kudlu is throwing rocks. Felt pen and coloured pencil, 1975 Overleaf: They are caught among ice floes. Felt pen drawing for Journey through Ice Fields, 1973-74 He looks down from the kayak at the animals in the ocean. The water is so calm. Felt pen. From a folio of reproductions of drawings by Cape Dorset artists published in 1971 by the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative in an edition of 2500.

is soft." Beside her bed was a small refrigerator which Pitseolak had bought out of her royalties from our book. In camp days she and her family had often walked miles to reach particularly good sources of drinking water. "Now I can get good cold water whenever I want." Conversation never lagged. Sometimes we entered new territory, sometimes we revisited and filled out the subjects of earlier interviews. Pitseolak especially liked to revisit the winter of 1921-22 when her family were helpers for the American explorer (later Rear Admiral) Donald MacMillan and his crew who were iced in with their vessel the Bowdoin on the tip of the south west coast of Baffin Island. MacMillan astonished much of the populace of the coast that year with the moving pictures he showed on board and he also took still photographs. Pitseolak was about fourteen, "the year the lovely ship, all white, was frozen in the ice. That was the first time I saw moving pictures. They had no sound. And also the American sailors were taking

pictures of us. They had a big camera with them. At first I was shy to have my picture taken because all the sailors were white." Today these photographs which show the life of the time are carefully cared for in the collections of the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum and Arctic Studies Center of Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. Unfortunately Pitseolak never saw these photographs but what a treasure trove they are. In a rather hazy picture Pitseolak herself is there with her brother Kavavow, bringing home a seal (page 134). It was Kavavow who in 1934 led the famous migration for the Hudson's Bay Company that took a number of south Baffin families to the High Arctic where they eventually founded, along with Netsilik of the Boothia Peninsula, the community of Taloyoak (which used to be called Spence Bay). Kavavow's descendants are known today all along the Arctic Ocean coast where many play leading roles in community and territorial affairs. There are good clear pictures of Pitseolak's father, Ottochie, carrying the ice window for the igloo which family members (in

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"My mother drew this picture of my father" Namoonie Ashoona, eldest son of Pitseolak and Ashoona. Felt pen, 1978-79

other pictures) are at that moment building (see Photographs from the Bowdoin, pages 134-7). Pitseolak's drawings and prints often seem to mirror the photographs taken this happy winter when her family, as it turned out, were all together for the last time. Ottochie died that year and Pitseolak, at age thirteen or fourteen, as was usual, began her married life. "When Ashoona came to the camp I didn't know why he came. I didn't know he came for me. I thought he'd just come for a visit - until he started to take me to the sled. Ashoona was pushing and sometimes picking me up to try to put me on the sled. Anyone trying to get married would often have to carry the girl! Girls got married very young; now they are older. At the time the young girls used to be really frightened of the men - frightened to go to bed with them. The first time I was sleeping beside my husband his breath was so heavy, his skin so hard. But after I got used to my husband I was really happy; we had a good life together."

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MacMillan's papers - diaries and unpublished manuscripts - held in the Special Collections division of Bowdoin College Library, provide valuable facts about Pitseolak's roots. He writes, "To my surprise, my Eskimo boys and especially their old father, Ook-took-ee, knew much of Labrador. It appears that Ook-took-ee's father was one of a party that migrated from Hopedale, Labrador, within the history of the Moravian Mission which began its work there in 1771. This and preceding migrations may explain the close connections between the Labrador and Baffin Island Eskimo." It also explains why our book, when it first appeared in its bilingual edition, sparked literary controversy in Cape Dorset. Both in drawings and verbal descriptions Pitseolak always devoted a lot of time to birds - to capturing them, hunting them, and egging. When people in Cape Dorset began to read our book a storm blew up over her description of how to catch geese that were free on the grass (page 56). Pitseolak had been eloquent: "When I

The man will carry off the woman he wants to marry. That's how it used to be. Even though she struggles to get away the man will not give up. But afterwards when she gets used to the man she will be very much attached. Felt pen and coloured crayon, 1978 Overleaf Composition of animals Felt pen, 1966-76 Festive bird. Felt pen drawing for Festive bird, Stone cut, 1971

was a little girl my mother and father taught me how to catch a goose. Four people would corner a goose and then my parents would tell me to run up behind it, hooting and shouting, and put my foot on its neck. I'd run and I'd catch the goose and I'd stand there waving my arms like a bird." But several critics said that this was not at all the way to catch geese. "Pitseolak never caught a goose," an elder assured me. I began to worry about Pitseolak's reaction to this assault on her credentials as a raconteur of the old way but she remained supremely unconcerned. "Pitseolak does not tell lies, though some people say she does." Some time later, back in Montreal at the Notman Photographic Archives in the McCord Museum of Canadian History, while examining a file of archival photographs I found a picture of people in Arctic Quebec catching geese free on the grass without the use of pens in exactly the way Pitseolak described. Along with the 'akulisaq,' and perhaps much else, the technique was an import from Arctic Quebec.

With their ties across the Hudson Strait, the Inuit of south west Baffin Island were great travelers, moving back and forth in their huge skin boats with sails of intestine, living, sometimes for long periods, on "the other side," and trading at the trading posts that were established there early in the nineteenth century. Pitseolak explained how it was that Ottochie, whose own father had come to Baffin Island from the Labrador coast, had lived in Arctic Quebec before her birth. "Long ago people would travel by skin boat, crossing the Hudson Strait from Baffin Island to Northern Quebec. In those days the water used to be calm most of the time and it wasn't dangerous to travel by 'umiak.' One day would turn into the next and the water still would be calm. When my father was a little boy his uncle and others were getting ready to leave from our side. Ottochie did not want to be left behind and he started crying hard. His uncle really loved Ottochie and he did not want to leave him crying so although the

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She is in labour. Felt pen on grey paper, 1971-72

people were already on the boat, he picked him up and took him with them. That's how before I was born my parents were living on that side. That's where Ottochie grew up. He did a lot of trapping for the white traders and my brothers and sisters started to be born there because my mother, Timungiak, was originally from there. When my mother was very young, people on that side had started to get supplies from traders. "When my father and mother went to the traders' post they had to travel through trees. My mother once said they used to go a long way to the post through the Indian land and even saw Indians. Once, traveling through trees, my brother Kavavow got lost and my mother couldn't find him. But she could hear his crying; she saw his tracks and found him through his crying." Pitseolak particularly liked to recount the story of her family's return journey to Baffin Island in a big sealskin boat that her father had made. "Before my parents came

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back to Baffin Island they stayed quite a while at Sugluk on the Arctic Quebec coast. This was the place where my father built a sealskin boat. The skins were sewn together and then put around the boat. It was a handsome boat that would carry many people." Though in some documentation Pitseolak's date of birth is given as 1904, she was born while her family was on a return journey at Toojak (Nottingham Island) in the middle of the Hudson Strait, almost certainly in the winter of 1907-8. In his account in People from Our Side of meeting 46 relatives wintering that year at Toojak on their way to Baffin Island, Cape Dorset's historian and photographer Peter Pitseolak (his uncle Kavavou was Ottochie's adoptive father) describes her as "a big baby who had not yet had a birthday."4 At Toojak, the whole migration was picked up by the whaling ship Active and transported on the final leg of the journey to Baffin Island. Pitseolak heard from her family that "many people got on the big boat Active, and were taken to Tikerak on our side

There is scarcely a bird I have not caught. Felt pen, 1975

- near to where Cape Dorset is today ... So many people were on the ship, my father and his brothers and all the families." Pitseolak has memorialized the skin boats and the voyage in many beautiful drawings and prints. The skin boats disappeared in Pitseolak's childhood but one of her earliest memories was of traveling in one of the great boats, sitting in the 'amauti' or 'amaut,' a special pouch in the woman's parka, playing with her mother's braids. There is such a child, playing with its mother's braids, in the drawing (and the print made from it) Eskimos on Sealskin Boats, the cover picture of this book. MacMillan's time at the place Inuit still call Schooner Harbour was a favourite departure point for Pitseolak's reminiscences, but this was not the first camera she encountered in her young life. Six years before he shot his masterpiece Nanook of the North in Arctic Quebec, the pioneer documentary film maker Robert Flaherty took his

first movie footage (with his first movie camera) on the south Baffin coast in the winter of 1913-14. Inuit in the region starred in his film. Tragically this historic footage has disappeared5 but Flaherty, known to south Baffin Inuit as Koodjuk - swan - "because his flesh was white," also took photographs - mostly portraits that perhaps were used as casting aids - and in 1978, with copies supplied by Monica Flaherty and the Flaherty Study Centre in Brattleboro, Vermont, I took the pictures around to households in Cape Dorset and Kimmirut (Lake Harbour) and spent hours hearing of Koodjuk's activities in the camps along the coast and identifying some of his subjects. Of course I asked Pitseolak if she had ever heard of Koodjuk. "I met that man," she said immediately. "I even got bitten on the knee by Koodjuk's dog. I stepped on its toes - that's why it bit me. I cried and cried." Then she showed me the scar on her kneecap. I was surprised to hear of this encounter but Pitseolak's responses were always like that - always vivid, informative - and personal. Later it seemed a typical Pitseolak response. Everything

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Creatures of the deep. Felt pen, 1966-76

made an impression on Pitseolak and it didn't take a bite on the knee.

I last saw Pitseolak in 1982 during a hospital visit she made to Montreal but we had done our last interviews together the year before when I visited Cape Dorset in pursuit of information about the American and Scottish whalers who were active in the eastern Arctic in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. In our talks I learned how interwoven with Inuit lives were the ships that voyaged through the Hudson Strait before and after Pitseolak's birth. Especially we talked of the bonanza provided by the wreck of the Scottish vessel Polar Star on the south Baffin coast in 1899, the last year of the old century. "It seems that there was no wood around here until the Polar Star was wrecked at Etidliakjuk. That wooden ship

supplied the Inuit here with their first wood. That was before there were any white people living here at all. "I'm the only one now to know about the Polar Star. We used to play on the decks of that wrecked ship when it still was whole. A lot of families used to gather in Etidliakjuk in summertime to take apart the ship and get some wood! That's when we started using wood for sleds, kayak, and tent poles. "When I was just a little girl I was on that ship with my father and his brothers. We children used to play with the glass that was used for the windows. We used to have the windows as our toys; we liked them very much. Because it was a wooden ship it was useful for so many things. The people here used up all the wood. They used up a whole ship." With the establishment of the HBC at Cape Dorset trade goods became regularly available to Inuit of south west

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Birding with bows and arrows. Felt pen, 1966-76

Baffin Island. Pitseolak told about how around the time the HBC arrived in 1913 her father got on a company vessel and went away for many months, helping to build another HBC post. "I was a small girl who didn't know any better and I used to think about my father and long for him to come home. My parents loved me and I used to cry easily. It seems I haven't changed." Perhaps in the end it was this force of emotion that made Pitseolak, as she put it herself, "a real artist." She always stressed that "the old life was happy; it was good." But she hinted at difficulties. In that very tough life, babies were "turned down," old people left behind. In a starvation winter Pitseolak's own brother carried his child until he could go on no longer. "He made the decision to stop carrying her. The little girl and an old woman were left behind in an igloo. The child had become partly frozen as he carried her and her cries could be heard as he walked on."

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And in the old life shamans could be good or bad. Pitseolak's cousin Kiakshuk was a shaman who had seen Taleelayu, the Inuit deity who, if in a good mood, gave the hunters a good catch - "lots of walrus, lots of seal." "Kiakshuk told me he saw Taleelayu once when he was out by himself in his kayak. She was under the kayak following him and he said she was naked and had flippers." I knew Pitseolak admired Kiakshuk because he also drew the old Inuit life, but from another source I heard how Kiakshuk went out on the land and built a snow figure in the form of Pitseolak's oldest brother, Napatchee, then shot an arrow through it. Shortly after this, Napatchee died. (Kiakshuk had taken Napatchee's wife, Mary, but Napatchee, his brother, and others had taken her back.) I could not help wondering about this long ago event and its effect on family relationships. One day I seized an opportunity and asked Pitseolak's well-known son, the sculptor Kiawat. "Oh, perhaps in the past Pitseolak felt

They are playing games. He is hanging in the igloo and holding a walrus head with his feet. Whoever goes the highest with the walrus head wins the game. Felt pen, 1966-76

something. But be angry against Kiakshuk today? No, it all happened so long ago - when they lived in the snow houses, the way you see in the prints."

The West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative, one of the great success stories of the modern North, operates today in a new era.6 The creation, through partition of the Northwest Territories in April 1999, of Nunavut, a Canadian territory with a majority Inuit population and its new legislature in Iqualuit has made Inuit masters in their own house. But the new times have brought modern problems: unemployment, alcohol, drugs, a rising suicide rate. In this difficult but ever-evolving world the Co-op continues to be reassuringly central to community life, a source of financial benefit to its members, its art programs the most productive in the North, the sculpture and graphic art it sends forth eagerly awaited.

During my recent visit I stayed in an apartment above the Co-op studio complex. All studios were resplendent with bright new paint. Green, yellow, and dark red covered the familiar optical yellow and blue colour scheme that had marked out the Co-op buildings for more than 30 years. "I tried to get a colour scheme a bit like the Hudson's Bay Company and a bit like the Baffin Trading Company," said studio manager Jimmy Manning, referring to the two trading companies that in the fox-fur era had made Cape Dorset the focus of camp life. Activity in the studios in early spring was intense. Craftsmen were preparing the year's new print collection: the stone cutters were incising the huge stones from drawings selected from work the print artists had brought in during the year, printers were applying the paint. Proofs of prints by the star artists Kenojuak Ashevak and Kananginak Pootoogook were drying along the walls. Their names have been associated with Cape Dorset's yearly

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Crossing the river. Felt pen, ca 1978

editions since printmaking began. But further into the studio complex, in the packing centre where Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays Cape Dorset carvers bring in their work, I noticed skilful works by the children and grandchildren of the early carvers who in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s brought Cape Dorset world-wide recognition. Generations are close here and the birth rate high. Oqsuralik Ottokie, 77, a midwife in camp days and daughter of Cape Dorset's old masters Eleeshushe and Parr, tells me she recently delivered her great-greatgranddaughter's child. While young people must look in a variety of directions for their futures today, Terry Ryan says, "Virtually all the community's families receive some of their income from Co-op art programs." Cape Dorset carver Johnny Manning, now living in Nunavik (Arctic Quebec), probably voiced a prevailing opinion when he said, "We think that many will carve part-time but that some - three or four - will be fulltime carvers. That's what we hope will happen." When 122

I play back the tape of my interview with Pitseolak's daughter-in-law Mayoriak Ashoona I hear sounds of filing in the background: a grandson giving his carving final touches before taking it to the Co-op. When Pitseolak and I worked together in 1970 she usually drew one drawing a day in the scrapbook she made to illustrate our interviews. But at the end of each session she would tell me that she also had a drawing she was about to take to Terry at the Co-op "so he won't be disappointed." I would rush down to the Co-op (at what is now the crossroads of "downtown") and find more drawings that were delightful illustrations of our talks. That year many drawings related to Netsilik, the huge inland lake, and the long journey inland to get there that Pitseolak and Ashoona and their children made at the start of many summers. During my spring visit, when I spoke to Pitseolak's surviving sons Namoonie and Kiawat (Kaka died in 1996 and Kumwartok died some months

Mosquitoes attacking dog. Stone cut, 1961 Dogs cross the river slowly. Stone cut and stencil, 1980

after Pitseolak in 1994), I discovered that these were family favourites. It was in Netsilik that they lived as a family during the last days of the old way. Sometimes they are there as children in the drawings.

art began in Cape Dorset, that's when non-lnuit began to realize that Inuit culture, traditions, and survival skills continue in the work of Inuit artists.

Kiawat lives today in a splendid house with its own wharf where boats can be tied up and a long view down the bay. I went to see him and his wife, Sorosolito, at a time when many of their children and their children's children had dropped in for a visit. They cluster around as we talk. Perhaps they find Kiawat's stories of the old way as fascinating as I did Pitseolak's. Kiawat remembers when his father, Ashoona, left to go hunting "without matches, with only stones to rub together to make fire." ("I can still do that pretty quick myself") There are fewer and fewer now who have such memories. Or such skills.

"My mother's drawings show exactly the lifestyle we lived as Inuit in the Netsilik area. To get there we used to travel by foot a great distance. As a child I used to start crying, knowing how long we would have to travel. Even the insects in the drawings show exactly what we used to experience." Among its insects the Arctic has mosquitoes, blackflies, and horseflies. Of those depicted in Pitseolak's drawings Kiawat says, "They are not mosquitoes, they are flies that can blind you. They used to go into the eyes and sometimes you'd sort of swallow them. There were lots of them flying around as we travelled. The drawings Pitseolak made show exactly how it was."

When I ask Kiawat what he feels is important about his mother's work he begins by saying, "Drawing has always been a part of showing non-lnuit [southern] history. When

Namoonie lives down in the valley not far from where I used to visit Pitseolak. At the time his sister Napatchie, who died in December 2002, was living across the road.

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They used to sew up the hides to make a raft to cross the river. Felt pen, ca 1978 He has lost his kayak so he is ice-hopping on the broken ice to get it back. Felt pen, ca 1975

Her husband, Eegyvudluk Pootoogook, one of the Co-op's longtime craftsmen, had died in 1999. Namoonie is the only family member who has been back to Netsilik Lake. "I really loved that land," he says. "Lots of animals and the freshest, freshest water. It's so beautiful but they don't go there today. We used to go up in the month of May and we used to travel for two weeks. It didn't take that long but we took our time. Lots of caribou, lots of fishing - we didn't have nets then so we were using spears. While my father was alive, we spent five winters up there. My parents liked to have caribou clothing for us. We were mostly boys so my mother didn't get much help, except that my Dad used to help her. He was very good at sewing; both of them were. My mother softened the skins and cut out the patterns. They used to make two sets for us - one for around the camp and one for traveling. Maybe they didn't always make perfect stitches but they made stitches that were small enough, close enough."

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Namoonie also mentions the insects. "We used to have tents and rocks and boulders to hold down the tent. When we travelled up there we always went with a new tent. Many times when we got there the tent was already dark with the flies. Then, when they began dying out, they'd start to sheet off the tent. They'd slide down the tent and on to all the rocks - they'd make one big block." Pitseolak shows us this phenomena in her drawing Safe in the Tent (page 29). She had told me the insects were dangerous for the dogs and Namoonie remembers when they wiped out almost all his family's team: "There was a time when we had fifteen dogs. My younger brother Kaka and I went out to get some water and we saw these big dogs lying around. Twelve of them had been killed by the flies. Only three were left. So these three were protected in the tent. The flies were around all through the month of July, especially if we had cloudy days. Even if you went out on a very nice clear day and there was no wind, the

Woman on the journey (detail). Felt pen, ca 1970 Netsilik River Stone cut, 1973

mosquitoes [or flies] were going to go into your eyes, mouth, everywhere. We had no mosquito repellant then but we had wings - bird wings - and we used them to brush the mosquitoes away." I ask Namoonie if he has a favourite picture done by his mother and he says, "My mother did art that showed our culture and I remember she did a drawing of us when we were walking way up inland (page 48); and a drawing of herself with a baby on her back, a backpack, and something on her head where she was drying clothing - walking with the clothesline on her back. I think back and I see her and I admire her - she had so much patience." I recognize Namoonie's favourite drawing. It appears in our book as In summer there were always very big mosquitoes (page 49) and shows Pitseolak surrounded by what that year were signature mosquitoes and holding a bird wing - the mosquito repellant of the old way.

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Ashoona died at Netsilik sometime during the years of World War II, leaving Pitseolak a widow with young children. Hard times followed, as she tells us in her story. Around the time our book came out a literary critic in Cape Dorset suggested to me that Pitseolak had not told "all." She had not, for instance, mentioned a relationship with a "Bay man" after Ashoona's death. To this I responded that few of us would reveal "all." But to tell the truth I have never been greatly interested in the Bay man, having always loved to hear Pitseolak's stories of her old way family life with their many universal themes. "When my husband died at Netsilik, even though I had relatives it was as if my whole family had died. I had no one anymore. Ottochie, my youngest son, was in the amauti. He was the only one who did not learn to hunt from his father. Ashoona taught his sons to hunt before he died. After Ashoona died at Netsilik, when the geese were coming south and flying overhead down here past Cape Dorset, I used to think, Those geese have been with Ashoona back

Caribou at play. Stonecul and stencil, 1980 Fish weir Felt pen, 1978-79

in Netsilik; they've been at Ashoona's grave.' When it was really dark and I could hear the geese overhead, I'd go outside and I'd yell, 'Goodbye, goodbye!"1

Despite difficulties and very real tragedies, Pitseolak remained optimistic ("I never wanted to be a morbid person"), with a lively sweetness of disposition. When the National Film Board asked her to draw a picture of two men on the moon for the film made from her drawings, Pitseolak obliged, with a fine instinct for a dramatic finale. "Here are a white man and an Inuk on the moon," she explained. "They are holding hands and they are pointing upwards." It was Pitseolak's great talent in her drawings and in her word pictures to personalize the old way, to humanize it,

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to make it relevant to us. In doing so she shows us its games, its joys and pleasures, sometimes its trials and tribulations, sometimes its spirits and shamans. She continued making her wonderful drawings and prints for more than a decade after our book was published, at times challenging all the skills of the printmakers, as with her complex multi-coloured Festive Bird (page 115). "Yes, it is very beautiful - and very hard to print," said her son-in-law, the Co-op craftsman Eegyvudluk Pootoogook, applying five colours to the stone. Pitseolak used to say that she hoped, like her cousin Kiakshuk, to keep doing the prints until the end and people remember she was down at the Co-op signing her prints just a week before she died on May 28, 1983. "She died," said Kiawat, "having many old way drawings still to do."

Joyous at the hunt. Stone cut and stencil, 1980

During all the years I knew her Pitseolak lived with her son Kumwartok and his wife, Mary, and on my last visit there in 1981, given pride of place in the large kitchen where food was eaten and seals cut up, were Pitseolak's framed citations from the Order of Canada and the Royal

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Canadian Academy of Arts. "What are these?" I asked as I went to take a closer look. "You know," said Pitseolak. "I got them for being a good artist." Her admirers all over the world will bear testimony to that,

Kavavow, leader of the historic 1934 migration that took Inuit from south Baffin Island to the High Arctic to trap for the Hudson's Bay Company, and his sister Pitseolak, bring home a seal. This is the only known photograph of the artist in her youth. Collections of the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum, Bowdoin College

Photographs from the Bowdoin During his 1921-22 journeys up and down the coasts of the Foxe Peninsula, explorer (later Rear Admiral) Donald MacMillan recorded life in a number of Inuit camps and also at the Cape Dorset fur trading post. Pitseolak's family members, who were guides and helpers to those on the Bowdoin while she wintered at Schooner Harbour, appear

in many photographs. MacMillan (and sometimes his crew) used the expedition's Graflex camera which produced 4 by 5 inch nitrate negatives. In the 1970s, because of the fire hazard created by nitrate film, copy negatives were made of the entire collection. The Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum now keeps all the original film in a freezer.

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Ottochie, Pitseolak's father, excavating and transporting an ice window. Collections of the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum, Bowdoin College

The Bowdoin's helpers build a snowhouse with the vessel, at Schooner Harbour, in the background. A newly constructed igloo with an ice window. Collections of the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum, Bowdoin College

When the Nascopie was seen on the horizon many people were happy. Felt pen, 1960s-1970s

About the Interpreters It is a great pleasure to thank the interpreters to whom this book owes much. The interviews for Pitseolak's story were interpreted in the summer of 1970 by Annie Elizabeth Manning and Ann Meekitjuk Hanson. Both went on to remarkable careers in the modern North. Annie Manning, 16 in 1970, took teachers' training and became the first native teacher in Cape Dorset and the first woman justice of the peace on Baffin Island. In May 2002 she graduated with a Bachelor of Education degree awarded by Nunavut Arctic College in association with McGill University. She was valedictorian for her class. Ann Hanson became deputy commissioner of the Northwest Territories (prior to the creation of Nunavut) and while in office graduated in journalism from Nunavut Arctic College, faxing in assignments from the remote Arctic

destinations to which her duties took her. Shortly after interpreting for Pitseolak: Pictures out of my life she played the female lead in The White Dawn, the film made from James Houston's classic novel. A member of numerous northern boards and committees, she writes magazine articles and film scripts. In 2003 she received the Order of Canada Many interpreters assisted with interviews conducted between 1971 and 1981, among them Pia Pootoogook, who also translated the syllabic notes on Pitseolak's drawings, Tierak Ottochie, Letia Parr, Jeannie Manning, Jeannie Jones, Becky Towkie, and Mukshowya Niviaxsie. In April 2002, Nina Manning and Aksatungua Ashoona interpreted for interviews with Pitseolak's relatives. In Ottawa Kitty Pudlat also provided valuable help.

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Family with Walrus Stone cut, 1974

Acknowledgments and Sources For generous help which made the second 2003 edition a reality, thanks are due to the airline Canadian North, the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative, and the Inuit Art Centre of Indian and Northern Affairs, Canada. This new edition owes much to McGill-Queen's University Press and the interest and hard work, particularly, of Joan McGilvray, Aurele Parisien, and Susanne McAdam. In Pitseolak's name and on my own behalf I thank them most sincerely. This 2003 edition of Pitseolak: Pictures out of my life draws on interviews with Pitseolak Ashoona conducted by Dorothy Harley Eber between 1971 and 1981, and on interviews with family members in April 2002. Short excerpts, in different form, appeared in the book When the

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Whalers Were Up North, McGill-Queen's University Press, 1989, and in "The History of Graphic in Dorset: Long and Viable," Canadian Forum, July/August 1972; "Eskimo Tales" and "On Koodjuk's Trail - Robert Flaherty's Photographs Evoke the Past for Cape Dorset Eskimo," Natural History, October 1977 and January 1979; "Remembering Pitseolak Ashoona," Arts and Culture of the North, fall 1983; and "Winter of Memories," Inuit Art Quarterly, fall 2000. The quotation from the unpublished papers of the explorer Donald MacMillan is reproduced here with permission from the Special Collections division of the Bowdoin College Library, Brunswick, Maine. The MacMillan photographs are reproduced with the permission of the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum and Arctic Studies Center, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine.

Notes 1

See Eskimo Graphic Art, West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative, 1960.

2

The Inuit Art Centre, Indian and Northern Affairs, Canada, holds in its

in an accidental fire in his studio. It is believed, however, that some

archives transcripts of interviews with a number of artists conducted

appeared in a print, known as the Harvard print, that survived the fire.

chiefly by art historians on contract.

According to his daughter Monica Flaherty, "He later used this print to

Cape Dorset prints may be stone cuts, stencils (and combinations of

persuade Revillon Freres to finance the making of Nanook of the

3

reports that some was lost through the ice; more was probably burned

the two), copper engravings, and, after the mid 1970s, etchings and

North" In all probability, it has been thrown away but Monica Flaherty

lithographs. While Pitseolak gave up copper engraving, she later creat-

believes there is a slight possibility it might still exist among the effects of Revillon Freres or of Pathe, the film's distributor.

ed a number of etchings, an easier task entailing working on coated plates. Although in general artists draw directly on lithographic plates,

4

5

6

The West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative, a member of the Federation of

Pitseolak's lithographs most probably are tracings of her original draw-

Arctic Cooperatives Ltd., was one of the earliest Arctic cooperatives. It

ings by lithography studio craftsment. For stone cuts and stencils it is

was incorporated in 1959 as the West Baffin Sports Fishing

the usual practice for skilled craftsmen to transfer and print artists'

Cooperative. In 1960 it made application to change its name and in

images by incising stone slabs, cutting stencils, and applying colour.

1961 was incorporated under its present name. Best known for its art

The craftman's syllabic mark appears with the artist's on the print.

component, it also runs a consumer division which operates a retail

Peter Pitseolak and Dorothy Harley Eber, People from Our Side

store and offers fuel delivery and other services to its members. The

(Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1993), 71.

Federation of Arctic Cooperatives is the largest employer of Inuit labour

Flaherty's first footage appears to have been dogged by vicissitude. In

outside of government and government agencies.

his book My Eskimo Friends (New York: Doubleday and Co., 1924), he

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Index The relationship of each family member to Pitseolak is given in parenthesis.

elements in art work 104, 128; childbirth 31; childhood journeys in skin boats 13-16; creative confidence 102; difficulties of the old way 120; father's death 112; financial help from art programs 74, 90; first

accordion, 59, 64

drawings 70; frequency of family portraits in work 104; hard times

akulisaq vi, viii

following Ashoona's death 128; her happy childhood 18; illness of son

Anglican church 88

82; marriage customs 112; meeting Sowmik 68; meeting the first white

Ashevak, Kenojuak 78, 80

man 16; movement of relatives to High Arctic 66; move to the

Ashoona (husband) 66, 67, 104, 112, 128, 130

settlements 82; Netsilik Lake and Ashoona and Namoonie's love for

Ashoona, Kaka (son) vii, 50, 54, 67, 122

104; photographs of vii, 134; printmaking and drawing 70, 76;

Ashoona, Kumwartok (son) 92, 122

prodigious output 108; skill at but dislike of copper engravings 102,

Ashoona, Mary (daughter-in-law) 132 Ashoona, Mayoriak (daughter-in-law) vii, viii, 122

108; subject matter vii, viii, 13, 16, 50, 72, 124, 128 Ashoona, Sorosolito (daughter-in-law) 124

Ashoona, Namoonie (son) 31, 32, 67, 104, 112, 122, 124-8

Ashoona, Kiawat (son) 62, 120-2, 124

Ashoona, Ottochie (son) 66, 82, 128

Atanarjuat - The Fast Runner 95

Ashoona, Pitseolak: age 117; birth 3, 117; death 130, 132; appreciation of reaction to her work 90; approach to art work 13, 105, 132;

Baffin Trading Company 121

Ashoona: death 66, 67, 128, 130, marriage to 26, 28, 112, portrait of

birding 120

112; assessment of other print artists 78; attitude in the face of

Blodgett, Jean 98, 108

criticism 113; attitudes to shamans 20, 24, 72; autobiographical

Bowdoin26, 109, 134-7

143

Canadian Guild of Crafts 7, 101

Hanson, Ann Meekitjuk 10, 97, 139

Cape Dorset 6, 7, 9, 18, 95, 122

Hessel, Ingo 104

Cape Dorset migration to High Arctic 109

honours 132

carving 122

Houston, James 6, 7, 16, 50, 67-8, 70, 72

catching geese 55-8, 112-13

Hudson's Bay Company 9, 58, 62, 64, 104-5, 119-21

childbirth 31

Hudson Strait journeys 13-14, 18, 113, 116-17

Columbia University Oral History Program 96 igloos 34-6 dancing 64-5

insects 124, 126

dogs 54-5, 123-6

Inuit food 58-9

drugs 121

Inuit prints, first catalogued edition 95 Inuktitut spelling viii

egging 96, 97

Ipeelie, Osuitok 78

end of camp life 95 Kavavow (brother) 109, 125, 134-5 family migration to High Arctic 109

Kiakshuk (cousin) 68, 70, 78, 120-1, 130

Flaherty, Monica 117

Kudlo (sister) 109

Flaherty, Robert 117 Labrador ancestry 112 games 24, 30, 59, 60, 61, 63, 105, 106, 107, 121, 130

Labrador and Arctic Quebec connections 136

grub 62

Labrador migrations 112

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Lake Harbour 67, 105

Nawpachee (daughter). See Pootoogook, Napatchie

legends 25

Netsilik64, 124, 126, 128

literary critics 112-13, 128

Niviaksiak 78

Lucy. See Qinnuajuak, Lucy

Notman Photographic Archives 113

MacMillan, Rear Admiral Donald 109, 135

old way and hardships 120

Manning, Anne Elizabeth 10, 97, 139

Ook-took-ee. See Ottochie (father)

Manning, Jimmy 121

oral history 96-7

Manning, Johnny 122

Oshaweetok. See Ipeelie, Osuitok

marriage customs 112

Ottochie, Quatsia 3, 4, 10

missionaries 88

Ottochie (father) 18, 20, 25, 104, 109, 112, 113, 120, 136

modern times and difficulties 121

Ottochie: Co-op craftsman 3

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts 95, 101

Ottokie, Oqsuralik 122

Moravian Mission 112 move to settlements 82, 95

Parr 78 photography viii, 109, 117, 124-37

Nanook of the North 117

Polar Star, wreck 119

Napatchee (oldest brother) 109, 120

Pootoogook, Eegyvudluk (son-in-law) 88, 126, 130

Nascopied, 62, 129

Pootoogook, Joseph 9, 88

National Film Board 105

Pootoogook, Napatchie (daughter) 84, 124

Natsilik Lake. See Netsilik

portraits 124, 126, 128

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preparing skins 14, 28, 42-6, 126

Taleelayu 40, 120

printmaking 7-9, 68, 72, 121, 124, 130 Pudlat, PudloSO, 102

Taloyoak 109 tape recorder 96, 97 target practice 109

Qinnuajuak, Lucy 80

tattoos 20, 105 teenagers 25

Ryan, Terrence 7, 8, 72, 74, 78, 122

tents 36-8, 42, 126 Timungiak (mother) 18, 21, 104, 128

Saila, Pitalosie 95

Toojak (Tooja) 11

sea dog 108

Toonoo, Pootoogook (granddaughter) vii, viii, 104

shamans 20, 24, 72, 120, 130

trapping 105

skin boats ii, iv, vii, 14, 16, 60, 109-11, 113, 116-17

Tudluk 78

sleds 3, 55, 62, 67, 90 Sowmik. See Houston, James

unemployment 121

Stursberg, Peter 98 suicides 121

West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative 7, 8, 13, 74, 92, 95, 121

syllables 11, 105

wood, first use of 119

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