Jessie Oonark Artista Inuk Estampado De Sello 840/1000 Firmado 1976 Inuit Panadero Lago
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JESSIE OONARK ARTISTA INUK ESTAMPADO DE SELLO 840/1000 FIRMADO 1976 INUIT PANADERO LAGO. JESSIE OONARK INUK ARTIST CACHET PRINT 840/1000 SIGNED 1976 INUIT BAKER LAKE Jessie Oonark, OC RCA was a prolific and influential Inuk artist of the Utkuhiksalingmiut Utkuhiksalingmiut whose wall hangings, prints and drawings are in major collections including the National Gallery of Canada.
Jessie Oonark, OC RCA ( ᔨᐊᓯ ᐅᓈᖅ; 2 March 1906 – 7 March 1985)[1]: 5 was a prolific and influential Inuk artist of the Utkuhiksalingmiut Utkuhiksalingmiut whose wall hangings, prints and drawings are in major collections including the National Gallery of Canada. Early years She was born in 1906 in the Chantrey Inlet (Tariunnuaq) area,[2] near the estuary of the Back River in the Keewatin District of the Northwest Territories[3]: 4 (now Nunavut)—the traditional lands of the Utkuhiksalingmiut Utkukhalingmiut, Utkukhalingmiut (the people of the place where there is soapstone). Her artwork portrays aspects of the traditional hunter-nomadic life that she lived for over five decades, moving from fishing the camp near the mouth of Back River on Chantrey Inlet in the Honoraru[1]: 3 area to their caribou hunting camp in the Garry Lake area,[1]: 10 living in winter snow houses (igloos) and caribou skin tents in the summer.[4] Oonark learned early how to prepare skins and sew caribou skin clothing. They subsisted mainly on trout (lake trout and Arctic char), whitefish, and barren-ground caribou.[5] The knife used by women, the ulu, their traditional skin clothing, the kamik, the amauti were recurring themes in her work.[1] Oonark has had a major museum retrospective with accompanying scholarly monograph.[6] Despite a late start – she was 54 years old when her work was first published – she was an active and prolific artist over the next 19 years, creating a body of work that won critical acclaim and made her one of Canada's best known Inuit artists. Utkuhikhalingmiut She was a fluent speaker of Utkuhiksalik, a sub dialect of Natsilingmiutut spoken by Netsilik (Natsilik) within the Western Canadian Inuit dialect continuum.[7][8][9] Just as it was true for the art of other first-generation Inuit artists from that area—Luke Anguhadluk and Marion Tuu'luq—Utkuhiksalingmiut oral history and legends were strongly reflected in Jessie's artwork. In later years, in Baker Lake, they became a small minority, and fewer people could speak the language. Biography Jessie Oonark's parents were Qiliikvuq and Aghlquarq[3]: 4 (Aglaguaq).[1]: 10 Aglaguaq and his brothers hunted muskox.[1]: 10 Oonark's spent most of her time the in Chantrey Inlet where fish were abundant.[1]: 10 The Utkukhalingmiut had many taboos, one of which was the drawing of images. According to Marie Bouchard— a researcher, art historian, and community worker who lived in Baker Lake for many years— "Oonark's grandmother repeatedly warned her that images could come to life in the dark of night."[3]: 4 Oonark's mother married Qiqniikpak after the death of Oonark's father. Oonark lived with her mother.[1]: 10 The Danish explorer, Knud Rasmussen, crossed the Canadian Arctic by dogsled and visited the Jessie Oonark's camp when she was just a teenager during his Fifth Thule Expedition. Utkuhikhalingmiut represented the first white contact. In the 1980s, Mame Jackson taped Jessie Oonark's description of the encountered broadcast on CBC radio.[10] Oonark was married at a young age to Qabluunaq, (Kabloona, Kabloonak) the son of Naatak and Nanuqluq from Gjoa Haven.[1][3]: 4 Natak joined them in their hunting camp. Although Kabloona was "a good hunter and a respected fur trader", the family was often hungry.[3]: 4 Their oldest daughter remembers the periods of hunger. Oonark's mother-in-law, Naatak, would boil a caribou skin into a "broth" in an attempt to appease the hunger. Even in 2007, Baker Lake Inuit kept animal bones for marrow patek.[11]: 10 "My grandmother, Natak, was always cooking something. She used to cook caribou skins. She would take hair off the skin and cook it. We would drink the broth. My grandmother used to even cook wolf meat. That was how we survived." — Janet Kigusiuq to Marie Bouchard Their first daughter, Janet Kigusiuq, was born at Putuqsuqniq in the Back River area in 1926.[11]: 10 She had eleven more children including Joshuan Nuilaliq, Mamnguqsualuq, Victoria Mamnguqsualuq, Miriam Nanuqluq, Mary Yuusipik, Peggy Gabluunaq, Nancy Pukingnaq (born 1940–), William Noah, Isumataq, Qaqurialuq, Amarouk, and Makitgag.[1]: 10 In the 1940s, Oonark was assigned a disc number by the Canadian federal government— E2-384. In the 1940s, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) conducted a census of Inuit populations. They assigned the infamous identification numbering system using discs. These disc numbers were dropped during "Operation Surname" in the 1960s. In the 1950s there was a slump in the fox fur trade. Sometime around 1953 and 1954, Kabloonak and her four youngest children died of illness[3]: 4 in the Garry Lake area when William Noah was still a child and Nancy Pukingrnak was in her early teens and they were still dependent on her. Luke Anguhadluq, camp leader helped her at this time. Starvation The annual caribou migration shifted away from the area where they lived, leaving many Inuit to starve. The Back River Inuit, including Oonark and her family, had a hard time during the starvation period of the 1950s.[11]: 10 The winter of 1957–1958 was marked by a severe shortage of country food in the Back River area. Oonark and her daughter Nancy Pukingrnak were starving. William Noah walked from their camp to Baker Lake in March to seek help. They were airlifted by the Canadian armed forces to Baker Lake.[12] Baker Lake When Oonark first arrived in Baker Lake in 1958 she survived by "cleaning skins for her friend, Sandy Lunan, at the Hudson's Bay Company post, cooking meals, washing dishes and sewing traditional Arctic garments for local sale"[3]: 4 and eventually worked as janitor at the Anglican Church.[3]: 4 Baker Lake residents "derisively referred to the Back River people as qangmaliqs (the people who only come in to trade) and considered them to be socially backwards.[3]: 5 In the 1950s, because of a severe famine in the Keewatin District, many Inuit arrived in Baker Lake. A federal day school was opened at Baker Lake in 1957. Pre-fabricated subsidized government housing constructed from the mid-1950s. The Northern Services Officer—Doug Wilkinson— encouraged the development of the arts and crafts industry in Baker Lake. At that time the Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources (DIAND) established arts and crafts projects in Inuit hamlets as part of socioeconomic development (Goetz, 1985:43).[13]: 43 Bill Larmour was the DIAND arts and crafts officer in Baker Lake from 1961 to 1962. Artistic career In 1958, after observing school children drawing in Baker Lake, Oonark casually remarked to the school teacher that she could draw better than that.[3]: 4 The next summer in 1959, the teacher shared this comment with Canadian Wildlife Service biologist, Dr. Andrew Macpherson, who was in Baker Lake studying Arctic fox. Macpherson gave her coloured pencils and paper,[3]: 5 purchased her drawings and brought some of them to Ottawa.[14] Macpherson continued to send her coloured pencils and a drawing pad after his return to Ottawa in the late fall of 1959. In the spring of 1960 Oonark sent him twelve completed drawings in the sketchbook via the Northern Services Officer Tom Butlers.[3]: 5 [15]: 155 Edith Dodds, the wife of the Northern Service Officer, Sam Dodds, sent six of Oonark's drawings to James Archibald Houston at the West Baffin Co-operative in Cape Dorset. Two of her drawings—Inland Eskimo Woman/Eskimo Woman and Tattooed Faces— were made into single colour stone cut prints under the name of Una (Kazan River) at the newly established Cape Dorset print shop and included in the 1960 Cape Dorset print collection and catalogue. A print from her drawing "People of lnland” appeared in the 1961 Cape Dorset Print collection. It was the first and only time the Cape Dorset print shop included work from an Inuk outside Cape Dorset.[3]: 5 [16] In 1961, William Larmour, crafts officer with the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs established a federal government arts and crafts program with Jessie Oonark as one of their key artists.[3]: 5 In 1963 Gabriel Gely developed a printmaking program in Baker Lake.[3]: 5 Ten experimental prints were made in 1964 and two of them were based on Oonark's drawings—"Drum Dancer" (1964).[3]: 5 Boris Kotelewetz, the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs' arts and crafts officer, who arrived in Baker Lake in March 1966, provided Oonark with studio space and a salary.[3]: 5 In 1969, Jack and Sheila Butler were recruited as the new DIAND arts and crafts officers on the advice of George Swinton,[17] artist, academic, collector of Inuit art, author of the influential book entitled Sculpture of the Eskimo.[18] By the time they arrived Oonark was already an accomplished artist.[3]: 5 In that year she completed a large appliqué wall hanging which hangs in the Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly's Chamber in Yellowknife.[19] In 1970, the first Baker Lake Print Collection was released[20] and exhibited at the Art Gallery of Alberta. The stone cut print by Thomas Manik of Oonark's drawing entitled "Woman" (1970) was featured on the cover and her work was prominent in the exhibition.[3]: 5 [21][14] She continued to contribute images to the Baker Lake Print collections until 1985.[22] In 1970, the National Museum of Man in Ottawa organized a touring exhibition of 50 of Oonark's drawings and works by sculptor John Pangnark. It toured major galleries in Canada for eight months.[3]: 5 Later that year, Avrom Isaacs featured Inuit artists such as Oonark and Karoo Ashevak in solo exhibitions in 1970 in the Isaacs Innuit Gallery—in the gallery's opening year. Isaacs Innuit Gallery became one of Toronto's most prestigious galleries for over thirty years. It was Oonark's first solo exhibition and in 1971 Isaacs had an exhibition of Oonark's wall hangings.[3]: 5 The Baker Lake Sanavik Co-operative was incorporated in 1971. The print-makers who rendered Oonark's drawings into limited edition fine art prints included Thomas Sivuraq. The printing technique in Baker Lake included colour stonecuts, stencil and lithograph on Japanese wove paper. These include the chop for Oonark and Sanavik. In the same year, Oonark received a travel grant from the Canada Council of the Arts to travel to Toronto and Montreal for the opening of the exhibitions of her drawings. The Toronto wall hangings solo-exhibition took place in April at the Innuit Gallery of Eskimo Art. In Montreal, the exhibition was held at the Canadian Guild of Crafts.[15]: 155 Oonark's work illustrated a 1972 anthology of Inuit poetry from the circumpolar regions including Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Siberia 1972.[23] In the spring of 1972, Baker Lake print collection was released and it included five Oonark prints, two of which are based on small wall hangings. The stencil print, Young Woman, was featured on the cover of the catalogue. Later that year, an Oonark wall hanging was commissioned by the Ivey Business School, University of Western Ontario, was featured on the cover of their publication, The Business Quarterly. In May 1975, Oonark was elected a Member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Later that year, the Baker Lake print collection is released featuring 11 Oonark prints, a new record for the artist. By 1976, Oonark was well known in her community. That year, her work was featured on two stamps for the United Nations commemorating the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements. The first day of Issue was May 28, 1976. In 1984, she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 1986, the Winnipeg Art Gallery mounted a retrospective of her work with a major touring exhibition and catalogue both entitled Jessie Oonark: a Retrospective.[24][25] By 1987 Oonark already has had eleven solo exhibitions and more than fifty national and international group exhibitions.[3]: 5 In 1998, the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre presented a major exhibition with catalogue entitled Qamanittuaq (Where the River Widens): Drawings by Baker Lake Artists which including first-generation artist Jessie Oonark and the distinctive drawings of four of her children: Janet Kigusiuq, Victoria Mamnguqsualuk, Nancy Pukingrnak, and William Noah among many others.[12] In 1994, Bernadette Driscoll-Ellgelstad, curated the exhibition entitled Northern Lights: Inuit Textile Art from Arctic Canada which included wall hangings by Jessie Oonark and her daughters, Janet Kigusiuq, Victoria Mamnguqsllaluk, her relatives Ruth Qaulluaryuk and other women from the Back River area along with artists from Baker Lake.[26] On 18 November 2015, Oonark's 1969 wall hanging depicting a hunting scene, made of duffel, felt and embroidery floss, sold for $70,800, a new record for the Baker Lake artist. The wall hanging was one of 333 pieces of art up for sale, organized by Walker's Fine Art Auctions in Ottawa.[27] Style A strong, bold graphic sense informs all of Oonark's work. Traditional dress, women's facial tattoos, and shamanistic themes are common in her art, yet they usually appear as isolated, fragmentary forms, shaped into a graphically bold image rather than a comprehensible narrative. Oonark is also well known as a textile artist, whose wool and felt wall-hangings reveal her as a master of color and form. — Janet Catherine Berlo[28]: 420 Themes in her artwork Oonark's work includes visual puns and shape-shifting,[29] descriptive works depicting clothing, tools and cultural objects of importance to the Utkuhihalingmiut as well as images based on storytelling, legends and shamanism.[1][30] Visual puns or ambiguous images Mame Jackson, George Swinton and Jean Blodgett noted that Oonark's work reflects a high tolerance for ambiguity, a kind of double vision.[31]: 107 [32][33] For example, her work entitled "Two Fish Looking for Something to Eat" (1978), when viewed as a horizontal image, suggests two swimming fish-like creatures and depicts her version of the cannibal fish legend. When viewed vertically one figure resembles a standing woman whose face fills the amaut. Is she birthing or eating the small blue fish? The fish-figure wearing a man's parka seems to be kiss-touching rather than eating. Jessie Oonark, although familiar with oral traditions and legends, is never satisfied with a one-layered literal illustration. The horizontal print Two Fish Looking for Something to Eat depicts her version of the cannibal fish story but her double vision leaves room for ambiguity. The cannibal fish also appears in her print "Untitled (Yellow fish)" (1977). Jessie Oonark's verbal descriptions of her own work are often cryptic, "These are sea creatures, and they are sort of eating one another. There is a story, and that is it that one whole person along with a qayak was swallowed up by some giant fish or creature or whatever – somewhere near Gjoa Haven or Back River." — Oonark in Jackson 1983:39 Shamanism Oonark's father Aglaguaq and her grandfather were said to be shamans.[1]: 5 Aglaquarq used his shamanic powers infrequently but Oonark vividly remembered his helping spirit— Uupitanaisuak.[3]: 4 Aglaguaq had a daughter who is Oonark's stepsister, Kayuruq. When Janet Kigusiuk was still a baby, Anglican missionaries, Canon James and his Inuk assistant catechist Thomas Tapatai came to Oonark's hunting camp. She adopted the Anglican religion and they gave her a prayer book and a Bible. The arrival of Christian missionaries divided their small camp into two divisions—those who became Christian and those who held onto the old ways.[3]: 4 Oonark did not participate in drum dancing nor did she follow the ways of shamanism. However she continued to depict the drum dance and aspects of shamanism in her artwork such as Horned Spirits (1970), Shaman (1970) and The People Within (1970).[1]: 10 [1]: 10 [30] The colour stonecut and stencil print on laid Japanese paper printed by Thomas Sivuraq of a drawing by Jessie Oonark called "A Shaman's Helping Spirits" (1971), in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada depicts a horned shaman, with animal helping spirits and with a small spirit on his head. Oonark's father—Aglaquarq—used his shamanic powers infrequently but Oonark vividly remembered his helping spirit— Uupitanaisuak.[3]: 4 "It was small and wore a baby caribou-skin hat. They asked me if I wanted to have it. I saw it from a distance and it almost came near me, but I didn't want to have a spirit helper." — Jessie Oonark in Bouochard 1987 Drum Dance She no longer participated in the drum dance either but she depicted images of the drum dance for example in "Drum Dance" (1970).[1]: 14 Shape-shifting was a popular theme seen in Day Spirit (1970). Inuit storytelling Oonark's mother and father and her mother-in-law Naatak, (Natak)[11]: 10 were storytellers[11]: 10 and these stories are richly represented in Oonark's work, such as the 1970 print entitled "Dream of the Bird Woman",[1]: 14 [34]: 105 referring to the Kiviuq (Qiviuk), an Inuk who faced dangerous obstacles in his journeys by kayak, which was described by Franz Boas as the most widely known Inuit legend in the circumpolar region.[35] Clothing and tools The knife used by women, the ulu, their clothing, the amauti were recurring themes in her work.[1] People of the Inland (1961) depicts the Back River people.[1]: 14 One of her best known works is "Woman" (1970) described as,[36] "Geometry, abstraction, design and activated symmetry are all combined to bring out the very real image of a woman in her winter dress. The brilliant colours emphasize the contrasting shades of caribou skin, beautifully assembled to form a traditional design on the parka. With this print Oonark set a style for herself to which she has remained true – strong and explicit use of line, an intelligent positioning of mass and daring choice of colour." — Furneaux and Rosshandler 1974 Birds Bernadette Driscoll explained the presence of birds — in the drawing and print "Dream of the Bird Woman" and in Oonark's other artworks — demonstrated the "symbolic significance of the importance of birds as a symbol of flight and in several instances as a reference to shamanism as in "Angagkok Conjuring Birds (1979) but also as a harbinger of spring and itself a symbol of fecundity and rebirth."[37]: 16 Christianity Reverend Alan Whitton was the Anglican minister at Saint Aidan's Church, Baker Lake, from 1963 until 1972. During that time his wife Elizabeth Whitton, befriended Oonark. In 1966 Elizabeth organized a sewing projects with Oonark and others where they produced mittens, parkas, slippers, duffel socks as well as appliquéd images from scraps for sale. At Easter in 1968 Elizabeth Whitton asked Oonark to do drawings about their church for their local women's auxiliary magazine. Oonark's drawings included depictions of Reverend Whitton, catechist Thomas Tapatai, local Inuit parishioners including women with traditional Inuit tattoos and the church exterior.[38]: 201–2 Oonark continued to use these themes in later work, for example in her 1971–1972 wall hanging for Saint Jude's Cathedra1 in Iqaluit[38]: 202 and in a 1971–1972 wall hanging of wool and stroud in the permanent collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario.[38]: 205 Oonark described this wall-hanging,[1]: 26 [38]: 206 "I was more thinking of people on the journey and seeing different tribes of different people, sort of walking between the hills or mountains. Those two women on the way back corners have the latest clothes from the Cambridge Bay area, and then next to her is a young one. Every young person seems to have those kind of parkas with a long tail and sort of a straight cut." — Oonark interviewed by Mame Jackson 1983 In her 1984 essay entitled "Christianity and Inuit Art" and in the 1986 "Jessie Oonark, A Retrospective", Blodgett noted how Oonark blended traditional Inuit clothing and symbols with Christian motifs.[39][40]: 85 [38] Oonark's influence on Inuit art In the first generation of Inuit artists working in printmaking, Oonark, together with Pitseolak Ashoona and Kenojuak were recognized quickly as significant figures, receiving solo exhibitions, scholarly attention and professional awards.[6] Rosemary Tovell wrote in the catalogue entitled Baker Lake Prints 1985 that When Oonark died in 1985, the Canadian Eskimo Art Council (CEAC) were quoted as saying that they were pleased with the quality of her last prints and they recognized that "[W]ithout Oonark, Baker Lake as a centre for prints may never have happened. It was largely due to her enormous talent that the world's attention came to the community."[41] On September 4, 2016, the CBC released an article titled, "Inuit Art Centre to Reveal Beauty of the North in the South" discussing Winnipeg's $65-million centre that will house the world's largest collection of Inuit art. In it, they reference the important role printmaking played, especially for female artists like Oonark, Kenojuak Ashevak and Helen Kalvak, who gravitated towards visual arts, while men focused on stone-carving which required more physical strength.[42] All her children, Janet Kigusiuq, Victoria Mamnguqsualuq Kayuryuk, Josiah Nuilalik, Nancy Pukirniq, Miriam Qiyuq, Peggy, Mary Yussipik and William Noah are artists.[11]: 10 [1] Collections Oonark's work is in major collections including the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen's University, (Kingston, ON), American National Insurance Company, Amon Carter Museum of Western Art (Fort Worth, Texas), Amway Environmental Foundation Collection (Ada, Michigan), Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (Victoria, BC), Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (Halifax, NS), Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto,ON), Art Gallery of Windsor, Art Gallery of York University (Downsview, ON), Beaverbrook Art Gallery (Fredericton, NB), Canada Council Art Bank (Ottawa, ON), Canadian Catholic Conference Art Collection (Ottawa, ON), Canadian Guild of Crafts Quebec (Montreal, QC), Canadian Museum of Civilization (Hull, QC), Churchill Community Centre (Churchill, MB), Clifford E. Lee Collection (University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB), Collection of His Holiness John Paul II (Vatican City, Rome, Italy), Collection of the Supreme Patriarch of All Armenia, His Holiness, Catholicos Vazken I, Dennos Museum Center, Northwestern Michigan College (Traverse City, Michigan), Edmonton Art Gallery (Edmonton, AB), Glenbow Museum (Calgary, AB), Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology (Brown University, Bristol, Rhode Island), Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery (Kitchener, ON), Klamer Family Collection, Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, ON), Macdonald Stewart Art Centre (Guelph, ON), McMaster University Art Gallery (Hamilton, ON), McMichael Canadian Art Collection (Kleinburg, ON) Mendel Art Gallery, (Saskatoon, SK), Museé des beaux-arts de Montreal (Montreal, QC), Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia (Vancouver, BC), National Arts Centre (Ottawa, ON), National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, ON), New Brunswick Museum (Saint John, NB), Owens Art Gallery, Mount Allison University (Sackville, NB), Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre (Yellowknife, NT), Shell Canada Collection (Calgary, AB), Simon Fraser Gallery, Simon Fraser University (Burnaby, BC), University of Alberta (Edmonton, AB), University of Lethbridge Art Gallery (Lethbridge, AB), Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies (Banff, AB) and the Winnipeg Art Gallery (Winnipeg, MB)[19] and the Hermon Collection of Native American Art at the University of Delaware Art Gallery.[43] Her untitled wall hanging (1973), one of her largest art works, is in the main lobby (foyer) of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.[44] Later life Oonark began to experience numbness in her hands and feet and in 1979, when a surgical intervention failed to check the symptoms, she lost much of her manual dexterity and produced only a few more pieces afterwards.[3]: 5 Her career had lasted roughly 19 years, but its impact on Inuit art – and on the perception of Inuit art in the larger world – is considerable. She died March 7, 1985, in Churchill, Manitoba.[2] and is buried on Blueberry Hill in Baker Lake.[3]: 5 [45] See also Notable Aboriginal people of Canada Inuit (/ˈɪnjuɪt/ IN-ew-it;[5] Inuktitut: ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, ᐃᓄᒃ, dual: Inuuk, ᐃᓅᒃ; Iñupiaq: Iñuit 'the people'; Greenlandic: Inuit)[6][7][8] are a group of culturally and historically similar circumpolar peoples traditionally inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of North America, including Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, Yukon (traditionally[a]), Alaska, and Chukotsky District of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia. Inuit languages are part of the Eskimo–Aleut languages, also known as Inuit-Yupik-Unangan, and also as Eskaleut.[9] Inuit Sign Language is a critically endangered language isolate used in Nunavut.[10] Canadian Inuit live throughout most of Northern Canada in the territory of Nunavut, Nunavik in the northern third of Quebec, Nunatsiavut and NunatuKavut in Labrador, and in various parts of the Northwest Territories and Yukon (traditionally), particularly around the Arctic Ocean, in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region.[a] These areas are known, primarily by Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, as Inuit Nunangat.[11][12] In Canada, sections 25 and 35 of the Constitution Act of 1982 classify Inuit as a distinctive group of Aboriginal Canadians who are not included under either the First Nations or the Métis.[13][14] Greenlandic Inuit, also known as Kalaallit, are descendants of Thule migrations from Canada by 1100 CE.[15] Although Greenland withdrew from the European Communities in 1985, Inuit of Greenland are Danish citizens and, as such, remain citizens of the European Union.[16][17][18] In the United States, the Alaskan Iñupiat are traditionally located in the Northwest Arctic Borough, on the Alaska North Slope, the Bering Strait and on Little Diomede Island. In Russia, few pockets of diaspora communities of Russian Iñupiat from Big Diomede Island, of which inhabitants were removed to Russian Mainland, remain in Bering Strait coast of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, particularly in Uelen, Lavrentiya, and Lorino. Many individuals who would have historically been referred to as Eskimo find that term offensive or forced upon them in a colonial way; Inuit is now a common autonym for a large sub-group of these people.[19][20][21][22] The word Inuit (varying forms Iñupiat, Inuvialuit, Inughuit, etc.), however, is an ancient self-referential to a group of peoples which includes at most the Iñupiat of Bering Strait coast of Chukotka and northern Alaska, the four broad groups of Inuit in Canada, and the Greenlandic Inuit. This usage has long been employed to the exclusion of other, closely related groups (e.g. Yupik, Aleut).[23][24][25][26] Therefore, the Aleut (Unangan) and Yupik peoples (Alutiiq/Sugpiaq, Central Yup'ik, Siberian Yupik), who live in Alaska and Siberia, at least at an individual and local level, generally do not self-identify as Inuit.[23][better source needed] History Pre-contact history For earlier pre-contact history, see Indigenous peoples in Canada § Paleo-Indians period. Dorset, Norse, and Thule cultures 900–1500 Inuit are the descendants of what anthropologists call the Thule people,[27] who emerged from the Bering Strait and western Alaska around 1000 CE. They had split from the related Aleut group about 4000 years ago and from northeastern Siberian migrants. They spread eastward across the Arctic.[28] They displaced the related Dorset culture, called the Tuniit in Inuktitut, which was the last major Paleo-Eskimo culture.[29] Inuit legends speak of the Tuniit as "giants", people who were taller and stronger than Inuit.[30] Less frequently, the legends refer to the Dorset as "dwarfs".[31] Researchers believe that Inuit society had advantages by having adapted to using dogs as transport animals, and developing larger weapons and other technologies superior to those of the Dorset culture.[32] By 1100 CE, Inuit migrants had reached west Greenland, where they settled.[15] During the 12th century, they also settled in East Greenland.[33][34] Faced with population pressures from the Thule and other surrounding groups, such as the Algonquian and Siouan-speaking peoples to the south, the Tuniit gradually receded.[35] The Tuniit were thought to have become completely extinct as a people by about 1400 or 1500. But, in the mid-1950s, researcher Henry B. Collins determined that based on the ruins found at Native Point, on Southampton Island, the Sadlermiut were likely the last remnants of the Dorset culture, or Tuniit.[36] The Sadlermiut population survived up until winter 1902–1903 when exposure to new infectious diseases brought by contact with Europeans led to their extinction as a people.[37] In the early 21st century, mitochondrial DNA research has supported the theory of continuity between the Tuniit and the Sadlermiut peoples.[38][39] It also provided evidence that a population displacement did not occur within the Aleutian Islands between the Dorset and Thule transition.[40] However a subsequent 2012 genetic analysis showed no genetic link between the Sadlermiut and the Dorset or Tuniit people.[41] In contrast to other Tuniit populations, the Aleut and Sadlermiut benefited from both geographical isolation and their ability to adopt certain Thule technologies.[citation needed] In Canada and Greenland, Inuit circulated almost exclusively north of the Arctic tree line, the effective southern border of Inuit society. The most southern "officially recognized" Inuit community in the world is Rigolet[42] in Nunatsiavut. South of Nunatsiavut, the descendants of the southern Labrador Inuit in NunatuKavut continued their traditional transhumant semi-nomadic way of life until the mid-1900s. The Nunatukavummuit people usually moved among islands and bays on a seasonal basis. They did not establish stationary communities. In other areas south of the tree line, non-Inuit Indigenous cultures were well established. The culture and technology of Inuit society that served so well in the Arctic were not suited to subarctic regions, so they did not displace their southern neighbors. As a result, being challenged by the groups below the tree line including Chukchi and Siberian Yupik for Russian Iñupiat, Arctic Athabascan and Gwichʼin for Alaskan Iñupiat and Inuvialuit, Cree for Nunavummiut (Nunavut Inuit) and Nunavimmiut (Northern Quebec Inuit), and Innu for Nunatsiavummiut (Labrador Inuit), Inuit did not make significant progress further south. Inuit had trade relations with more southern cultures; boundary disputes were common and gave rise to aggressive actions. Warfare was not uncommon among those Inuit groups with sufficient population density. Inuit such as the Nunamiut (Uummarmiut), who inhabited the Mackenzie River delta area, often engaged in warfare. The more sparsely settled Inuit in the Central Arctic, however, did so less often. Their first European contact was with the Vikings who had settled in Greenland centuries prior. The sagas recorded meeting skrælingar, probably an undifferentiated label for all the Indigenous peoples whom the Norse encountered, whether Tuniit, Inuit, or Beothuk.[43] After about 1350, the climate grew colder during the period known as the Little Ice Age. During this period, Russian and Alaskan natives were able to continue their whaling activities. But, in the high Arctic, Inuit were forced to abandon their hunting and whaling sites as bowhead whales disappeared from Canada and Greenland.[44] These Inuit had to subsist on a much poorer diet, and lost access to the essential raw materials for their tools and architecture which they had previously derived from whaling.[44] The changing climate forced Inuit to work their way south, pushing them into marginal niches along the edges of the tree line. These were areas First Nations had not occupied or where they were weak enough for Inuit to live near them. Researchers have difficulty defining when Inuit stopped this territorial expansion. There is evidence that Inuit were still moving into new territory in southern Labrador when they first began to interact with European colonists in the 17th century.[citation needed] Post-contact history A European ship coming into contact with Inuit in the ice of Hudson Bay in 1697 Canada Early contact with Europeans The lives of Paleo-Eskimos of the far north were largely unaffected by the arrival of visiting Norsemen except for mutual trade.[45] The Labrador Inuit have had the longest continuous contact with Europeans.[46] After the disappearance of the Norse colonies in Greenland, Inuit had no contact with Europeans for at least a century. By the mid-16th century, Basque whalers and fishermen were already working the Labrador coast and had established whaling stations on land, such as the one that has been excavated at Red Bay, Labrador.[47][48] Inuit do not appear to have interfered with their operations, but raided the stations in winter, taking tools and items made of worked iron, which they adapted to their own needs. An anonymous 1578 illustration believed to show Kalicho (left), and Arnaq and Nutaaq (right) Martin Frobisher's 1576 search for the Northwest Passage was the first well-documented contact between Europeans and Inuit. Frobisher's expedition landed in Frobisher Bay, Baffin Island, not far from the settlement now called Iqaluit. Frobisher encountered Inuit on Resolution Island where five sailors left the ship, under orders from Frobisher, with instructions to stay clear of Inuit. They became part of Inuit mythology. Inuit oral tradition tells that the men lived among them for a few years of their own free will until they died attempting to leave Baffin Island in a self-made boat and vanished.[49] Frobisher, in an attempt to find the men, captured three Inuit and brought them back to England. They were possibly the first Inuit ever to visit Europe.[50] The semi-nomadic Inuit were fishermen and hunters harvesting lakes, seas, ice platforms, and tundra. While there are some allegations that Inuit were hostile to early French and English explorers, fishermen, and whalers, more recent research suggests that the early relations with whaling stations along the Labrador coast and later James Bay were based on a mutual interest in trade.[51] In the final years of the 18th century, the Moravian Church began missionary activities in Labrador, supported by the British[52] who were tired of the raids on their whaling stations. The Moravian missionaries could easily provide Inuit with the iron and basic materials they had been stealing from whaling outposts, materials whose real cost to Europeans was almost nothing, but whose value to Inuit was enormous. From then on, contacts between the national groups in Labrador were far more peaceful. The Hudson's Bay Company ships Prince of Wales and Eddystone with Inuit boats off the Upper Savage Islands, Hudson Strait, Canada Hudson's Bay Company Ships bartering with Inuit off the Upper Savage Islands, Hudson Strait, 1819 The exchanges that accompanied the arrival and colonization by the Europeans greatly damaged Inuit way of life. Mass death was caused by the new infectious diseases carried by whalers and explorers, to which the Indigenous peoples had no acquired immunity. The high mortality rate contributed to the enormous social disruptions caused by the distorting effect of Europeans' material wealth and the introduction of different materials. Nonetheless, Inuit society in the higher latitudes largely remained in isolation during the 19th century. The Hudson's Bay Company opened trading posts such as Great Whale River (1820), today the site of the twin villages of Whapmagoostui (Cree-majority) and Kuujjuarapik (Inuit-majority), where whale products of the commercial whale hunt were processed and furs traded. The expedition of 1821–23 to the Northwest Passage led by Commander William Edward Parry twice over-wintered in Foxe Basin.[53] It provided the first informed, sympathetic and well-documented account of the economic, social and religious life of Inuit. Parry stayed in what is now Igloolik over the second winter. Parry's writings, with pen and ink illustrations of Inuit everyday life, and those of George Francis Lyon were widely read after they were both published in 1824.[54] Captain George Comer's Inuk wife Shoofly, known for her sewing skills and elegant attire,[55] was influential in convincing him to acquire more sewing accessories and beads for trade with Inuit. Early 20th century During the early 20th century a few traders and missionaries circulated among the more accessible bands. After 1904, they were accompanied by a handful of North-West Mounted Police (NWMP). Unlike most Aboriginal peoples in Canada, however, Inuit did not occupy lands that were coveted by European settlers. Used to more temperate climates and conditions, most Europeans considered the homeland of Inuit to be hostile hinterland. Southerners enjoyed lucrative careers as bureaucrats and service providers to the people of the North, but very few ever chose to visit there. Once its more hospitable lands were largely settled, the government of Canada and entrepreneurs began to take a greater interest in its more peripheral territories, especially the fur and mineral-rich hinterlands. By the late 1920s, there were no longer any Inuit who had not been contacted by traders, missionaries or government agents. In 1939, the Supreme Court of Canada found, in a decision known as Re Eskimos, that Inuit should be considered Indians and were thus under the jurisdiction of the federal government. Native customs were worn down by the actions of the RCMP, who enforced Canadian criminal law on Inuit. People such as Kikkik often did not understand the rules of the alien society with which they had to interact. In addition, the generally Protestant missionaries of the British preached a moral code very different from the one Inuit had as part of their tradition. Many Inuit were systematically converted to Christianity in the 19th and 20th centuries, through rituals such as the Siqqitiq. The Second World War to the 1960s World War II and the Cold War made Arctic Canada strategically important to the great powers for the first time. Thanks to the development of modern long-distance aircraft, these areas became accessible year-round. The construction of air bases and the Distant Early Warning Line in the 1940s and 1950s brought more intensive contact with European society, particularly in the form of public education for children. The traditionalists complained that Canadian education promoted foreign values that were disdainful of the traditional structure and culture of Inuit society.[56] In the 1950s, the Government of Canada undertook what was called the High Arctic relocation for several reasons. These were to include protecting Canada's sovereignty in the Arctic, alleviating hunger (as the area currently occupied had been over-hunted), and attempting to solve the "Eskimo problem", by seeking assimilation of the people and the end of their traditional Inuit culture. One of the more notable relocations was undertaken in 1953, when 17 families were moved from Port Harrison (now Inukjuak, Quebec) to Resolute and Grise Fiord.[57] They were dropped off in early September when winter had already arrived. The land they were sent to was very different from that in the Inukjuak area; it was barren, with only a couple of months when the temperature rose above freezing, and several months of polar night. The families were told by the RCMP they would be able to return to their home territory within two years if conditions were not right. However, two years later more Inuit families were relocated to the High Arctic. Thirty years passed before they were able to visit Inukjuak.[58][59][60][61] By 1953, Canada's prime minister Louis St. Laurent publicly admitted, "Apparently we have administered the vast territories of the north in an almost continuing absence of mind."[62][63] The government began to establish about forty permanent administrative centers to provide education, health, and economic development services.[63] Inuit from hundreds of smaller camps scattered across the north began to congregate in these hamlets.[64] Regular visits from doctors and access to modern medical care raised the birth rate and decreased the death rate, causing a marked natural increase in the population that made it more difficult for them to survive by traditional means. In the 1950s, the Canadian government began to actively settle Inuit into permanent villages and cities, occasionally against their will (such as in Nuntak and Hebron). In 2005 the Canadian government acknowledged the abuses inherent in these forced resettlements.[65] By the mid-1960s, encouraged first by missionaries, then by the prospect of paid jobs and government services, and finally forced by hunger and required by the police, most Canadian Inuit lived year-round in permanent settlements. The nomadic migrations that were the central feature of Arctic life had become a much smaller part of life in the North. Inuit, a once self-sufficient people in an extremely harsh environment were, in the span of perhaps two generations, transformed into a small, impoverished minority, lacking skills or resources to sell to the larger economy, but increasingly dependent on it for survival. Although anthropologists like Diamond Jenness (1964) were quick to predict that Inuit culture was facing extinction, Inuit political activism was already emerging. Cultural renewal In the 1960s, the Canadian government funded the establishment of secular, government-operated high schools in the Northwest Territories (including what is now Nunavut) and Inuit areas in Quebec and Labrador along with the residential school system. Inuit population was not large enough to support a full high school in every community, so this meant only a few schools were built, and students from across the territories were boarded there. These schools, in Aklavik, Iqaluit, Yellowknife, Inuvik and Kuujjuaq, brought together young Inuit from across the Arctic in one place for the first time and exposed them to the rhetoric of civil and human rights that prevailed in Canada in the 1960s. This was a real wake-up call for Inuit, and it stimulated the emergence of a new generation of young Inuit activists in the late 1960s who came forward and pushed for respect for Inuit and their territories. Inuit began to emerge as a political force in the late 1960s and early 1970s, shortly after the first graduates returned home. They formed new politically active associations in the early 1970s, starting with the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada (Inuit Brotherhood and today known as Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami), an outgrowth of the Indian and Eskimo Association of the '60s, in 1971, and more region-specific organizations shortly afterward, including the Committee for the Original People's Entitlement (representing the Inuvialuit),[66] the Northern Quebec Inuit Association (Makivik Corporation) and the Labrador Inuit Association (LIA) representing Northern Labrador Inuit. Since the mid-1980s the Southern Labrador Inuit of NunatuKavut began organizing politically after being geographically cut out of the LIA, however, for political expediency the organization was erroneously called the Labrador Métis Nation. These various activist movements began to change the direction of Inuit society in 1975 with the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement. This comprehensive land claims settlement for Quebec Inuit, along with a large cash settlement and substantial administrative autonomy in the new region of Nunavik, set the precedent for the settlements to follow. The northern Labrador Inuit submitted their land claim in 1977, although they had to wait until 2005 to have a signed land settlement establishing Nunatsiavut. Southern Labrador Inuit of NunatuKavut is currently in the process of establishing land claims and title rights that would allow them to negotiate with the Newfoundland Government. Canada's 1982 Constitution Act recognized Inuit as Aboriginal peoples in Canada.[14] In the same year, the Tunngavik Federation of Nunavut (TFN) was incorporated, in order to take over negotiations for land claims on behalf of Inuit living in the eastern Northwest Territories, that would later become Nunavut, from Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, which became a joint association of Inuit of Quebec, Labrador, and the Northwest Territories. Inuit cabinet members at the federal level On October 30, 2008, Leona Aglukkaq was appointed as Minister of Health, "[becoming] the first Inuk to hold a senior cabinet position, although she is not the first Inuk to be in cabinet altogether."[67] Jack Anawak and Nancy Karetak-Lindell were both parliamentary secretaries respectively from 1993 to 1996 and in 2003. Nomenclature See also: Eskimo § Nomenclature The term Eskimo is still used by people,[19][68][69] but in the 21st century, usage in North America has declined.[20][21] In the United States the term Eskimo was, as of 2016, commonly[19] used to describe Inuit and the Siberian and Alaskan Yupik, and Iñupiat peoples. Eskimo is still used by some groups and organizations to encompass Inuit and Yupik, as well as other Indigenous Alaskan and Siberian peoples.[68][69] In 2011, Lawrence Kaplan of the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks wrote that Inuit was not generally accepted as a term for the Yupik, and Eskimo was often used as the term that applied to the Yupik, Iñupiat, and Inuit.[70] Since then Kaplan has updated this to indicate that the term Inuit has gained acceptance in Alaska.[20] Though there is much debate, the word Eskimo likely derives from a Innu-aimun (Montagnais)[71][72][73] exonym meaning 'a person who laces a snowshoe',[22][26][71][74] but is also used in folk etymology as meaning 'eater of raw meat' in the Cree language.[75] Though the Cree etymology has been discredited, "Eskimo" is considered pejorative by some Canadian and English-speaking Greenlandic Inuit.[75][76][77][78] In Canada and Greenland, Inuit is preferred. Inuit is the Eastern Canadian Inuit (Inuktitut) and West Greenlandic (Kalaallisut) word for 'the people'.[6] Since Inuktitut and Kalaallisut are the prestige dialects in Canada and Greenland, respectively, their version has become dominant, although every Inuit dialect uses cognates from the Proto-Eskimo *ińuɣ – for example, "people" is inughuit in North Greenlandic and iivit in East Greenlandic. In Alaska, though there has been criticism against Eskimo, it is still commonly used in daily conversation to this day. However, as an alternative word, more specific word describing Alaskan Inuit such as Inupiaq or Inupiaq-Eskimo has been gaining more acceptance as well to distinct themselves from Yup'ik or Unangax.[citation needed] Cultural history Main article: Inuit culture Languages Main article: Inuit languages Inuktitut dialect map with labels in Inuktitut inuujingajut or local Roman alphabet Distribution of Inuit dialects Inuit speak Inupiaq (Inupiatun), Inuinnaqtun,[79] Inuktitut,[80] Inuvialuktun, and Greenlandic languages,[81] which belong to the Inuit-Inupiaq branch of the Inuit-Yupik-Unangan language family.[23] Inupiaq (Inupiatun) is spoken in Russia (extinct) and Alaska, which is one of the 22 official languages of the State of Alaska. In Russia, due to the replacement from their traditional territory in Big Diomede Island to Mainland Russia, Inupiaq language has been nearly extinct with most of them speaking Central Siberian Yupik or Russian predominantly with some Inupiaq linguistic features. In Canada, three Inuit languages (Inuvialuktun, Inuinnaqtun, Inuktitut) are spoken. Inuvialuktun is spoken in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, Northwest Territories, with official language status from the territorial government. Inuinnaqtun is spoken across the Northwest Territories and the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut with official language status from both territories. Inuktitut, the most widely spoken Inuit language in Canada, however, is an official, and one of two main languages, alongside with English, of Nunavut and has its speakers throughout Nunavut, Nunavik (Northern Quebec), Nunatsiavut (Labrador), and the Northwest Territories, where it is also an official language.[82][83][84][85][86][87] Kalaallisut is the official language of Greenland.[88] The Greenlandic languages are divided into: Kalaallisut (Western), Inuktun (Northern), and Tunumiit (Eastern). As Inuktitut was the language of the Eastern Canadian Inuit[80] and Kalaallisut is the language of the Western Greenlandic Inuit,[81] they are related more closely than most other dialects.[89] Inuit in Alaska and Northern Canada also typically speak English.[90] In Greenland, Inuit also speak Danish and learn English in school. Inuit in Russia mostly speak Russian and Central Siberian Yupik. Canadian Inuit, particularly those from Nunavik, may also speak Québécois French. Finally, deaf Inuit use Inuit Sign Language, which is a language isolate and is almost extinct as only around 50 people still use it.[91] Diet Main article: Inuit diet Inuit have traditionally been fishermen and hunters. They still hunt whales (esp. bowhead whale), seal, (esp. ringed seal, harp seal, common seal, bearded seal), polar bears, muskoxen, caribou, birds, and fish and at times other less commonly eaten animals such as the Arctic fox. The typical Inuit diet is high in protein and very high in fat – in their traditional diets, Inuit consumed an average of 75 per cent of their daily energy intake from fat.[92] While it is not possible to cultivate plants for food in the Arctic, Inuit have traditionally gathered those that are naturally available. Grasses, tubers, roots, Plant stems, berries, and seaweed (kuanniq or edible seaweed) were collected and preserved depending on the season and the location.[93][94][95][96] There is a vast array of different hunting technologies that Inuit used to gather their food. In the 1920s, anthropologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson lived with and studied a group of Inuit.[97] The study focused on Stefansson's observation that Inuit's low-carbohydrate diet apparently had no adverse effects on their health, nor indeed, on his own health. Stefansson (1946) also observed that Inuit were able to get the necessary vitamins they needed from their traditional winter diet, which did not contain any plant matter. In particular, he found that adequate vitamin C could be obtained from items in their traditional diet of raw meat such as ringed seal liver and whale skin (muktuk). While there was considerable skepticism when he reported these findings, the initial anecdotal reports were reaffirmed both in the 1970s,[98] and more recently.[99][100] Modern Inuit have lifespans 12 to 15 years shorter than the average Canadian's, which is thought to be influenced by factors such as their diet[101] and limited access to medical services.[102] The life expectancy gap is not closing and remains stagnant.[102][103][104] Tattoos Main article: Kakiniit The ancient art of face tattooing among Inuit women, which is called kakiniit or tunniit in Inuktitut, dates back nearly 4,000 years. The facial tattoos detailed aspects of the women's lives, such as where they were from, who their family was, their life achievements, and their position in the community.[105] When Catholic missionaries arrived in the area in the early 20th century[106] they outlawed the practice,[citation needed] but it is now making a comeback thanks to some modern Inuit women who want to honor the practices of their ancestors and get in touch with their cultural roots.[107] The traditional method of tattooing was done with needles made of sinew or bone soaked in suet and sewn into the skin, but today they use ink.[105] The Inuit Tattoo Revitalization Project is a community that was created to highlight the revitalization of this ancient tradition.[108][109][110] Transport, navigation, and dogs See also: Inuit navigation Photograph of an Inuit man seated in a kayak, holding a paddle Inupiat man in a kayak, Noatak, Alaska, c. 1929 (photo by Edward S. Curtis) Urbanization in Greenland Inuit hunted sea animals from single-passenger, seal-skin covered boats called qajaq (Inuktitut syllabics: ᖃᔭᖅ)[111] which were extraordinarily buoyant, and could be righted by a seated person, even if completely overturned. Because of this property, the design was copied by Europeans and Americans who still produce them under Inuit name kayak. Covered Inuit basket, Alaska, undated Inuit also made umiaq ("woman's boat"), larger open boats made of wood frames covered with animal skins, for transporting people, goods, and dogs. They were 6–12 m (20–39 ft) long and had a flat bottom so that the boats could come close to shore. In the winter, Inuit would also hunt sea mammals by patiently watching an aglu (breathing hole) in the ice and waiting for the air-breathing seals to use them. This technique is also used by the polar bear, who hunts by seeking holes in the ice and waiting nearby. In winter, both on land and on sea ice, Inuit used dog sleds (qamutik) for transportation. The husky dog breed comes from the Siberian Husky. These dogs were bred from wolves, for transportation. A team of dogs in either a tandem/side-by-side or fan formation would pull a sled made of wood, animal bones, or the baleen from a whale's mouth and even frozen fish,[112] over the snow and ice. Inuit used stars to navigate at sea and landmarks to navigate on land; they possessed a comprehensive native system of toponymy. Where natural landmarks were insufficient, Inuit would erect an inukshuk. Also, Greenland Inuit created Ammassalik wooden maps, which are tactile devices that represent the coastline. Dogs played an integral role in the annual routine of Inuit. During the summer they became pack animals, sometimes dragging up to 20 kg (44 lb) of baggage and in the winter they pulled the sled. Yearlong they assisted with hunting by sniffing out seals' holes and pestering polar bears. They also protected Inuit villages by barking at bears and strangers. Inuit generally favoured, and tried to breed, the most striking and handsome of dogs, especially ones with bright eyes and healthy coats. Common husky dog breeds used by Inuit were the Canadian Eskimo Dog, the official animal of Nunavut,[113] (Qimmiq; Inuktitut for dog), the Greenland Dog, the Siberian Husky and the Alaskan Malamute. Industry, art, and clothing Main articles: Inuit art and Inuit clothing Caribou skin amauti from Nunavut Kalaallit girl's clothing from Western Greenland Inuit industry relied almost exclusively on animal hides, driftwood, and bones, although some tools were also made out of worked stones, particularly the readily worked soapstone. Walrus ivory was a particularly essential material, used to make knives. Art played a big part in Inuit society and continues to do so today. Small sculptures of animals and human figures, usually depicting everyday activities such as hunting and whaling, were carved from ivory and bone. In modern times prints and figurative works carved in relatively soft stone such as soapstone, serpentinite, or argillite have also become popular. Traditional Inuit clothing and footwear is made from animal skins, sewn together using needles made from animal bones and threads made from other animal products, such as sinew. The anorak (parka) is made in a similar fashion by Arctic peoples from Europe through Asia and the Americas, including Inuit. The back part of an amauti (women's parka) was traditionally made extra-large with a separate compartment below the hood to allow the mother to carry a baby against her back and protect it from the harsh wind.[114] Styles vary from region to region, from the shape of the hood to the length of the tails. Boots (mukluk[115] or kamik[116]), could be made of caribou or seal skin, and designed for men and women. Group of Inuit building an igloo During the winter, certain Inuit lived in a temporary shelter made from snow called an igloo, and during the few months of the year when temperatures were above freezing, they lived in tents, known as tupiq,[114] made of animal skins supported by a frame of bones or wood.[117][118] Some, such as the Siglit, used driftwood,[119] while others built sod houses.[120] Inuit also used the Cape York Meteorite as a primary resource of Iron, using a technique called cold forging, which consisted in slicing a piece of the meteorite and giving it shape by smashing it with rocks until getting the desired shape, for example, tools for fishing. They used this meteorite for centuries until Robert E. Peary sold it to the American Natural History Museum in 1883.[121] Gender roles, marriage, birth, and community See also: Eskimo kinship and Inuit women Inupiat woman, Alaska, circa 1907 The division of labor in traditional Inuit society had a strong gender component, but it was not absolute. The men were traditionally hunters and fishermen, and the women took care of the children, cleaned the home, sewed, processed food, and cooked. However, there are numerous examples of women who hunted, out of necessity or as a personal choice. At the same time, men, who could be away from camp for several days at a time, would be expected to know how to sew and cook.[122] The marital customs among Inuit were not strictly monogamous: many Inuit relationships were implicitly or explicitly sexual. Open marriages, polygamy, divorce, and remarriage were known. Among some Inuit groups, if there were children, divorce required the approval of the community and particularly the agreement of the elders. Marriages were often arranged, sometimes in infancy, and occasionally forced on the couple by the community.[123] An Inupiat family from Noatak, Alaska, 1929 Marriage was common for women at puberty and for men when they became productive hunters. Family structure was flexible: a household might consist of a husband and wife (or wives) and children; it might include his parents or his wife's parents as well as adopted children; it might be a larger formation of several siblings with their parents, wives, and children; or even more than one family sharing dwellings and resources. Every household had its head, either an elder or a particularly respected man.[124] There was also a larger notion of community as, generally, several families shared a place where they wintered. Goods were shared within a household, and also, to a significant extent, within a whole community. Inuit were hunter–gatherers,[125] and have been referred to as nomadic.[126] One of the customs following the birth of an infant was for an Angakkuq (shaman) to place a tiny ivory carving of a whale into the baby's mouth, in hopes this would make the child good at hunting. Loud singing and drumming were also customary at birth.[127] Raiding Virtually all Inuit cultures have oral traditions of raids by other Indigenous peoples, including fellow Inuit, and of taking vengeance on them in return, such as the Bloody Falls massacre. Western observers often regarded these tales as generally not entirely accurate historical accounts, but more as self-serving myths. However, evidence shows that Inuit cultures had quite accurate methods of teaching historical accounts to each new generation.[128] In northern Canada, historically there were ethnic feuds between the Dene and Inuit, as witnessed by Samuel Hearne in 1771.[129] In 1996, Dene and Inuit representatives participated in a healing ceremony to reconcile the centuries-old grievances.[130] The historic accounts of violence against outsiders make it clear that there was a history of hostile contact within Inuit cultures and with other cultures.[131] It also makes it clear that Inuit nations existed through history, as well as confederations of such nations. The known confederations were usually formed to defend against a more prosperous, and thus stronger, nation. Alternately, people who lived in less productive geographical areas tended to be less warlike, as they had to spend more time producing food. Justice within Inuit culture was moderated by the form of governance that gave significant power to the elders. As in most cultures around the world, justice could be harsh and often included capital punishment for serious crimes against the community or the individual. During raids against other peoples, Inuit, like their non-Inuit neighbors, tended to be merciless.[132] Suicide, murder, and death Further information: Suicide in Greenland and Suicide among Canadian aboriginal people A pervasive European myth about Inuit is that they killed elderly (senicide) and "unproductive people",[133] but this is not generally true.[134][135][136] In a culture with an oral history, elders are the keepers of communal knowledge, effectively the community library.[137] Because they are of extreme value as the repository of knowledge, there are cultural taboos against sacrificing elders.[138][139] In Antoon A. Leenaars' book Suicide in Canada he states that "Rasmussen found that the death of elders by suicide was a commonplace among the Iglulik Inuit".[140] According to Franz Boas, suicide was "not of rare occurrence" and was generally accomplished through hanging.[141] Writing of the Labrador Inuit, Hawkes (1916) was considerably more explicit on the subject of suicide and the burden of the elderly: Aged people who have outlived their usefulness and whose life is a burden both to themselves and their relatives are put to death by stabbing or strangulation. This is customarily done at the request of the individual concerned, but not always so. Aged people who are a hindrance on the trail are abandoned. — Leenaars et al., Suicide in Canada[142] When food is not sufficient, the elderly are the least likely to survive. In the extreme case of famine, Inuit fully understood that, if there was to be any hope of obtaining more food, a hunter was necessarily the one to feed on whatever food was left. However, a common response to desperate conditions and the threat of starvation was infanticide.[143][144] A mother abandoned an infant in hopes that someone less desperate might find and adopt the child before the cold or animals killed it. The belief that Inuit regularly resorted to infanticide may be due in part to studies done by Asen Balikci,[145] Milton Freeman[146] and David Riches[147] among the Netsilik, along with the trial of Kikkik.[148][149] Other recent research has noted that "While there is little disagreement that there were examples of infanticide in Inuit communities, it is presently not known the depth and breadth of these incidents. The research is neither complete nor conclusive to allow for a determination of whether infanticide was a rare or a widely practiced event."[150] There is no agreement about the actual estimates of the frequency of newborn female infanticide in Inuit population. Carmel Schrire mentions diverse studies ranging from 15–50 per cent to 80 per cent.[151] Anthropologists believed that Inuit cultures routinely killed children born with physical defects because of the demands of the extreme climate. These views were changed by late 20th century discoveries of burials at an archaeological site. Between 1982 and 1994, a storm with high winds caused ocean waves to erode part of the bluffs near Barrow, Alaska, and a body was discovered to have been washed out of the mud. Unfortunately, the storm claimed the body, which was not recovered. But examination of the eroded bank indicated that an ancient house, perhaps with other remains, was likely to be claimed by the next storm. The site, known as the "Ukkuqsi archaeological site", was excavated. Several frozen bodies (now known as the "frozen family") were recovered, autopsies were performed, and they were re-interred as the first burials in the then-new Imaiqsaun Cemetery south of Barrow.[152] Years later another body was washed out of the bluff. It was a female child, approximately nine years old, who had clearly been born with a congenital birth defect.[153] This child had never been able to walk, but must have been cared for by family throughout her life.[154] She was the best preserved body ever recovered in Alaska, and radiocarbon dating of grave goods and of a strand of her hair all place her back to about 1200 CE.[154] Health See also: Indian hospital During the 19th century, the Western Arctic suffered a population decline of close to 90 per cent, resulting from exposure to new diseases, including tuberculosis, measles, influenza, and smallpox. Autopsies near Greenland reveal that, more commonly pneumonia, kidney diseases, trichinosis, malnutrition, and degenerative disorders may have contributed to mass deaths among different Inuit tribes. Inuit believed that the causes of the disease were of a spiritual origin.[155] Canadian churches and, eventually, the federal government ran the earliest health facilities for Inuit population, whether fully segregated hospitals or "annexes" and wards attached to settler hospitals. These "Indian hospitals" were focused on treating people for tuberculosis, though diagnosis was difficult and treatment involved forced removal of individuals from their communities for in-patient confinement in other parts of the country. Dr. Kevin Patterson, a physician, wrote an op-ed in The Globe and Mail: "In October (2017) the federal Minister of Indigenous Services, Jane Philpott, announced that in 2015 tuberculosis ... Was 270 times ... More common among the Canadian Inuit than it is among non-Indigenous southern Canadians." The Canadian Medical Association Journal published in 2013 that "tuberculosis among Canadian Inuit has dramatically increased since 1997. In 2010 the incidence in Nunavut ... Was 304 per 100,000—more than 66 times the rate seen in the general population.[156] Traditional law Main article: Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit or Inuit traditional laws are anthropologically different from Western law concepts. Customary law was thought non-existent in Inuit society before the introduction of the Canadian legal system. In 1954, E. Adamson Hoebel concluded that only "rudimentary law" existed amongst Inuit. No known Western observer before 1970 was aware that any form of governance existed among any Inuit;[157] however, there was a set way of doing things that had to be followed: maligait refers to what has to be followed piqujait refers to what has to be done tirigusuusiit refers to what has to be avoided If an individual's actions went against the tirigusuusiit, maligait or piqujait, the angakkuq (shaman) might have to intervene, lest the consequences be dire to the individual or the community.[158] We are told today that Inuit never had laws or "maligait". Why? They say because they are not written on paper. When I think of paper, I think you can tear it up, and the laws are gone. The laws of the Inuit are not on paper. — Mariano Aupilaarjuk, Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, Perspectives on Traditional Law[159] Traditional beliefs See also: Inuit religion and Inuit astronomy Some Inuit (including Alaska Natives) believed that the spirits of their ancestors could be seen in the aurora borealis. The environment in which Inuit lived inspired a mythology filled with adventure tales of whale and walrus hunts. Long winter months of waiting for caribou herds or sitting near breathing holes hunting seals gave birth to stories of the mysterious and sudden appearance of ghosts and fantastic creatures. Some Inuit looked into the aurora borealis, or northern lights, to find images of their family and friends dancing in the next life.[160] However, some Inuit believed that the lights were more sinister and if you whistled at them, they would come down and cut off your head. This tale is still told to children today.[161] For others they were invisible giants, the souls of animals, a guide to hunting and as a spirit for the angakkuq to help with healing.[161][162] They relied upon the angakkuq (shaman) for spiritual interpretation. The nearest thing to a central deity was the Old Woman (Sedna), who lived beneath the sea. The waters, a central food source, were believed to contain great gods. Inuit practiced a form of shamanism based on animist principles. They believed that all things had a form of spirit, including humans, and that to some extent these spirits could be influenced by a pantheon of supernatural entities that could be appeased when one required some animal or inanimate thing to act in a certain way. The angakkuq of a community of Inuit was not the leader, but rather a sort of healer and psychotherapist, who tended wounds and offered advice, as well as invoking the spirits to assist people in their lives. Their role was to see, interpret and exhort the subtle and unseen. Angakkuit were not trained; they were held to be born with the ability and recognized by the community as they approached adulthood. Inuit religion was closely tied to a system of rituals integrated into the daily life of the people. These rituals were simple but held to be necessary. According to a customary Inuit saying, "The great peril of our existence lies in the fact that our diet consists entirely of souls".[163] By believing that all things, including animals, have souls like those of humans,[164] any hunt that failed to show appropriate respect and customary supplication would only give the liberated spirits cause to avenge themselves. The harshness and unpredictability of life in the Arctic ensured that Inuit lived with concern for the uncontrollable, where a streak of bad luck could destroy an entire community. To offend a spirit was to risk its interference with an already marginal existence. Inuit understood that they had to work in harmony with supernatural powers to provide the necessities of day-to-day life. Demographics In total there are about 148,000 Inuit living in four countries, Canada, Greenland, Denmark and the United States.[11][2][3][4] Inuit Demographics by Region Country Region Inuit population Inuit population concentration Inuit territory Russia Chukotka Autonomous Okrug 125[citation needed] 0.26% Yes (Big Diomede) United States Alaska 14,718[4][165] 2.00% Yes United States California 352[citation needed] <0.01% No United States Washington 1,863[4][166] 0.02% No Canada Yukon 260[167] 0.66% Inuvialuit Settlement Region (Inuit Nunangat) Canada Northwest Territories 4,155[167] 10.29% Inuvialuit Settlement Region (Inuit Nunangat) Canada Nunavut 30,865[167] 84.33% Inuit Nunangat Canada British Columbia 1,720[167] 0.03% No Canada Alberta 2,950[167] 0.07% No Canada Saskatchewan 460[167] 0.04% No Canada Manitoba 730[167] 0.06% No Canada Ontario 4,310[167] 0.03% No Canada Quebec 15,800[167] 0.19% Nunavik (Inuit Nunangat) Canada Newfoundland and Labrador 7,330[167] 1.46% Nunatsiavut (Inuit Nunangat) Canada New Brunswick 685[167] 0.09% No Canada Nova Scotia 1,100[167] 0.12% No Canada Prince Edward Island 180[167] 0.12% No Greenland Avannaata 10,693[7] 92.14% (87.53%) Yes Greenland Qeqertalik 6,284[7] 98.56% (93.63%) Yes Greenland Qeqqata 9,252[7] 98.10% (93.20%) Yes Greenland Sermersooq 23,416[7] 95.20% (90.44%) Yes Greenland Kujalleq 6,266[7] 96.28% (91.47%) Yes Denmark Nordjylland 2,168[168] 0.44% No Denmark Midtjylland 3,822[168] 0.33% No Denmark Syddanmark 4,411[168] 0.34% No Denmark Sjælland 2,664[168] 0.33% No Denmark Hovedstaden 5,498[168] 0.31% No Norway Oslo 293[citation needed] 0.04% No Faroe Islands Torshavn 163[citation needed] 1.16% No Iceland Reykjavik 65[citation needed] 0.03% No Netherlands North Holland 14[citation needed] <0.01% No Canada As of the 2016 Canadian census, there were 65,025 people identifying as Inuit living in Canada. This was up 29.1 per cent from the 2006 Canadian census. Close to three-quarters (72.8 per cent) of Inuit lived in one of the four regions comprising Inuit Nunangat (Nunavut, Nunavik, Nunatsiavut, and Inuvialuit Settlement Region). From 2006 to 2016, Inuit population grew by 20.1 per cent inside Inuit Nunangat.[169] The largest population of Inuit in Canada as of 2016 live in Nunavut with 30,140[169] Inuit out of a total population of 35,580 residents.[11][170] Between 2006 and 2016, Inuit population of Nunavut grew by 22.5 per cent.[169] In Nunavut, Inuit population forms a majority in all communities and is the only jurisdiction of Canada where Aboriginal peoples form a majority.[170] As of 2016, there were 13,945 Inuit living in Quebec.[170] The majority, about 11,795, live in Nunavik.[11] Inuit population of Nunavik grew 23.3 per cent between the 2006 and 2016 censuses. This was the fastest growth among all four regions of Inuit Nunangat.[169] The 2016 Canada Census found there were 6,450 Inuit living in Newfoundland and Labrador[170] including 2,285 who live in Nunatsiavut.[11] In Nunatsiavut, Inuit population grew by 6.0 per cent between 2006 and 2016.[169] As of 2016, there were 4,080 Inuit living in the Northwest Territories.[170] The majority, 3,110, live in the six communities of the Inuvialuit Settlement Region.[11] Inuit population growth in the region was largely flat between 2006 and 2016.[169] Outside of Inuit Nunangat, Inuit population was 17,695 as of 2016.[11] This was a growth of 61.9 per cent between the 2006 and 2016 censuses.[169] The highest populations of Inuit outside of Inuit Nunangat lived in the Atlantic provinces (30.6 per cent) with 23.5 per cent lived in Newfoundland and Labrador. A further 21.8 per cent outside of Inuit Nunangat lived in Ontario, 28.7 per cent lived in the western provinces, 12.1 per cent lived in Quebec, while 6.8 per cent lived in the Northwest Territories (not including the Inuvialuit region) and Yukon.[169] Included in the population of Newfoundland and Labrador outside of Inuit Nunangat is the unrecognized Inuit territory of NunatuKavut where about 6,000 NunatuKavut people (Labrador Metis or Inuit-metis) reside in southern Labrador.[171] Greenland Main article: Greenlandic Inuit According to the 2018 edition of the CIA World Factbook, Inuit population of Greenland is 88 per cent (50,787) out of a total of 57,713 people.[2] Like Nunavut, the population lives throughout the habitable areas of the region. Denmark The population size of Greenlandic people in Denmark varies from source to source between 15,000 and 20,000. According to 2023 figures from Statistics Denmark there are 17,067 people residing in Denmark of Greenlandic Inuit ancestry.[3] Most travel to Denmark for educational purposes, and many remain after finishing their education,[172] which results in the population being mostly concentrated in the big four educational cities of Copenhagen, Aarhus, Odense, and Aalborg, which all have vibrant Greenlandic communities and cultural centers (Kalaallit Illuutaat). United States According to the 2000 United States Census there were a total of 16,581 Inuit / Inupiat living throughout the country.[4] The majority, about 14,718, live in the state of Alaska.[165] According to 2019-based U.S. Census Bureau data, there are 700 Alaskan Natives in Seattle, many of whom are Inuit and Yupik, and almost 7,000 in Washington state.[166][173] Governance Inuit Circumpolar Conference members The Inuit Circumpolar Council is a United Nations-recognized non-governmental organization (NGO), which defines its constituency as Canada's Inuit and Inuvialuit, Greenland's Kalaallit Inuit, Alaska's Inupiat and Yup'ik, and Russia's Siberian Yupik,[174] despite the last two neither speaking an Inuit dialect[70] or considering themselves "Inuit". Nonetheless, it has come together with other circumpolar cultural and political groups to promote Inuit and other northern people in their fight against ecological problems such as climate change which disproportionately affects Inuit population. The Inuit Circumpolar Council is one of the six group of Arctic Indigenous peoples that have a seat as a so-called "Permanent Participant" on the Arctic Council,[175] an international high level forum in which the eight Arctic Countries (United States, Canada, Russia, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland) discuss Arctic policy. On 12 May 2011, Greenland's Prime Minister Kuupik Kleist hosted the ministerial meeting of the Arctic Council, an event for which the American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came to Nuuk, as did many other high-ranking officials such as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt and Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. At that event they signed the Nuuk Declaration.[176] Canada See also: NunatuKavut, Nunavut, Nunavik, Nunatsiavut, and Nunangit While Inuit Nunangat is within Canada, and the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami oversees only the four official regions, there remains NunatuKavut in southern Labrador. NunatuKavummuit retain a treaty with the Crown since 1765,[177] and the NunatuKavut Community Council (NCC) oversees governance in this region.[178] Regions of Inuit Nunangat The Inuvialuit are western Canadian Inuit who remained in the Northwest Territories when Nunavut split off. They live primarily in the Mackenzie River delta, on Banks Island, and parts of Victoria Island in the Northwest Territories. They are officially represented by the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation and, in 1984, received a comprehensive land claims settlement, the first in Northern Canada, with the signing of the Inuvialuit Final Agreement.[179] The TFN worked for ten years and, in September 1992, came to a final agreement with the Government of Canada. This agreement called for the separation of the Northwest Territories into an eastern territory whose Aboriginal population would be predominately Inuit,[180] the future Nunavut, and a rump Northwest Territories in the west. It was the largest land claim agreement in Canadian history. In November 1992, the Nunavut Final Agreement was approved by nearly 85 per cent of Inuit of what would become Nunavut. As the final step in this long process, the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement was signed on May 25, 1993, in Iqaluit by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and by Paul Quassa, the president of Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, which replaced the TFN with the ratification of the Nunavut Final Agreement. The Canadian Parliament passed the supporting legislation in June of the same year, enabling the 1999 establishment of Nunavut as a territorial entity. Greenland See also: Kalaallit and History of Greenland In 1953, Denmark put an end to the colonial status of Greenland and granted home rule in 1979 and in 2008 a self-government referendum was passed with 75 per cent approval. Although still a part of the Kingdom of Denmark (along with Denmark proper and the Faroe Islands), Greenland, known as Kalaallit Nunaat in the Greenlandic language, maintains much autonomy today. Of a population of 56,000, 80 per cent of Greenlanders identify as Inuit. Their economy is based on fishing and shrimping.[181] The Thule people arrived in Greenland in the 13th century. There they encountered the Norsemen, who had established colonies there since the late 10th century, as well as a later wave of the Dorset people. Because most of Greenland is covered in ice, the Greenland Inuit (or Kalaallit) only live in coastal settlements, particularly the northern polar coast, the eastern Amassalik coast and the central coasts of western Greenland.[182] Alaska Inuit of Alaska are the Iñupiat who live in the Northwest Arctic Borough, the North Slope Borough and the Bering Strait region. Utqiagvik, the northernmost city in the United States, is in the Inupiat region. Their language is Iñupiaq. Genetics See also: Saqqaq culture § Genetics, Dorset culture § Genetics, Birnirk culture § Genetics, Thule people § Genetics, and Sadlermiut § Genetics A genetic study published in Science in August 2014 examined a large number of remains from the Dorset culture, Birnirk culture and the Thule people. Genetic continuity was observed between Inuit, Thule and Birnirk, who overwhelmingly carried the maternal haplogroup A2a and were genetically very different from the Dorset. The evidence suggested that Inuit descend from the Birnirk of Siberia, who through the Thule culture expanded into northern Canada and Greenland, where they genetically and culturally completely replaced the Indigenous Dorset people some time after 1300 AD.[183] Inuit people tend to have the dry variant of human earwax.[184] Modern culture Two Inuit elders share Maktaaq in 2002. Inuit art, carving, print making, textiles and Inuit throat singing, are very popular, not only in Canada but globally, and Inuit artists are widely known. Canada has adopted some of Inuit culture as national symbols, using Inuit cultural icons like the inuksuk in unlikely places, such as its use as a symbol at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Respected art galleries display Inuit art, the largest collection of which is at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Their traditional New Year is called Quviasukvik.[185] Some Inuit languages, such as Inuktitut, appear to have a more secure future in Quebec and Nunavut. There are a number of Inuit, even those who now live in urban centres such as Ottawa, Montreal and Winnipeg, who have experienced living on the land in the traditional life style. People such as Legislative Assembly of Nunavut member, Levinia Brown and former Commissioner of Nunavut and the NWT, Helen Maksagak were born and lived the early part of their life "on the land". Inuit culture is alive and vibrant today in spite of the negative impacts of recent history. An important biennial event, the Arctic Winter Games, is held in communities across the northern regions of the world, featuring traditional Inuit and northern sports as part of the events. A cultural event is also held. The games were first held in 1970, and while rotated usually among Alaska, Yukon and the Northwest Territories, they have also been held in Schefferville, Quebec, in 1976, in Slave Lake, Alberta, and a joint Iqaluit, Nunavut-Nuuk, Greenland staging in 2002. In other sporting events, Jordin Tootoo became the first Inuk to play in the National Hockey League in the 2003–2004 season, playing for the Nashville Predators. An Inuit woman uses a traditional amauti and a modern western stroller. Although Inuit life has changed significantly over the past century, many traditions continue. Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, or traditional knowledge, such as storytelling, mythology, music, and dancing remain important parts of the culture. Family and community are very important. The Inuktitut language is still spoken in many areas of the Arctic and is common on radio and in television programming. Well-known Inuit politicians include Premier of Nunavut, P.J. Akeeagok, Lori Idlout, member of parliament for the riding of Nunavut, Eva Aariak, Commissioner of Nunavut and Múte Bourup Egede, Prime Minister of Greenland. Leona Aglukkaq, former MP, was the first Inuk to be sworn into the Canadian Federal Cabinet as Health Minister in 2008. In May 2011 after being re-elected for her second term, Aglukkaq was given the additional portfolio of Minister of the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency. In July 2013 she was sworn in as the minister of the environment.[186] Inuit seal hunter in a kayak, armed with a harpoon Visual and performing arts are strong features of Inuit culture. In 2002 the first feature film in Inuktitut, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, was released worldwide to great critical and popular acclaim. It was directed by Zacharias Kunuk, and written, filmed, produced, directed, and acted almost entirely by Inuit of Igloolik. In 2009, the film Le Voyage D'Inuk, a Greenlandic-language feature film, was directed by Mike Magidson and co-written by Magidson and French film producer Jean-Michel Huctin.[187] One of the most famous Inuit artists is Pitseolak Ashoona. Susan Aglukark is a popular singer. Mitiarjuk Attasie Nappaaluk worked at preserving Inuktitut and wrote one of the first novels ever published in that language.[188] In 2006, Cape Dorset was hailed as Canada's most artistic city, with 23 per cent of the labor force employed in the arts.[189] Inuit art such as soapstone carvings is one of Nunavut's most important industries. Ada Eyetoaq was an Inuit artist who made miniature sculptures out of soapstone. Recently, there has been an identity struggle among the younger generations of Inuit, between their traditional heritage and the modern society which their cultures have been forced to assimilate into in order to maintain a livelihood. With current dependence on modern society for necessities, (including governmental jobs, food, aid, medicine, etc.), Inuit have had much interaction with and exposure to the societal norms outside their previous cultural boundaries. The stressors regarding the identity crisis among teenagers have led to disturbingly high numbers of suicide.[190] A series of authors have focused upon the increasing myopia in the youngest generations of Inuit. Myopia was almost unknown prior to Inuit adoption of Western culture. Principal theories are the change to a Western style diet with more refined foods, and extended education.[191][192][193] David Pisurayak Kootook was awarded the Meritorious Service Cross, posthumously, for his heroic efforts in a 1972 plane crash. Other notable Inuit include the freelance journalist Ossie Michelin, whose iconic photograph of the activist Amanda Polchies went viral after the 2013 anti-fracking protests at Elsipogtog First Nation.[194] Notes The Inuvialuit Settlement Region (ISR) also includes the Yukon North Slope in the territory of Yukon, which is relatively small compared with the ISR in Northwest Territories and has no communities living within it—but is part of traditional and current Inuvialuit hunting, trapping, fishing, etc. grounds. References The Utkuhiksalingmiut Ukukhalingmiut, Utkukhalingmiut —the people of the place where there is soapstone—is one of 48 groups of Inuit in what is now Nunavut, Canada.[1] Their traditional land was around Chantrey Inlet (Tariunnuaq) area,[2] near the estuary of the Back River in, what was then called, the Keewatin District of the Northwest Territories.[3]: 4 The Utkuhiksalingmiut followed the traditional hunter-nomadic life moving from fishing the camp near the mouth of the Back River on Chantrey Inlet[4]: 3 to their caribou hunting camp in the Garry Lake area,[4]: 10 living in winter snow houses (igloos) and caribou skin tents in the summer.[5] They subsisted mainly on trout (lake trout and Arctic char), whitefish, and barren-ground caribou.[6] In his 1888 Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Smithsonian Institution, which was based on his trip to Cumberland Sound and Davis Strait and on "extracts from the reports of other travelers", the anthropologist Franz Boas listed three Inuit groups—the Netchillirmiut, Ugjulirmiut, and Ukusiksalirmiut as the Boothia Felix and Back River Inuit, calling them tribes of the "Central Eskimo", terms that are no longer in use.[7][Notes 1] The 2008 publication Uqalurait, an "authoritative and comprehensive compilation of the traditional knowledge of Inuit elders", lists the 48 Nunavutmiut groups and uses the spelling Utkuhiksalingmiut.[1] During his Fifth Thule Expedition, the Danish explorer, Knud Rasmussen, visited a Utkuhikhalingmiut camp. This represented the first time the Utkuhikhalingmiut made contact with non-Inuit. Rasmussen, whose mother was Inuk, traversed the Arctic region from Hudson Bay to the Bering Strait in dogsled from 1921 to 1924. In the 1980s, CBC radio aired a segment in which Jessie Oonark, OC RCA (March 2, 1906 – March 7, 1985)—a prolific and influential artist—described that encounter in the Utkuhiksalik language, which Oonark spoke fluently.[8] Oonark was one of three Inuit artists—along with Marion Tuu'luq (1910–2002) and Luke Anguhadluq (1895–1982)—the Utkuhikhalingmiut camp leader[9]—whose artworks reflect Utkuhiksalingmiut oral history and legends. Garry Lake 2006 By 1949, Roman Catholic mission post had been established in an island in Garry Lake Hanningajuq, an outflow of the Back River.[10]: 240 [11] In the late 1950s, there was a shift in the migratory patterns of the Beverly herd of the barren-ground caribou upon which the Utkuhikhalingmiut depended, causing a famine.[12] [13]: 10 : 10 During the winter months of 1957–1958, of the Utkuhikhalingmiut at Garry Lake—the Hanningajurmiut—58 people died before the federal government intervened. The Canadian armed forces airlifted 31 survivors to Baker Lake.[3]: 4 [10] Most never returned to Garry Lake on a permanent basis.[14][15][16][17][18][19] During a brief visit to the area in 2009 by one of survivors of the Garry Lake starvation, a bag and some small items that were still fresh, were found in the old Catholic mission that had been manned by Father Joseph Buliard. In Baker Lake, the Utkuhikhalingmiut were forced to change their nomadic lifestyle.[3]: 4 [20] They became a small minority in the hamlet where they were known as the Back River people.[14] In 2015, Nunavut Arctic College published Jean L. Briggs 700-page dictionary of the rare Utkuhiksalingmiut dialect, a multi-year, collaborative process.[21][22] Rosie Kigeak, who became Briggs' mentor in the early 1960s when she came to live with a family camp to understand to the Utkuhiksalingmiut culture, became Brigg's "most trusted collaborator on the dictionary".[21] Notable people William Noah Luke Anguhadluq Jessie Oonark Marion Tuu'luq Notes Boas identified the Baffin Land Inuit groups as Sikosuilarmiut, Akuliarmiut, Qaumauangmiut, Nugumiut, Oqomiut, Padlimiut, Akudnirmiut, Aggomiut, Iglulirmiut, Pilingmiut, and Sagdlirmiut. He identified the Inuit groups on the western shore of Hudson Bay as Aivillirmiut, and Kinipetu or Agutit, the Sagdlirmiut of Southampton Island, Sinimiut; the Inuit groups of Boothia Felix and Back River were identified as the Netchillirmiut, Ugjulirmiut, and Ukusiksalirmiut; the Inuit groups of Smith Sound were identified as Ellesmere Land and the North Greenlanders. The current names of the 48 groups of Nunavutmiut can be found on the map on page 340 of the 2008 publication, Uqalurait. References The National Gallery of Canada (French: Musée des beaux-arts du Canada), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's national art museum.[8] The museum's building takes up 46,621 square metres (501,820 sq ft), with 12,400 square metres (133,000 sq ft) of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the largest art museums in North America by exhibition space. The institution was established in 1880 at the Second Supreme Court of Canada building, and moved to the Victoria Memorial Museum building in 1911. In 1913, the Government of Canada passed the National Gallery Act, formally outlining the institution's mandate as a national art museum. The museum was moved to the Lorne building in 1960. In 1988, the museum was relocated to a new building designed for this purpose. The National Gallery of Canada is situated in a glass and granite building on Sussex Drive, with a notable view of the Canadian Parliament buildings on Parliament Hill. The building was designed by Israeli architect Moshe Safdie and opened in 1988.[4][5][6][9] The museum's permanent collection includes over 93,000 works from European, American, and Asian, Canadian, and Indigenous artists. In addition to exhibiting works from its permanent collection, the museum also organizes and hosts a number of travelling exhibitions. History The National Gallery was housed in the Second Supreme Court of Canada building from 1882 to 1911 The Gallery was first formed in 1880 by Canada's Governor General, John Campbell, 9th Duke of Argyll in conjunction with the establishment of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. In 1882, moved into its first home on Parliament Hill, housed in the Second Supreme Court of Canada building.[9] Eric Brown was named the first director in 1910.[10] In 1911, the Gallery moved to the Victoria Memorial Museum building, sharing it with the National Museum of Natural Sciences. In 1913, the first National Gallery Act was passed, outlining the Gallery's mandate and resources.[9] During the 1920s, the building was expanded. The art gallery was given four floors, and a separate entrance was created for the art museum. In addition, a firewall was built between the natural sciences museum and the National Gallery.[11] But, the Gallery was still in temporary space in the Victoria Memorial Museum building. Longterm plans were to move it to a new permanent location, with spaces dedicated to the viewing of art.[11] Victoria Memorial Museum building in 1911. The National Gallery of Canada was situated in the building from 1911 to 1960. By the 1950s, the space in the Victoria Memorial Museum building had grown inadequate for the museum's collections. In 1952, the museum launched a design contest for architects to design a permanent home for the gallery.[11] But the museum failed to garner support from the government of Louis St. Laurent, resulting in the museum having to abandon the winning bid. [11] To provide a workable compromise for the National Gallery, St. Laurent's government offered the National Gallery the eight-storey Lorne office building for use.[11] The National Gallery moved into the nondescript office building on Elgin Street.[12] The building has since been demolished and replaced by a 17-storey office building to house the Federal Finance Department. In 1962, Charles Comfort, the museum's director, was criticised after half of the works on display at an exhibition for Walter Chrysler's European works were exposed as forgeries by American journalists. Comfort had allowed the Gallery to host the exhibition although he had been warned about the works by the director of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.[13] The National Museums of Canada Corporation (NMC) absorbed the National Gallery of Canada in 1968.[14] During the 1970s, the NMC diverted funds from the National Gallery to form regional galleries.[14] The museum completed renovations to the Lorne building in 1976.[11] By 1980, it had become apparent that the National Gallery would need to relocate, given the poor condition of the building, historic use of asbestos there, and inadequate exhibition areas that provided only enough space for two per cent of the collection to be exhibited at any given time.[11] After the Canadian constitution was patriated in 1982, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau announced a shift in policy focus towards the "creation of a nation," with priority given towards the arts in an effort to enrich Canadian identity.[11] In same year, Minister of Communications Francis Fox declared the government's commitment to erect a new permanent buildings for its national museums, including the National Gallery, and the Museum of Man within five years.[14] The director of the National Gallery, Jean Sutherland Boggs, was chosen by Trudeau to oversee construction of the national gallery and museums.[15] The museum began construction for its permanent museum building on Sussex Drive in 1985, and was opened in May 1988.[16] The diversion of funds by the NMC to help fund regional museums was ended in 1982,[17] and the National Museums of Canada formally dissolved in 1987.[16] As a result of the dissolution, the National Gallery reacquired its institutional independence, and its mandate and powers outlined by its formative legislative act prior to 1968.[16] The Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (CMCP), formerly the Stills Photography Division of the National Film Board of Canada, was an affiliated institution of the National Gallery established in 1985. In 1988, the CMCP's administration was amalgamated to that of the National Gallery's. The CMCP later moved to its new location at 1 Rideau Canal, and continued to operate there until its closure in 2006. Its collection was later absorbed into the National Gallery's in 2009. In December 2000, the National Gallery announced it suspected approximately 100 works from its collection was plunder stolen by the Nazis during the Second World War.[18] The gallery posted images of works suspected of being stolen art online, permitting its last legal owners to examine and possibly lay claim to the works.[18][19] In 2006, the museum restituted a painting by Édouard Vuillard that had been looted by the Nazis from Alfred Lindon in 1942, The Salon of Madame Aron, to Lindon's heirs.[20] In December 2009, the National Gallery of Canada and the Art Gallery of Alberta issued a joint press release announcing a three-year partnership, which saw the use of the Art Gallery of Alberta's galleries to exhibit works from the National Gallery's collection.[21] The program was the first "satellite program" between the National Gallery of Canada, and another institution, with similar initiatives launched in other Canadian art galleries in the following years.[21] Marc Mayer was named the museum's director, succeeding Pierre Théberge, on 19 January 2009.[22] On 19 April 2019, he was succeeded by Alexandra Suda, who was appointed the 11th Director and chief executive officer of the National Gallery of Canada. Under Sasha Suda, the Gallery underwent a major re-branding, dubbed Ankosé, to be more inclusive and work towards reconciliation. After only three years, Suda resigned. Angela Cassie was then appointed interim Director and CEO in July 2022. Building The building is adjacent to the Ottawa River. The museum's present building was designed by Moshe Safdie & Associates, with construction beginning in 1985, and the building opening in 1988. The building has a total floor area of 46,621 square metres (501,820 sq ft). In 2000, the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada chose the National Gallery as one of the top 500 buildings produced in Canada during the last millennium.[23] The National Gallery of Canada is housed in a building on Sussex Drive, adjacent to the ByWard Market district. The building is the fourth edifice to house the art museum. An independent crown corporation, the Canadian Museums Construction Corporation was established to build the museum with a budget of C$185 million.[17] Following the 1984 Canadian federal election, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney dissolved the corporation.[16] However, because the groundwork for the building was already completed, Mulroney chose to continue funding construction for the museum, albeit at a reduced total budget of C$162 million.[16] Exterior The pink-granite walls of the building's western façade. The building's northern, eastern, and western exterior facade is made up of pink-granite walls, or glass-windows.[24] The southern exterior facade features an elongated glass wall, supported by concrete pylons grouped in fours.[24] The profile of the southern facade was designed to mimic a cathedral, with the concrete pylons being used similarly to the flying buttresses found on Gothic cathedrals.[24] The eastern portion of the building's southern facade transitions into a low-levelled crystalline glass cupola, which holds the museum's main entrance; and its western portion, which features a three-tiered glass cupola.[24] The building's southern facade, made up of a glass wall supported by concrete pylons, and a three-storey glass cupola in the southwest corner. The three-tiered glass cupola is formed out of rectangular glass and narrow steel supports.[25] The second tier of the cupola is formed out of rectangles and equilateral triangles that are further subdivided into eight or twelve smaller equilateral triangles.[26] All these glass pieces are joined by steel struts. The third tier of the cupola is formed with similar designs, although the triangular glass panes are isosceles triangles.[26] The isosceles triangles converge upwards, with its apexes towards the centre.[26] The building's three-tiered cupola is positioned in a manner in which the cupola would be flanked by the Peace Tower and the Library of Parliament to the west when approaching the museum from the east.[27] Interior The building lobby's ramp towards the Great Hall The interior entrance lobby is floored with pink-granite, and includes a straight four metres (13 ft) wide ramp which slopes upward towards the west.[28] Safdie noted the importance of the ramp in his design, stating that one should "go through some kind of procession to make your way into something as important as the National Gallery," and that it gave the visitor the feeling of making an ascent to a ritual, a ceremony.[29] The walls of the entrance lobby are lined with rectangular cut pink granite, excluding the southern wall, which is part of the glass-walled exterior facade.[30] A glass and steel ceiling reminiscent of Gothic cathedral architecture, extends the entire way of the ramp.[30] However, as opposed to most Gothic cathedrals, the ceiling has several concrete columns spaced out to support the roof.[30] The summit of the ramp leads towards the Great Hall of the building, situated in the three-storey glass cupola.[25] The interior courtyard of the building includes the Taiga Garden. The garden was designed by Cornelia Oberlander, who modelled the painting Terre Sauvage by A. Y. Jackson;[31] a painting in the National Gallery's permanent collection. The garden attempts to mimic the landscape depicted in the painting, the Canadian shield; although limestone is substituted in place of the granite typically found at the Canadian shield.[31] Collection As of October 2018, the National Gallery of Canada's permanent collection holds over 93,625 works,[1] representing several artistic movements and eras in art history. The Gallery has a large and varied collection of paintings, works on paper, sculptures and photographs. The earliest works acquired by the museum were from Canadian artists, with Canadian art remaining the focus of the institution. However, its collection also includes several works from artists around the world. The museum's collection has been built up through purchases and donations. The museum organizes its own travelling exhibitions to exhibit its collection, travelling across Canada and abroad.[32][33] The National Gallery is the largest lender of artwork in Canada, sending out approximately 800 pieces a year.[34] Sculptures on display in the museum's sculpture courtyard in 2005 The museum's prints and drawings collection includes 27,000 works on paper dating from the 15th century to the present. The prints and drawing collection includes 10,000 works on paper by Canadian artists; more than 800 of these prints and drawings being crafted by Inuit artists.[35] The prints and drawing collection also includes 2,500 drawings and 10,000 prints by American, Asian, and European artists. The museum also has approximately 400 works from Asian artists, dating from the 200 CE to 19th century. The museum's Asian collection began in the early 20th century, with a number of works originating from the collection of Nasli Heeramaneck.[36] The museum's also has a collection of photographs. A number of the photographs in the collection originated from the defunct Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. Until the mid-1980s, the Gallery's mandate did not include collecting art by Indigenous peoples. It was a settler institution. This has been much critiqued and led to important changes in the gallery from the 1980s onwards.[37] Despite a major re-hang in 2003 of the Canadian galleries to include Indigenous art for the first time, the Gallery continues to work towards more equitable representation of Indigenous art, particularly in the historic galleries.[38] The largest work in the Gallery is the entire interior of the Rideau Street Chapel, which formed part of the Convent of Our Lady Sacred Heart,[12] The interior decorations of the Rideau Street Chapel were designed by Georges Couillon in 1887.[10] The chapel interior was acquired by the museum in 1972, when the convent was slated for demolition. The interior's 1,123 pieces was dismantled, stored and reconstructed within the gallery as a work of art in 1988.[10] Canadian and Indigenous works The museum's Canadian collection includes works dating from 18th century New France, to the 1990s.[39] The collection includes paintings from pre-Confederation; abstract paintings and other postwar art; and the Henry Birks Collection of Canadian Silver.[39] Early pre-Confederation paintings were among the first items in the Canadian collections, with the National Gallery's earliest works originating from Canadian artists at the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.[39] The Jack Pine by Tom Thomson. The Canadian collection includes a number of works by Thomson. The museum's Canadian collection holds a large number of works by the Group of Seven.[39] The museum also holds a large collection of Tom Thomson works,[39] with the museum adding The Jack Pine to its collection in 1918.[40] The museum also holds the largest collection of works by Alex Colville.[41] Other artists featured in the collections includes William Berczy, Jack Bush, Paul-Émile Borduas, Emily Carr, Robert Field, Vera Frenkel, Theophile Hamel, Joseph Légaré, Cornelius Krieghoff, Fernand Leduc, Alexandra Luke, Ken Lum, James Wilson Morrice, John O'Brien, Antoine Plamondon, William Raphael, Jean-Paul Riopelle, William Ronald, Michael Snow, Lisa Steele, Jeff Wall, Joyce Wieland, Paul Wong, and members of the Regina Five.[39][40] In commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Canada in 2017, the museum of undertook a C$7.4 million renovation to open the Canadian and Indigenous Art: From Time Immemorial to 1967 gallery.[42] The gallery exhibits the progression of Canadian art and history, exhibiting Canadian and Indigenous works side by side.[42] These works are exhibited in a manner which examines the intertwined relations between the two groups of people.[42] The Indigenous collection includes works by Indigenous artists around the world, although it has an emphasis on works by the Indigenous peoples of Canada. The museum collection acquired its first works by First Nations and Metis artists in the early 20th century.[43] However, the makers of these works were often not acknowledged as Indigenous, because the Gallery's mandate did not include collection of art by Indigenous peoples until the 1980s. The museum acquired its first Inuit works in 1956, crafted by artists in Nunavik.[35] The Gallery's acquisition of Inuit works, at a time when it was not actively collecting art by other Indigenous peoples, is related to the Government's instrumentalization of Inuit art to create jobs in the North and to assert Canadian sovereignty there.[44] In 1979, Henry Birks bequeathed a large collection to NGC consisting primarily of Quebecois pre-confederation silver; this bequest of more than 12,000 objects included around 16 works by Indigenous artists.[45] In 1989 and 1992, the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development bequeathed 570 works by Inuit artists.[35] Artist and Shaman between Two Worlds by Norval Morrisseau on display at the museum A number of Indigenous artists whose works are featured in the collection include Kenojuak Ashevak, Kiawak Ashoona, Qaqaq Ashoona, Carl Beam, Faye HeavyShield, Osuitok Ipeelee, Rita Letendre, Norval Morrisseau, Shelley Niro, David Ruben Piqtoukun, Abraham Anghik Ruben, Lucy Tasseor Tutsweetok, Jeffrey Thomas, John Tiktak, and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun.[40][43][35] Contemporary Maman by Louise Bourgeois, displayed outside the museum The museum's contemporary collection includes 1,500 works from artists since the 1990s.[46] The collection features a number of works from Canadian, and its Indigenous artists. The first Indigenous Canadian contemporary artwork acquired by the National Gallery was in 1987, a piece by Anishinaabe artist Carl Beam. In 2017, Bob Rennie donated a contemporary art collection to the National Gallery in honour of Canada' 150th anniversary.[34] The collection includes 197 paintings, sculptures, and mixed-media pieces with most of it originating from Vancouver-based artists including Geoffrey Farmer, Rodney Graham, Brian Jungen, and Ian Wallace.[34] The Rennie collection also includes some international contemporary works, including from Doris Salcedo.[34] In 1990 the Gallery bought Barnett Newman's Voice of Fire for $1.8 million, igniting a storm of controversy. However, since that time its value has appreciated to approximately C$40 million as of 2014.[40] In 1999, the museum acquired a sculpture of a giant spider, Maman, by Louise Bourgeois for a cost of C$3.2 million.[40][47] The sculpture was installed in the plaza in front of the Gallery.[40] In 2011 the gallery installed Canadian sculptor Joe Fafard's Running Horses next to the Sussex Drive entrance, and American artist Roxy Paine's stainless steel sculpture One Hundred Foot Line at Kìwekì Point behind the gallery. Other contemporary artists whose works are featured in the National Gallery's collection includes David Altmejd, Lee Bul, Janet Cardiff, Bharti Kher, Christian Marclay, Elizabeth McIntosh, Chris Ofili, Paine, Ugo Rondinone, and Joanne Tod.[46] European, American, and Asian The Death of General Wolfe by Benjamin West. The painting is part of the museum's collection. The European, American, and Asian collection area includes most of the museum's works by non-Canadian artists. The museum acquired its first European work in 1907, the painting Ignatius Sancho by Thomas Gainsborough.[48] Conversely, the museum did not begin to develop its collection of American art until the 1970s.[why?][48] The museum's collection includes American and European works dating from the Renaissance through to the 20th century.[48] In addition to Western art, the collection area also has 400 works from India, Nepal, and Tibet.[49] The museum's European collection has since expanded either through acquisitions or gifts. Such works include La Tour Eiffel by Marc Chagall, acquired by the museum in 1956 for $C16,000.[50] In 2018, the museum planned to sell the piece to fund other acquisitions, but abandoned those plans after it was found to be unpopular with the public.[50] In 2005, the Gallery acquired a painting by Italian Renaissance painter Francesco Salviati for $4.5 million.[51] In 2018, the museum acquired The Partie Carée by James Tissot from the collection of David R. Graham, putting it on display in December 2018.[52] It is the third work by Tissot to be acquired by the museum since 1921.[52] Other works from the collection include The Death of General Wolfe by Anglo-American artist Benjamin West.[40] Other artists featured in the museum's European collection includes Alejo Fernández, Vilhelm Hammershøi, Gustav Klimt, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Henri Matisse, Charles Meynier, Claude Monet, Rembrandt, and Vincent van Gogh.[40][36] Library and archives The library and archives of the National Gallery of Canada holds an extensive collection of art literature on Canadian art.[53] The library and archives was established alongside the museum in 1880, and contains documents on western art from the Late Middle Ages to the present.[53] The collection includes 275,000 books, exhibition catalogues, and periodicals; 76,000 documentation files; and 95,000 microforms.[53] The archives serves as the institutional archive for the museum. The library and archives' special collections includes over 50,000 auction catalogues, in addition to 182,000 slides and 360,000 research photographs.[54] The Library and Archives' Exceptional Materials and Notable Subject Collections contains a number of rare imprints, books, and bookplates on Canadian artists, as well as items relating to historians of Canadian art.[54] Management The federal government assumed responsibility for the museum in 1913, with the enactment of the National Gallery of Canada Act. The museum became a Crown corporation on 1 July 1990 with the proclamation of the Museums Act. The Museum Act serves as the museum's governing legislation. It empowers a board of trustees to serve as the museum's governing body, with the board, through the chair, being accountable to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, who is ultimately responsible for the Museum.[55] The CEO and director are charged with day-to-day management of the gallery.[56] The museum is affiliated with several associations, including the Canadian Museums Association, the Ontario Association of Art Galleries, the Canadian Heritage Information Network, and the Virtual Museum of Canada. Directors The following is a list of directors of the National Gallery of Canada: Eric Brown (1910–1939)[57] Harry Orr McCurry (1939–1955)[57] Alan Jarvis (1955–1959)[57] Charles Comfort (1960–1965)[57] Jean Sutherland Boggs (1966–1976)[17] Hsio-yen Shih (1977–1981)[58] Joseph Martin (1983–1987)[59][note 1] Shirley Thomson (1987–1997)[60] Pierre Théberge (1998–2008)[61] Marc Mayer (2009–2019)[62] Alexandra Sasha Suda (2019–2022)[62] Angela Cassie (interim 2022–)[63] Selected works Canadian collection Tom Thomson, Spring Ice, 1915–16 Tom Thomson, Spring Ice, 1915–16 J. E. H. MacDonald, The Tangled Garden, 1916 J. E. H. MacDonald, The Tangled Garden, 1916 David Milne, Vimy Ridge from Souchez, Estaminet among the Ruins, 1919 David Milne, Vimy Ridge from Souchez, Estaminet among the Ruins, 1919 Franklin Carmichael, The Upper Ottawa, near Mattawa, 1924 Franklin Carmichael, The Upper Ottawa, near Mattawa, 1924 Bill Vazan, Black Nest, 1989–1991 Bill Vazan, Black Nest, 1989–1991 Charlotte Schreiber, The Croppy Boy, 1879 Charlotte Schreiber, The Croppy Boy, 1879 Tom Thomson, Northern River, 1914–15 Tom Thomson, Northern River, 1914–15 Edward Wadsworth, Dazzle-ships in Drydock at Liverpool, 1919 Edward Wadsworth, Dazzle-ships in Drydock at Liverpool, 1919 European and American collection Auguste Rodin, Age of Bronze, 1875–1876, cast in 1901 Henri Matisse, Yellow Odalisque, 1926 M. C. Escher, Stars, 1948 Barnett Newman, Voice of Fire, 1967 Lorenzo Lotto, Madonna and Child with Saint Roch and Saint Sebastian, c. 1518 Lorenzo Lotto, Madonna and Child with Saint Roch and Saint Sebastian, c. 1518 Paolo Veronese, Fragment of the Petrobelli Altarpiece: The Dead Christ with Angels, c. 1563 Paolo Veronese, Fragment of the Petrobelli Altarpiece: The Dead Christ with Angels, c. 1563 J. M. W. Turner, Shoeburyness Fishermen Hailing a Whitstable Hoy, c. 1809 J. M. W. Turner, Shoeburyness Fishermen Hailing a Whitstable Hoy, c. 1809 Honoré Daumier, The Third-Class Carriage, 1863–1865 Honoré Daumier, The Third-Class Carriage, 1863–1865 Claude Monet, Waterloo Bridge: the Sun in a Fog, 1903 Claude Monet, Waterloo Bridge: the Sun in a Fog, 1903 Camille Pissarro, Hay Harvest at Éragny, 1901 Camille Pissarro, Hay Harvest at Éragny, 1901 Sandro Botticelli, The Triumph of Mordecai, c. 1475 Sandro Botticelli, The Triumph of Mordecai, c. 1475 Hans Baldung, Eve, the Serpent, and Death, c. 1510–1515 Hans Baldung, Eve, the Serpent, and Death, c. 1510–1515 Titian, Daniele Barbaro, 1545k Titian, Daniele Barbaro, 1545k El Greco, St. Francis and Brother Leo Meditating on Death, c. 1600–1605 El Greco, St. Francis and Brother Leo Meditating on Death, c. 1600–1605 Prints and drawings collection Giorgio Vasari, Abraham and the Three Angels, c. 16th century Giorgio Vasari, Abraham and the Three Angels, c. 16th century Caspar David Friedrich, Boy Sleeping on a Grave, c. 1801–1803 Caspar David Friedrich, Boy Sleeping on a Grave, c. 1801–1803 Eugène Delacroix, The Barque of Dante, c. 1820 Eugène Delacroix, The Barque of Dante, c. 1820 Francisco Goya, Holy Week in Spain in Times Past, c. 1825 Francisco Goya, Holy Week in Spain in Times Past, c. 1825 Ford Madox Brown, Portrait of Emma Madox Brown, 1853 Ford Madox Brown, Portrait of Emma Madox Brown, 1853 John Everett Millais, Portrait of Effie Ruskin, c. 1853 John Everett Millais, Portrait of Effie Ruskin, c. 1853 Odilon Redon, The Raven, 1882 Odilon Redon, The Raven, 1882 Mary Cassatt, Woman Bathing, c. 1890–1891 Mary Cassatt, Woman
Jessie Oonark, OC RCA ( ᔨᐊᓯ ᐅᓈᖅ; 2 March 1906 – 7 March 1985)[1]: 5 was a prolific and influential Inuk artist of the Utkuhiksalingmiut Utkuhiksalingmiut whose wall hangings, prints and drawings are in major collections including the National Gallery of Canada. Early years She was born in 1906 in the Chantrey Inlet (Tariunnuaq) area,[2] near the estuary of the Back River in the Keewatin District of the Northwest Territories[3]: 4 (now Nunavut)—the traditional lands of the Utkuhiksalingmiut Utkukhalingmiut, Utkukhalingmiut (the people of the place where there is soapstone). Her artwork portrays aspects of the traditional hunter-nomadic life that she lived for over five decades, moving from fishing the camp near the mouth of Back River on Chantrey Inlet in the Honoraru[1]: 3 area to their caribou hunting camp in the Garry Lake area,[1]: 10 living in winter snow houses (igloos) and caribou skin tents in the summer.[4] Oonark learned early how to prepare skins and sew caribou skin clothing. They subsisted mainly on trout (lake trout and Arctic char), whitefish, and barren-ground caribou.[5] The knife used by women, the ulu, their traditional skin clothing, the kamik, the amauti were recurring themes in her work.[1] Oonark has had a major museum retrospective with accompanying scholarly monograph.[6] Despite a late start – she was 54 years old when her work was first published – she was an active and prolific artist over the next 19 years, creating a body of work that won critical acclaim and made her one of Canada's best known Inuit artists. Utkuhikhalingmiut She was a fluent speaker of Utkuhiksalik, a sub dialect of Natsilingmiutut spoken by Netsilik (Natsilik) within the Western Canadian Inuit dialect continuum.[7][8][9] Just as it was true for the art of other first-generation Inuit artists from that area—Luke Anguhadluk and Marion Tuu'luq—Utkuhiksalingmiut oral history and legends were strongly reflected in Jessie's artwork. In later years, in Baker Lake, they became a small minority, and fewer people could speak the language. Biography Jessie Oonark's parents were Qiliikvuq and Aghlquarq[3]: 4 (Aglaguaq).[1]: 10 Aglaguaq and his brothers hunted muskox.[1]: 10 Oonark's spent most of her time the in Chantrey Inlet where fish were abundant.[1]: 10 The Utkukhalingmiut had many taboos, one of which was the drawing of images. According to Marie Bouchard— a researcher, art historian, and community worker who lived in Baker Lake for many years— "Oonark's grandmother repeatedly warned her that images could come to life in the dark of night."[3]: 4 Oonark's mother married Qiqniikpak after the death of Oonark's father. Oonark lived with her mother.[1]: 10 The Danish explorer, Knud Rasmussen, crossed the Canadian Arctic by dogsled and visited the Jessie Oonark's camp when she was just a teenager during his Fifth Thule Expedition. Utkuhikhalingmiut represented the first white contact. In the 1980s, Mame Jackson taped Jessie Oonark's description of the encountered broadcast on CBC radio.[10] Oonark was married at a young age to Qabluunaq, (Kabloona, Kabloonak) the son of Naatak and Nanuqluq from Gjoa Haven.[1][3]: 4 Natak joined them in their hunting camp. Although Kabloona was "a good hunter and a respected fur trader", the family was often hungry.[3]: 4 Their oldest daughter remembers the periods of hunger. Oonark's mother-in-law, Naatak, would boil a caribou skin into a "broth" in an attempt to appease the hunger. Even in 2007, Baker Lake Inuit kept animal bones for marrow patek.[11]: 10 "My grandmother, Natak, was always cooking something. She used to cook caribou skins. She would take hair off the skin and cook it. We would drink the broth. My grandmother used to even cook wolf meat. That was how we survived." — Janet Kigusiuq to Marie Bouchard Their first daughter, Janet Kigusiuq, was born at Putuqsuqniq in the Back River area in 1926.[11]: 10 She had eleven more children including Joshuan Nuilaliq, Mamnguqsualuq, Victoria Mamnguqsualuq, Miriam Nanuqluq, Mary Yuusipik, Peggy Gabluunaq, Nancy Pukingnaq (born 1940–), William Noah, Isumataq, Qaqurialuq, Amarouk, and Makitgag.[1]: 10 In the 1940s, Oonark was assigned a disc number by the Canadian federal government— E2-384. In the 1940s, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) conducted a census of Inuit populations. They assigned the infamous identification numbering system using discs. These disc numbers were dropped during "Operation Surname" in the 1960s. In the 1950s there was a slump in the fox fur trade. Sometime around 1953 and 1954, Kabloonak and her four youngest children died of illness[3]: 4 in the Garry Lake area when William Noah was still a child and Nancy Pukingrnak was in her early teens and they were still dependent on her. Luke Anguhadluq, camp leader helped her at this time. Starvation The annual caribou migration shifted away from the area where they lived, leaving many Inuit to starve. The Back River Inuit, including Oonark and her family, had a hard time during the starvation period of the 1950s.[11]: 10 The winter of 1957–1958 was marked by a severe shortage of country food in the Back River area. Oonark and her daughter Nancy Pukingrnak were starving. William Noah walked from their camp to Baker Lake in March to seek help. They were airlifted by the Canadian armed forces to Baker Lake.[12] Baker Lake When Oonark first arrived in Baker Lake in 1958 she survived by "cleaning skins for her friend, Sandy Lunan, at the Hudson's Bay Company post, cooking meals, washing dishes and sewing traditional Arctic garments for local sale"[3]: 4 and eventually worked as janitor at the Anglican Church.[3]: 4 Baker Lake residents "derisively referred to the Back River people as qangmaliqs (the people who only come in to trade) and considered them to be socially backwards.[3]: 5 In the 1950s, because of a severe famine in the Keewatin District, many Inuit arrived in Baker Lake. A federal day school was opened at Baker Lake in 1957. Pre-fabricated subsidized government housing constructed from the mid-1950s. The Northern Services Officer—Doug Wilkinson— encouraged the development of the arts and crafts industry in Baker Lake. At that time the Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources (DIAND) established arts and crafts projects in Inuit hamlets as part of socioeconomic development (Goetz, 1985:43).[13]: 43 Bill Larmour was the DIAND arts and crafts officer in Baker Lake from 1961 to 1962. Artistic career In 1958, after observing school children drawing in Baker Lake, Oonark casually remarked to the school teacher that she could draw better than that.[3]: 4 The next summer in 1959, the teacher shared this comment with Canadian Wildlife Service biologist, Dr. Andrew Macpherson, who was in Baker Lake studying Arctic fox. Macpherson gave her coloured pencils and paper,[3]: 5 purchased her drawings and brought some of them to Ottawa.[14] Macpherson continued to send her coloured pencils and a drawing pad after his return to Ottawa in the late fall of 1959. In the spring of 1960 Oonark sent him twelve completed drawings in the sketchbook via the Northern Services Officer Tom Butlers.[3]: 5 [15]: 155 Edith Dodds, the wife of the Northern Service Officer, Sam Dodds, sent six of Oonark's drawings to James Archibald Houston at the West Baffin Co-operative in Cape Dorset. Two of her drawings—Inland Eskimo Woman/Eskimo Woman and Tattooed Faces— were made into single colour stone cut prints under the name of Una (Kazan River) at the newly established Cape Dorset print shop and included in the 1960 Cape Dorset print collection and catalogue. A print from her drawing "People of lnland” appeared in the 1961 Cape Dorset Print collection. It was the first and only time the Cape Dorset print shop included work from an Inuk outside Cape Dorset.[3]: 5 [16] In 1961, William Larmour, crafts officer with the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs established a federal government arts and crafts program with Jessie Oonark as one of their key artists.[3]: 5 In 1963 Gabriel Gely developed a printmaking program in Baker Lake.[3]: 5 Ten experimental prints were made in 1964 and two of them were based on Oonark's drawings—"Drum Dancer" (1964).[3]: 5 Boris Kotelewetz, the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs' arts and crafts officer, who arrived in Baker Lake in March 1966, provided Oonark with studio space and a salary.[3]: 5 In 1969, Jack and Sheila Butler were recruited as the new DIAND arts and crafts officers on the advice of George Swinton,[17] artist, academic, collector of Inuit art, author of the influential book entitled Sculpture of the Eskimo.[18] By the time they arrived Oonark was already an accomplished artist.[3]: 5 In that year she completed a large appliqué wall hanging which hangs in the Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly's Chamber in Yellowknife.[19] In 1970, the first Baker Lake Print Collection was released[20] and exhibited at the Art Gallery of Alberta. The stone cut print by Thomas Manik of Oonark's drawing entitled "Woman" (1970) was featured on the cover and her work was prominent in the exhibition.[3]: 5 [21][14] She continued to contribute images to the Baker Lake Print collections until 1985.[22] In 1970, the National Museum of Man in Ottawa organized a touring exhibition of 50 of Oonark's drawings and works by sculptor John Pangnark. It toured major galleries in Canada for eight months.[3]: 5 Later that year, Avrom Isaacs featured Inuit artists such as Oonark and Karoo Ashevak in solo exhibitions in 1970 in the Isaacs Innuit Gallery—in the gallery's opening year. Isaacs Innuit Gallery became one of Toronto's most prestigious galleries for over thirty years. It was Oonark's first solo exhibition and in 1971 Isaacs had an exhibition of Oonark's wall hangings.[3]: 5 The Baker Lake Sanavik Co-operative was incorporated in 1971. The print-makers who rendered Oonark's drawings into limited edition fine art prints included Thomas Sivuraq. The printing technique in Baker Lake included colour stonecuts, stencil and lithograph on Japanese wove paper. These include the chop for Oonark and Sanavik. In the same year, Oonark received a travel grant from the Canada Council of the Arts to travel to Toronto and Montreal for the opening of the exhibitions of her drawings. The Toronto wall hangings solo-exhibition took place in April at the Innuit Gallery of Eskimo Art. In Montreal, the exhibition was held at the Canadian Guild of Crafts.[15]: 155 Oonark's work illustrated a 1972 anthology of Inuit poetry from the circumpolar regions including Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Siberia 1972.[23] In the spring of 1972, Baker Lake print collection was released and it included five Oonark prints, two of which are based on small wall hangings. The stencil print, Young Woman, was featured on the cover of the catalogue. Later that year, an Oonark wall hanging was commissioned by the Ivey Business School, University of Western Ontario, was featured on the cover of their publication, The Business Quarterly. In May 1975, Oonark was elected a Member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Later that year, the Baker Lake print collection is released featuring 11 Oonark prints, a new record for the artist. By 1976, Oonark was well known in her community. That year, her work was featured on two stamps for the United Nations commemorating the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements. The first day of Issue was May 28, 1976. In 1984, she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 1986, the Winnipeg Art Gallery mounted a retrospective of her work with a major touring exhibition and catalogue both entitled Jessie Oonark: a Retrospective.[24][25] By 1987 Oonark already has had eleven solo exhibitions and more than fifty national and international group exhibitions.[3]: 5 In 1998, the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre presented a major exhibition with catalogue entitled Qamanittuaq (Where the River Widens): Drawings by Baker Lake Artists which including first-generation artist Jessie Oonark and the distinctive drawings of four of her children: Janet Kigusiuq, Victoria Mamnguqsualuk, Nancy Pukingrnak, and William Noah among many others.[12] In 1994, Bernadette Driscoll-Ellgelstad, curated the exhibition entitled Northern Lights: Inuit Textile Art from Arctic Canada which included wall hangings by Jessie Oonark and her daughters, Janet Kigusiuq, Victoria Mamnguqsllaluk, her relatives Ruth Qaulluaryuk and other women from the Back River area along with artists from Baker Lake.[26] On 18 November 2015, Oonark's 1969 wall hanging depicting a hunting scene, made of duffel, felt and embroidery floss, sold for $70,800, a new record for the Baker Lake artist. The wall hanging was one of 333 pieces of art up for sale, organized by Walker's Fine Art Auctions in Ottawa.[27] Style A strong, bold graphic sense informs all of Oonark's work. Traditional dress, women's facial tattoos, and shamanistic themes are common in her art, yet they usually appear as isolated, fragmentary forms, shaped into a graphically bold image rather than a comprehensible narrative. Oonark is also well known as a textile artist, whose wool and felt wall-hangings reveal her as a master of color and form. — Janet Catherine Berlo[28]: 420 Themes in her artwork Oonark's work includes visual puns and shape-shifting,[29] descriptive works depicting clothing, tools and cultural objects of importance to the Utkuhihalingmiut as well as images based on storytelling, legends and shamanism.[1][30] Visual puns or ambiguous images Mame Jackson, George Swinton and Jean Blodgett noted that Oonark's work reflects a high tolerance for ambiguity, a kind of double vision.[31]: 107 [32][33] For example, her work entitled "Two Fish Looking for Something to Eat" (1978), when viewed as a horizontal image, suggests two swimming fish-like creatures and depicts her version of the cannibal fish legend. When viewed vertically one figure resembles a standing woman whose face fills the amaut. Is she birthing or eating the small blue fish? The fish-figure wearing a man's parka seems to be kiss-touching rather than eating. Jessie Oonark, although familiar with oral traditions and legends, is never satisfied with a one-layered literal illustration. The horizontal print Two Fish Looking for Something to Eat depicts her version of the cannibal fish story but her double vision leaves room for ambiguity. The cannibal fish also appears in her print "Untitled (Yellow fish)" (1977). Jessie Oonark's verbal descriptions of her own work are often cryptic, "These are sea creatures, and they are sort of eating one another. There is a story, and that is it that one whole person along with a qayak was swallowed up by some giant fish or creature or whatever – somewhere near Gjoa Haven or Back River." — Oonark in Jackson 1983:39 Shamanism Oonark's father Aglaguaq and her grandfather were said to be shamans.[1]: 5 Aglaquarq used his shamanic powers infrequently but Oonark vividly remembered his helping spirit— Uupitanaisuak.[3]: 4 Aglaguaq had a daughter who is Oonark's stepsister, Kayuruq. When Janet Kigusiuk was still a baby, Anglican missionaries, Canon James and his Inuk assistant catechist Thomas Tapatai came to Oonark's hunting camp. She adopted the Anglican religion and they gave her a prayer book and a Bible. The arrival of Christian missionaries divided their small camp into two divisions—those who became Christian and those who held onto the old ways.[3]: 4 Oonark did not participate in drum dancing nor did she follow the ways of shamanism. However she continued to depict the drum dance and aspects of shamanism in her artwork such as Horned Spirits (1970), Shaman (1970) and The People Within (1970).[1]: 10 [1]: 10 [30] The colour stonecut and stencil print on laid Japanese paper printed by Thomas Sivuraq of a drawing by Jessie Oonark called "A Shaman's Helping Spirits" (1971), in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada depicts a horned shaman, with animal helping spirits and with a small spirit on his head. Oonark's father—Aglaquarq—used his shamanic powers infrequently but Oonark vividly remembered his helping spirit— Uupitanaisuak.[3]: 4 "It was small and wore a baby caribou-skin hat. They asked me if I wanted to have it. I saw it from a distance and it almost came near me, but I didn't want to have a spirit helper." — Jessie Oonark in Bouochard 1987 Drum Dance She no longer participated in the drum dance either but she depicted images of the drum dance for example in "Drum Dance" (1970).[1]: 14 Shape-shifting was a popular theme seen in Day Spirit (1970). Inuit storytelling Oonark's mother and father and her mother-in-law Naatak, (Natak)[11]: 10 were storytellers[11]: 10 and these stories are richly represented in Oonark's work, such as the 1970 print entitled "Dream of the Bird Woman",[1]: 14 [34]: 105 referring to the Kiviuq (Qiviuk), an Inuk who faced dangerous obstacles in his journeys by kayak, which was described by Franz Boas as the most widely known Inuit legend in the circumpolar region.[35] Clothing and tools The knife used by women, the ulu, their clothing, the amauti were recurring themes in her work.[1] People of the Inland (1961) depicts the Back River people.[1]: 14 One of her best known works is "Woman" (1970) described as,[36] "Geometry, abstraction, design and activated symmetry are all combined to bring out the very real image of a woman in her winter dress. The brilliant colours emphasize the contrasting shades of caribou skin, beautifully assembled to form a traditional design on the parka. With this print Oonark set a style for herself to which she has remained true – strong and explicit use of line, an intelligent positioning of mass and daring choice of colour." — Furneaux and Rosshandler 1974 Birds Bernadette Driscoll explained the presence of birds — in the drawing and print "Dream of the Bird Woman" and in Oonark's other artworks — demonstrated the "symbolic significance of the importance of birds as a symbol of flight and in several instances as a reference to shamanism as in "Angagkok Conjuring Birds (1979) but also as a harbinger of spring and itself a symbol of fecundity and rebirth."[37]: 16 Christianity Reverend Alan Whitton was the Anglican minister at Saint Aidan's Church, Baker Lake, from 1963 until 1972. During that time his wife Elizabeth Whitton, befriended Oonark. In 1966 Elizabeth organized a sewing projects with Oonark and others where they produced mittens, parkas, slippers, duffel socks as well as appliquéd images from scraps for sale. At Easter in 1968 Elizabeth Whitton asked Oonark to do drawings about their church for their local women's auxiliary magazine. Oonark's drawings included depictions of Reverend Whitton, catechist Thomas Tapatai, local Inuit parishioners including women with traditional Inuit tattoos and the church exterior.[38]: 201–2 Oonark continued to use these themes in later work, for example in her 1971–1972 wall hanging for Saint Jude's Cathedra1 in Iqaluit[38]: 202 and in a 1971–1972 wall hanging of wool and stroud in the permanent collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario.[38]: 205 Oonark described this wall-hanging,[1]: 26 [38]: 206 "I was more thinking of people on the journey and seeing different tribes of different people, sort of walking between the hills or mountains. Those two women on the way back corners have the latest clothes from the Cambridge Bay area, and then next to her is a young one. Every young person seems to have those kind of parkas with a long tail and sort of a straight cut." — Oonark interviewed by Mame Jackson 1983 In her 1984 essay entitled "Christianity and Inuit Art" and in the 1986 "Jessie Oonark, A Retrospective", Blodgett noted how Oonark blended traditional Inuit clothing and symbols with Christian motifs.[39][40]: 85 [38] Oonark's influence on Inuit art In the first generation of Inuit artists working in printmaking, Oonark, together with Pitseolak Ashoona and Kenojuak were recognized quickly as significant figures, receiving solo exhibitions, scholarly attention and professional awards.[6] Rosemary Tovell wrote in the catalogue entitled Baker Lake Prints 1985 that When Oonark died in 1985, the Canadian Eskimo Art Council (CEAC) were quoted as saying that they were pleased with the quality of her last prints and they recognized that "[W]ithout Oonark, Baker Lake as a centre for prints may never have happened. It was largely due to her enormous talent that the world's attention came to the community."[41] On September 4, 2016, the CBC released an article titled, "Inuit Art Centre to Reveal Beauty of the North in the South" discussing Winnipeg's $65-million centre that will house the world's largest collection of Inuit art. In it, they reference the important role printmaking played, especially for female artists like Oonark, Kenojuak Ashevak and Helen Kalvak, who gravitated towards visual arts, while men focused on stone-carving which required more physical strength.[42] All her children, Janet Kigusiuq, Victoria Mamnguqsualuq Kayuryuk, Josiah Nuilalik, Nancy Pukirniq, Miriam Qiyuq, Peggy, Mary Yussipik and William Noah are artists.[11]: 10 [1] Collections Oonark's work is in major collections including the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen's University, (Kingston, ON), American National Insurance Company, Amon Carter Museum of Western Art (Fort Worth, Texas), Amway Environmental Foundation Collection (Ada, Michigan), Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (Victoria, BC), Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (Halifax, NS), Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto,ON), Art Gallery of Windsor, Art Gallery of York University (Downsview, ON), Beaverbrook Art Gallery (Fredericton, NB), Canada Council Art Bank (Ottawa, ON), Canadian Catholic Conference Art Collection (Ottawa, ON), Canadian Guild of Crafts Quebec (Montreal, QC), Canadian Museum of Civilization (Hull, QC), Churchill Community Centre (Churchill, MB), Clifford E. Lee Collection (University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB), Collection of His Holiness John Paul II (Vatican City, Rome, Italy), Collection of the Supreme Patriarch of All Armenia, His Holiness, Catholicos Vazken I, Dennos Museum Center, Northwestern Michigan College (Traverse City, Michigan), Edmonton Art Gallery (Edmonton, AB), Glenbow Museum (Calgary, AB), Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology (Brown University, Bristol, Rhode Island), Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery (Kitchener, ON), Klamer Family Collection, Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, ON), Macdonald Stewart Art Centre (Guelph, ON), McMaster University Art Gallery (Hamilton, ON), McMichael Canadian Art Collection (Kleinburg, ON) Mendel Art Gallery, (Saskatoon, SK), Museé des beaux-arts de Montreal (Montreal, QC), Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia (Vancouver, BC), National Arts Centre (Ottawa, ON), National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, ON), New Brunswick Museum (Saint John, NB), Owens Art Gallery, Mount Allison University (Sackville, NB), Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre (Yellowknife, NT), Shell Canada Collection (Calgary, AB), Simon Fraser Gallery, Simon Fraser University (Burnaby, BC), University of Alberta (Edmonton, AB), University of Lethbridge Art Gallery (Lethbridge, AB), Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies (Banff, AB) and the Winnipeg Art Gallery (Winnipeg, MB)[19] and the Hermon Collection of Native American Art at the University of Delaware Art Gallery.[43] Her untitled wall hanging (1973), one of her largest art works, is in the main lobby (foyer) of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.[44] Later life Oonark began to experience numbness in her hands and feet and in 1979, when a surgical intervention failed to check the symptoms, she lost much of her manual dexterity and produced only a few more pieces afterwards.[3]: 5 Her career had lasted roughly 19 years, but its impact on Inuit art – and on the perception of Inuit art in the larger world – is considerable. She died March 7, 1985, in Churchill, Manitoba.[2] and is buried on Blueberry Hill in Baker Lake.[3]: 5 [45] See also Notable Aboriginal people of Canada Inuit (/ˈɪnjuɪt/ IN-ew-it;[5] Inuktitut: ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, ᐃᓄᒃ, dual: Inuuk, ᐃᓅᒃ; Iñupiaq: Iñuit 'the people'; Greenlandic: Inuit)[6][7][8] are a group of culturally and historically similar circumpolar peoples traditionally inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of North America, including Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, Yukon (traditionally[a]), Alaska, and Chukotsky District of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia. Inuit languages are part of the Eskimo–Aleut languages, also known as Inuit-Yupik-Unangan, and also as Eskaleut.[9] Inuit Sign Language is a critically endangered language isolate used in Nunavut.[10] Canadian Inuit live throughout most of Northern Canada in the territory of Nunavut, Nunavik in the northern third of Quebec, Nunatsiavut and NunatuKavut in Labrador, and in various parts of the Northwest Territories and Yukon (traditionally), particularly around the Arctic Ocean, in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region.[a] These areas are known, primarily by Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, as Inuit Nunangat.[11][12] In Canada, sections 25 and 35 of the Constitution Act of 1982 classify Inuit as a distinctive group of Aboriginal Canadians who are not included under either the First Nations or the Métis.[13][14] Greenlandic Inuit, also known as Kalaallit, are descendants of Thule migrations from Canada by 1100 CE.[15] Although Greenland withdrew from the European Communities in 1985, Inuit of Greenland are Danish citizens and, as such, remain citizens of the European Union.[16][17][18] In the United States, the Alaskan Iñupiat are traditionally located in the Northwest Arctic Borough, on the Alaska North Slope, the Bering Strait and on Little Diomede Island. In Russia, few pockets of diaspora communities of Russian Iñupiat from Big Diomede Island, of which inhabitants were removed to Russian Mainland, remain in Bering Strait coast of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, particularly in Uelen, Lavrentiya, and Lorino. Many individuals who would have historically been referred to as Eskimo find that term offensive or forced upon them in a colonial way; Inuit is now a common autonym for a large sub-group of these people.[19][20][21][22] The word Inuit (varying forms Iñupiat, Inuvialuit, Inughuit, etc.), however, is an ancient self-referential to a group of peoples which includes at most the Iñupiat of Bering Strait coast of Chukotka and northern Alaska, the four broad groups of Inuit in Canada, and the Greenlandic Inuit. This usage has long been employed to the exclusion of other, closely related groups (e.g. Yupik, Aleut).[23][24][25][26] Therefore, the Aleut (Unangan) and Yupik peoples (Alutiiq/Sugpiaq, Central Yup'ik, Siberian Yupik), who live in Alaska and Siberia, at least at an individual and local level, generally do not self-identify as Inuit.[23][better source needed] History Pre-contact history For earlier pre-contact history, see Indigenous peoples in Canada § Paleo-Indians period. Dorset, Norse, and Thule cultures 900–1500 Inuit are the descendants of what anthropologists call the Thule people,[27] who emerged from the Bering Strait and western Alaska around 1000 CE. They had split from the related Aleut group about 4000 years ago and from northeastern Siberian migrants. They spread eastward across the Arctic.[28] They displaced the related Dorset culture, called the Tuniit in Inuktitut, which was the last major Paleo-Eskimo culture.[29] Inuit legends speak of the Tuniit as "giants", people who were taller and stronger than Inuit.[30] Less frequently, the legends refer to the Dorset as "dwarfs".[31] Researchers believe that Inuit society had advantages by having adapted to using dogs as transport animals, and developing larger weapons and other technologies superior to those of the Dorset culture.[32] By 1100 CE, Inuit migrants had reached west Greenland, where they settled.[15] During the 12th century, they also settled in East Greenland.[33][34] Faced with population pressures from the Thule and other surrounding groups, such as the Algonquian and Siouan-speaking peoples to the south, the Tuniit gradually receded.[35] The Tuniit were thought to have become completely extinct as a people by about 1400 or 1500. But, in the mid-1950s, researcher Henry B. Collins determined that based on the ruins found at Native Point, on Southampton Island, the Sadlermiut were likely the last remnants of the Dorset culture, or Tuniit.[36] The Sadlermiut population survived up until winter 1902–1903 when exposure to new infectious diseases brought by contact with Europeans led to their extinction as a people.[37] In the early 21st century, mitochondrial DNA research has supported the theory of continuity between the Tuniit and the Sadlermiut peoples.[38][39] It also provided evidence that a population displacement did not occur within the Aleutian Islands between the Dorset and Thule transition.[40] However a subsequent 2012 genetic analysis showed no genetic link between the Sadlermiut and the Dorset or Tuniit people.[41] In contrast to other Tuniit populations, the Aleut and Sadlermiut benefited from both geographical isolation and their ability to adopt certain Thule technologies.[citation needed] In Canada and Greenland, Inuit circulated almost exclusively north of the Arctic tree line, the effective southern border of Inuit society. The most southern "officially recognized" Inuit community in the world is Rigolet[42] in Nunatsiavut. South of Nunatsiavut, the descendants of the southern Labrador Inuit in NunatuKavut continued their traditional transhumant semi-nomadic way of life until the mid-1900s. The Nunatukavummuit people usually moved among islands and bays on a seasonal basis. They did not establish stationary communities. In other areas south of the tree line, non-Inuit Indigenous cultures were well established. The culture and technology of Inuit society that served so well in the Arctic were not suited to subarctic regions, so they did not displace their southern neighbors. As a result, being challenged by the groups below the tree line including Chukchi and Siberian Yupik for Russian Iñupiat, Arctic Athabascan and Gwichʼin for Alaskan Iñupiat and Inuvialuit, Cree for Nunavummiut (Nunavut Inuit) and Nunavimmiut (Northern Quebec Inuit), and Innu for Nunatsiavummiut (Labrador Inuit), Inuit did not make significant progress further south. Inuit had trade relations with more southern cultures; boundary disputes were common and gave rise to aggressive actions. Warfare was not uncommon among those Inuit groups with sufficient population density. Inuit such as the Nunamiut (Uummarmiut), who inhabited the Mackenzie River delta area, often engaged in warfare. The more sparsely settled Inuit in the Central Arctic, however, did so less often. Their first European contact was with the Vikings who had settled in Greenland centuries prior. The sagas recorded meeting skrælingar, probably an undifferentiated label for all the Indigenous peoples whom the Norse encountered, whether Tuniit, Inuit, or Beothuk.[43] After about 1350, the climate grew colder during the period known as the Little Ice Age. During this period, Russian and Alaskan natives were able to continue their whaling activities. But, in the high Arctic, Inuit were forced to abandon their hunting and whaling sites as bowhead whales disappeared from Canada and Greenland.[44] These Inuit had to subsist on a much poorer diet, and lost access to the essential raw materials for their tools and architecture which they had previously derived from whaling.[44] The changing climate forced Inuit to work their way south, pushing them into marginal niches along the edges of the tree line. These were areas First Nations had not occupied or where they were weak enough for Inuit to live near them. Researchers have difficulty defining when Inuit stopped this territorial expansion. There is evidence that Inuit were still moving into new territory in southern Labrador when they first began to interact with European colonists in the 17th century.[citation needed] Post-contact history A European ship coming into contact with Inuit in the ice of Hudson Bay in 1697 Canada Early contact with Europeans The lives of Paleo-Eskimos of the far north were largely unaffected by the arrival of visiting Norsemen except for mutual trade.[45] The Labrador Inuit have had the longest continuous contact with Europeans.[46] After the disappearance of the Norse colonies in Greenland, Inuit had no contact with Europeans for at least a century. By the mid-16th century, Basque whalers and fishermen were already working the Labrador coast and had established whaling stations on land, such as the one that has been excavated at Red Bay, Labrador.[47][48] Inuit do not appear to have interfered with their operations, but raided the stations in winter, taking tools and items made of worked iron, which they adapted to their own needs. An anonymous 1578 illustration believed to show Kalicho (left), and Arnaq and Nutaaq (right) Martin Frobisher's 1576 search for the Northwest Passage was the first well-documented contact between Europeans and Inuit. Frobisher's expedition landed in Frobisher Bay, Baffin Island, not far from the settlement now called Iqaluit. Frobisher encountered Inuit on Resolution Island where five sailors left the ship, under orders from Frobisher, with instructions to stay clear of Inuit. They became part of Inuit mythology. Inuit oral tradition tells that the men lived among them for a few years of their own free will until they died attempting to leave Baffin Island in a self-made boat and vanished.[49] Frobisher, in an attempt to find the men, captured three Inuit and brought them back to England. They were possibly the first Inuit ever to visit Europe.[50] The semi-nomadic Inuit were fishermen and hunters harvesting lakes, seas, ice platforms, and tundra. While there are some allegations that Inuit were hostile to early French and English explorers, fishermen, and whalers, more recent research suggests that the early relations with whaling stations along the Labrador coast and later James Bay were based on a mutual interest in trade.[51] In the final years of the 18th century, the Moravian Church began missionary activities in Labrador, supported by the British[52] who were tired of the raids on their whaling stations. The Moravian missionaries could easily provide Inuit with the iron and basic materials they had been stealing from whaling outposts, materials whose real cost to Europeans was almost nothing, but whose value to Inuit was enormous. From then on, contacts between the national groups in Labrador were far more peaceful. The Hudson's Bay Company ships Prince of Wales and Eddystone with Inuit boats off the Upper Savage Islands, Hudson Strait, Canada Hudson's Bay Company Ships bartering with Inuit off the Upper Savage Islands, Hudson Strait, 1819 The exchanges that accompanied the arrival and colonization by the Europeans greatly damaged Inuit way of life. Mass death was caused by the new infectious diseases carried by whalers and explorers, to which the Indigenous peoples had no acquired immunity. The high mortality rate contributed to the enormous social disruptions caused by the distorting effect of Europeans' material wealth and the introduction of different materials. Nonetheless, Inuit society in the higher latitudes largely remained in isolation during the 19th century. The Hudson's Bay Company opened trading posts such as Great Whale River (1820), today the site of the twin villages of Whapmagoostui (Cree-majority) and Kuujjuarapik (Inuit-majority), where whale products of the commercial whale hunt were processed and furs traded. The expedition of 1821–23 to the Northwest Passage led by Commander William Edward Parry twice over-wintered in Foxe Basin.[53] It provided the first informed, sympathetic and well-documented account of the economic, social and religious life of Inuit. Parry stayed in what is now Igloolik over the second winter. Parry's writings, with pen and ink illustrations of Inuit everyday life, and those of George Francis Lyon were widely read after they were both published in 1824.[54] Captain George Comer's Inuk wife Shoofly, known for her sewing skills and elegant attire,[55] was influential in convincing him to acquire more sewing accessories and beads for trade with Inuit. Early 20th century During the early 20th century a few traders and missionaries circulated among the more accessible bands. After 1904, they were accompanied by a handful of North-West Mounted Police (NWMP). Unlike most Aboriginal peoples in Canada, however, Inuit did not occupy lands that were coveted by European settlers. Used to more temperate climates and conditions, most Europeans considered the homeland of Inuit to be hostile hinterland. Southerners enjoyed lucrative careers as bureaucrats and service providers to the people of the North, but very few ever chose to visit there. Once its more hospitable lands were largely settled, the government of Canada and entrepreneurs began to take a greater interest in its more peripheral territories, especially the fur and mineral-rich hinterlands. By the late 1920s, there were no longer any Inuit who had not been contacted by traders, missionaries or government agents. In 1939, the Supreme Court of Canada found, in a decision known as Re Eskimos, that Inuit should be considered Indians and were thus under the jurisdiction of the federal government. Native customs were worn down by the actions of the RCMP, who enforced Canadian criminal law on Inuit. People such as Kikkik often did not understand the rules of the alien society with which they had to interact. In addition, the generally Protestant missionaries of the British preached a moral code very different from the one Inuit had as part of their tradition. Many Inuit were systematically converted to Christianity in the 19th and 20th centuries, through rituals such as the Siqqitiq. The Second World War to the 1960s World War II and the Cold War made Arctic Canada strategically important to the great powers for the first time. Thanks to the development of modern long-distance aircraft, these areas became accessible year-round. The construction of air bases and the Distant Early Warning Line in the 1940s and 1950s brought more intensive contact with European society, particularly in the form of public education for children. The traditionalists complained that Canadian education promoted foreign values that were disdainful of the traditional structure and culture of Inuit society.[56] In the 1950s, the Government of Canada undertook what was called the High Arctic relocation for several reasons. These were to include protecting Canada's sovereignty in the Arctic, alleviating hunger (as the area currently occupied had been over-hunted), and attempting to solve the "Eskimo problem", by seeking assimilation of the people and the end of their traditional Inuit culture. One of the more notable relocations was undertaken in 1953, when 17 families were moved from Port Harrison (now Inukjuak, Quebec) to Resolute and Grise Fiord.[57] They were dropped off in early September when winter had already arrived. The land they were sent to was very different from that in the Inukjuak area; it was barren, with only a couple of months when the temperature rose above freezing, and several months of polar night. The families were told by the RCMP they would be able to return to their home territory within two years if conditions were not right. However, two years later more Inuit families were relocated to the High Arctic. Thirty years passed before they were able to visit Inukjuak.[58][59][60][61] By 1953, Canada's prime minister Louis St. Laurent publicly admitted, "Apparently we have administered the vast territories of the north in an almost continuing absence of mind."[62][63] The government began to establish about forty permanent administrative centers to provide education, health, and economic development services.[63] Inuit from hundreds of smaller camps scattered across the north began to congregate in these hamlets.[64] Regular visits from doctors and access to modern medical care raised the birth rate and decreased the death rate, causing a marked natural increase in the population that made it more difficult for them to survive by traditional means. In the 1950s, the Canadian government began to actively settle Inuit into permanent villages and cities, occasionally against their will (such as in Nuntak and Hebron). In 2005 the Canadian government acknowledged the abuses inherent in these forced resettlements.[65] By the mid-1960s, encouraged first by missionaries, then by the prospect of paid jobs and government services, and finally forced by hunger and required by the police, most Canadian Inuit lived year-round in permanent settlements. The nomadic migrations that were the central feature of Arctic life had become a much smaller part of life in the North. Inuit, a once self-sufficient people in an extremely harsh environment were, in the span of perhaps two generations, transformed into a small, impoverished minority, lacking skills or resources to sell to the larger economy, but increasingly dependent on it for survival. Although anthropologists like Diamond Jenness (1964) were quick to predict that Inuit culture was facing extinction, Inuit political activism was already emerging. Cultural renewal In the 1960s, the Canadian government funded the establishment of secular, government-operated high schools in the Northwest Territories (including what is now Nunavut) and Inuit areas in Quebec and Labrador along with the residential school system. Inuit population was not large enough to support a full high school in every community, so this meant only a few schools were built, and students from across the territories were boarded there. These schools, in Aklavik, Iqaluit, Yellowknife, Inuvik and Kuujjuaq, brought together young Inuit from across the Arctic in one place for the first time and exposed them to the rhetoric of civil and human rights that prevailed in Canada in the 1960s. This was a real wake-up call for Inuit, and it stimulated the emergence of a new generation of young Inuit activists in the late 1960s who came forward and pushed for respect for Inuit and their territories. Inuit began to emerge as a political force in the late 1960s and early 1970s, shortly after the first graduates returned home. They formed new politically active associations in the early 1970s, starting with the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada (Inuit Brotherhood and today known as Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami), an outgrowth of the Indian and Eskimo Association of the '60s, in 1971, and more region-specific organizations shortly afterward, including the Committee for the Original People's Entitlement (representing the Inuvialuit),[66] the Northern Quebec Inuit Association (Makivik Corporation) and the Labrador Inuit Association (LIA) representing Northern Labrador Inuit. Since the mid-1980s the Southern Labrador Inuit of NunatuKavut began organizing politically after being geographically cut out of the LIA, however, for political expediency the organization was erroneously called the Labrador Métis Nation. These various activist movements began to change the direction of Inuit society in 1975 with the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement. This comprehensive land claims settlement for Quebec Inuit, along with a large cash settlement and substantial administrative autonomy in the new region of Nunavik, set the precedent for the settlements to follow. The northern Labrador Inuit submitted their land claim in 1977, although they had to wait until 2005 to have a signed land settlement establishing Nunatsiavut. Southern Labrador Inuit of NunatuKavut is currently in the process of establishing land claims and title rights that would allow them to negotiate with the Newfoundland Government. Canada's 1982 Constitution Act recognized Inuit as Aboriginal peoples in Canada.[14] In the same year, the Tunngavik Federation of Nunavut (TFN) was incorporated, in order to take over negotiations for land claims on behalf of Inuit living in the eastern Northwest Territories, that would later become Nunavut, from Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, which became a joint association of Inuit of Quebec, Labrador, and the Northwest Territories. Inuit cabinet members at the federal level On October 30, 2008, Leona Aglukkaq was appointed as Minister of Health, "[becoming] the first Inuk to hold a senior cabinet position, although she is not the first Inuk to be in cabinet altogether."[67] Jack Anawak and Nancy Karetak-Lindell were both parliamentary secretaries respectively from 1993 to 1996 and in 2003. Nomenclature See also: Eskimo § Nomenclature The term Eskimo is still used by people,[19][68][69] but in the 21st century, usage in North America has declined.[20][21] In the United States the term Eskimo was, as of 2016, commonly[19] used to describe Inuit and the Siberian and Alaskan Yupik, and Iñupiat peoples. Eskimo is still used by some groups and organizations to encompass Inuit and Yupik, as well as other Indigenous Alaskan and Siberian peoples.[68][69] In 2011, Lawrence Kaplan of the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks wrote that Inuit was not generally accepted as a term for the Yupik, and Eskimo was often used as the term that applied to the Yupik, Iñupiat, and Inuit.[70] Since then Kaplan has updated this to indicate that the term Inuit has gained acceptance in Alaska.[20] Though there is much debate, the word Eskimo likely derives from a Innu-aimun (Montagnais)[71][72][73] exonym meaning 'a person who laces a snowshoe',[22][26][71][74] but is also used in folk etymology as meaning 'eater of raw meat' in the Cree language.[75] Though the Cree etymology has been discredited, "Eskimo" is considered pejorative by some Canadian and English-speaking Greenlandic Inuit.[75][76][77][78] In Canada and Greenland, Inuit is preferred. Inuit is the Eastern Canadian Inuit (Inuktitut) and West Greenlandic (Kalaallisut) word for 'the people'.[6] Since Inuktitut and Kalaallisut are the prestige dialects in Canada and Greenland, respectively, their version has become dominant, although every Inuit dialect uses cognates from the Proto-Eskimo *ińuɣ – for example, "people" is inughuit in North Greenlandic and iivit in East Greenlandic. In Alaska, though there has been criticism against Eskimo, it is still commonly used in daily conversation to this day. However, as an alternative word, more specific word describing Alaskan Inuit such as Inupiaq or Inupiaq-Eskimo has been gaining more acceptance as well to distinct themselves from Yup'ik or Unangax.[citation needed] Cultural history Main article: Inuit culture Languages Main article: Inuit languages Inuktitut dialect map with labels in Inuktitut inuujingajut or local Roman alphabet Distribution of Inuit dialects Inuit speak Inupiaq (Inupiatun), Inuinnaqtun,[79] Inuktitut,[80] Inuvialuktun, and Greenlandic languages,[81] which belong to the Inuit-Inupiaq branch of the Inuit-Yupik-Unangan language family.[23] Inupiaq (Inupiatun) is spoken in Russia (extinct) and Alaska, which is one of the 22 official languages of the State of Alaska. In Russia, due to the replacement from their traditional territory in Big Diomede Island to Mainland Russia, Inupiaq language has been nearly extinct with most of them speaking Central Siberian Yupik or Russian predominantly with some Inupiaq linguistic features. In Canada, three Inuit languages (Inuvialuktun, Inuinnaqtun, Inuktitut) are spoken. Inuvialuktun is spoken in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, Northwest Territories, with official language status from the territorial government. Inuinnaqtun is spoken across the Northwest Territories and the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut with official language status from both territories. Inuktitut, the most widely spoken Inuit language in Canada, however, is an official, and one of two main languages, alongside with English, of Nunavut and has its speakers throughout Nunavut, Nunavik (Northern Quebec), Nunatsiavut (Labrador), and the Northwest Territories, where it is also an official language.[82][83][84][85][86][87] Kalaallisut is the official language of Greenland.[88] The Greenlandic languages are divided into: Kalaallisut (Western), Inuktun (Northern), and Tunumiit (Eastern). As Inuktitut was the language of the Eastern Canadian Inuit[80] and Kalaallisut is the language of the Western Greenlandic Inuit,[81] they are related more closely than most other dialects.[89] Inuit in Alaska and Northern Canada also typically speak English.[90] In Greenland, Inuit also speak Danish and learn English in school. Inuit in Russia mostly speak Russian and Central Siberian Yupik. Canadian Inuit, particularly those from Nunavik, may also speak Québécois French. Finally, deaf Inuit use Inuit Sign Language, which is a language isolate and is almost extinct as only around 50 people still use it.[91] Diet Main article: Inuit diet Inuit have traditionally been fishermen and hunters. They still hunt whales (esp. bowhead whale), seal, (esp. ringed seal, harp seal, common seal, bearded seal), polar bears, muskoxen, caribou, birds, and fish and at times other less commonly eaten animals such as the Arctic fox. The typical Inuit diet is high in protein and very high in fat – in their traditional diets, Inuit consumed an average of 75 per cent of their daily energy intake from fat.[92] While it is not possible to cultivate plants for food in the Arctic, Inuit have traditionally gathered those that are naturally available. Grasses, tubers, roots, Plant stems, berries, and seaweed (kuanniq or edible seaweed) were collected and preserved depending on the season and the location.[93][94][95][96] There is a vast array of different hunting technologies that Inuit used to gather their food. In the 1920s, anthropologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson lived with and studied a group of Inuit.[97] The study focused on Stefansson's observation that Inuit's low-carbohydrate diet apparently had no adverse effects on their health, nor indeed, on his own health. Stefansson (1946) also observed that Inuit were able to get the necessary vitamins they needed from their traditional winter diet, which did not contain any plant matter. In particular, he found that adequate vitamin C could be obtained from items in their traditional diet of raw meat such as ringed seal liver and whale skin (muktuk). While there was considerable skepticism when he reported these findings, the initial anecdotal reports were reaffirmed both in the 1970s,[98] and more recently.[99][100] Modern Inuit have lifespans 12 to 15 years shorter than the average Canadian's, which is thought to be influenced by factors such as their diet[101] and limited access to medical services.[102] The life expectancy gap is not closing and remains stagnant.[102][103][104] Tattoos Main article: Kakiniit The ancient art of face tattooing among Inuit women, which is called kakiniit or tunniit in Inuktitut, dates back nearly 4,000 years. The facial tattoos detailed aspects of the women's lives, such as where they were from, who their family was, their life achievements, and their position in the community.[105] When Catholic missionaries arrived in the area in the early 20th century[106] they outlawed the practice,[citation needed] but it is now making a comeback thanks to some modern Inuit women who want to honor the practices of their ancestors and get in touch with their cultural roots.[107] The traditional method of tattooing was done with needles made of sinew or bone soaked in suet and sewn into the skin, but today they use ink.[105] The Inuit Tattoo Revitalization Project is a community that was created to highlight the revitalization of this ancient tradition.[108][109][110] Transport, navigation, and dogs See also: Inuit navigation Photograph of an Inuit man seated in a kayak, holding a paddle Inupiat man in a kayak, Noatak, Alaska, c. 1929 (photo by Edward S. Curtis) Urbanization in Greenland Inuit hunted sea animals from single-passenger, seal-skin covered boats called qajaq (Inuktitut syllabics: ᖃᔭᖅ)[111] which were extraordinarily buoyant, and could be righted by a seated person, even if completely overturned. Because of this property, the design was copied by Europeans and Americans who still produce them under Inuit name kayak. Covered Inuit basket, Alaska, undated Inuit also made umiaq ("woman's boat"), larger open boats made of wood frames covered with animal skins, for transporting people, goods, and dogs. They were 6–12 m (20–39 ft) long and had a flat bottom so that the boats could come close to shore. In the winter, Inuit would also hunt sea mammals by patiently watching an aglu (breathing hole) in the ice and waiting for the air-breathing seals to use them. This technique is also used by the polar bear, who hunts by seeking holes in the ice and waiting nearby. In winter, both on land and on sea ice, Inuit used dog sleds (qamutik) for transportation. The husky dog breed comes from the Siberian Husky. These dogs were bred from wolves, for transportation. A team of dogs in either a tandem/side-by-side or fan formation would pull a sled made of wood, animal bones, or the baleen from a whale's mouth and even frozen fish,[112] over the snow and ice. Inuit used stars to navigate at sea and landmarks to navigate on land; they possessed a comprehensive native system of toponymy. Where natural landmarks were insufficient, Inuit would erect an inukshuk. Also, Greenland Inuit created Ammassalik wooden maps, which are tactile devices that represent the coastline. Dogs played an integral role in the annual routine of Inuit. During the summer they became pack animals, sometimes dragging up to 20 kg (44 lb) of baggage and in the winter they pulled the sled. Yearlong they assisted with hunting by sniffing out seals' holes and pestering polar bears. They also protected Inuit villages by barking at bears and strangers. Inuit generally favoured, and tried to breed, the most striking and handsome of dogs, especially ones with bright eyes and healthy coats. Common husky dog breeds used by Inuit were the Canadian Eskimo Dog, the official animal of Nunavut,[113] (Qimmiq; Inuktitut for dog), the Greenland Dog, the Siberian Husky and the Alaskan Malamute. Industry, art, and clothing Main articles: Inuit art and Inuit clothing Caribou skin amauti from Nunavut Kalaallit girl's clothing from Western Greenland Inuit industry relied almost exclusively on animal hides, driftwood, and bones, although some tools were also made out of worked stones, particularly the readily worked soapstone. Walrus ivory was a particularly essential material, used to make knives. Art played a big part in Inuit society and continues to do so today. Small sculptures of animals and human figures, usually depicting everyday activities such as hunting and whaling, were carved from ivory and bone. In modern times prints and figurative works carved in relatively soft stone such as soapstone, serpentinite, or argillite have also become popular. Traditional Inuit clothing and footwear is made from animal skins, sewn together using needles made from animal bones and threads made from other animal products, such as sinew. The anorak (parka) is made in a similar fashion by Arctic peoples from Europe through Asia and the Americas, including Inuit. The back part of an amauti (women's parka) was traditionally made extra-large with a separate compartment below the hood to allow the mother to carry a baby against her back and protect it from the harsh wind.[114] Styles vary from region to region, from the shape of the hood to the length of the tails. Boots (mukluk[115] or kamik[116]), could be made of caribou or seal skin, and designed for men and women. Group of Inuit building an igloo During the winter, certain Inuit lived in a temporary shelter made from snow called an igloo, and during the few months of the year when temperatures were above freezing, they lived in tents, known as tupiq,[114] made of animal skins supported by a frame of bones or wood.[117][118] Some, such as the Siglit, used driftwood,[119] while others built sod houses.[120] Inuit also used the Cape York Meteorite as a primary resource of Iron, using a technique called cold forging, which consisted in slicing a piece of the meteorite and giving it shape by smashing it with rocks until getting the desired shape, for example, tools for fishing. They used this meteorite for centuries until Robert E. Peary sold it to the American Natural History Museum in 1883.[121] Gender roles, marriage, birth, and community See also: Eskimo kinship and Inuit women Inupiat woman, Alaska, circa 1907 The division of labor in traditional Inuit society had a strong gender component, but it was not absolute. The men were traditionally hunters and fishermen, and the women took care of the children, cleaned the home, sewed, processed food, and cooked. However, there are numerous examples of women who hunted, out of necessity or as a personal choice. At the same time, men, who could be away from camp for several days at a time, would be expected to know how to sew and cook.[122] The marital customs among Inuit were not strictly monogamous: many Inuit relationships were implicitly or explicitly sexual. Open marriages, polygamy, divorce, and remarriage were known. Among some Inuit groups, if there were children, divorce required the approval of the community and particularly the agreement of the elders. Marriages were often arranged, sometimes in infancy, and occasionally forced on the couple by the community.[123] An Inupiat family from Noatak, Alaska, 1929 Marriage was common for women at puberty and for men when they became productive hunters. Family structure was flexible: a household might consist of a husband and wife (or wives) and children; it might include his parents or his wife's parents as well as adopted children; it might be a larger formation of several siblings with their parents, wives, and children; or even more than one family sharing dwellings and resources. Every household had its head, either an elder or a particularly respected man.[124] There was also a larger notion of community as, generally, several families shared a place where they wintered. Goods were shared within a household, and also, to a significant extent, within a whole community. Inuit were hunter–gatherers,[125] and have been referred to as nomadic.[126] One of the customs following the birth of an infant was for an Angakkuq (shaman) to place a tiny ivory carving of a whale into the baby's mouth, in hopes this would make the child good at hunting. Loud singing and drumming were also customary at birth.[127] Raiding Virtually all Inuit cultures have oral traditions of raids by other Indigenous peoples, including fellow Inuit, and of taking vengeance on them in return, such as the Bloody Falls massacre. Western observers often regarded these tales as generally not entirely accurate historical accounts, but more as self-serving myths. However, evidence shows that Inuit cultures had quite accurate methods of teaching historical accounts to each new generation.[128] In northern Canada, historically there were ethnic feuds between the Dene and Inuit, as witnessed by Samuel Hearne in 1771.[129] In 1996, Dene and Inuit representatives participated in a healing ceremony to reconcile the centuries-old grievances.[130] The historic accounts of violence against outsiders make it clear that there was a history of hostile contact within Inuit cultures and with other cultures.[131] It also makes it clear that Inuit nations existed through history, as well as confederations of such nations. The known confederations were usually formed to defend against a more prosperous, and thus stronger, nation. Alternately, people who lived in less productive geographical areas tended to be less warlike, as they had to spend more time producing food. Justice within Inuit culture was moderated by the form of governance that gave significant power to the elders. As in most cultures around the world, justice could be harsh and often included capital punishment for serious crimes against the community or the individual. During raids against other peoples, Inuit, like their non-Inuit neighbors, tended to be merciless.[132] Suicide, murder, and death Further information: Suicide in Greenland and Suicide among Canadian aboriginal people A pervasive European myth about Inuit is that they killed elderly (senicide) and "unproductive people",[133] but this is not generally true.[134][135][136] In a culture with an oral history, elders are the keepers of communal knowledge, effectively the community library.[137] Because they are of extreme value as the repository of knowledge, there are cultural taboos against sacrificing elders.[138][139] In Antoon A. Leenaars' book Suicide in Canada he states that "Rasmussen found that the death of elders by suicide was a commonplace among the Iglulik Inuit".[140] According to Franz Boas, suicide was "not of rare occurrence" and was generally accomplished through hanging.[141] Writing of the Labrador Inuit, Hawkes (1916) was considerably more explicit on the subject of suicide and the burden of the elderly: Aged people who have outlived their usefulness and whose life is a burden both to themselves and their relatives are put to death by stabbing or strangulation. This is customarily done at the request of the individual concerned, but not always so. Aged people who are a hindrance on the trail are abandoned. — Leenaars et al., Suicide in Canada[142] When food is not sufficient, the elderly are the least likely to survive. In the extreme case of famine, Inuit fully understood that, if there was to be any hope of obtaining more food, a hunter was necessarily the one to feed on whatever food was left. However, a common response to desperate conditions and the threat of starvation was infanticide.[143][144] A mother abandoned an infant in hopes that someone less desperate might find and adopt the child before the cold or animals killed it. The belief that Inuit regularly resorted to infanticide may be due in part to studies done by Asen Balikci,[145] Milton Freeman[146] and David Riches[147] among the Netsilik, along with the trial of Kikkik.[148][149] Other recent research has noted that "While there is little disagreement that there were examples of infanticide in Inuit communities, it is presently not known the depth and breadth of these incidents. The research is neither complete nor conclusive to allow for a determination of whether infanticide was a rare or a widely practiced event."[150] There is no agreement about the actual estimates of the frequency of newborn female infanticide in Inuit population. Carmel Schrire mentions diverse studies ranging from 15–50 per cent to 80 per cent.[151] Anthropologists believed that Inuit cultures routinely killed children born with physical defects because of the demands of the extreme climate. These views were changed by late 20th century discoveries of burials at an archaeological site. Between 1982 and 1994, a storm with high winds caused ocean waves to erode part of the bluffs near Barrow, Alaska, and a body was discovered to have been washed out of the mud. Unfortunately, the storm claimed the body, which was not recovered. But examination of the eroded bank indicated that an ancient house, perhaps with other remains, was likely to be claimed by the next storm. The site, known as the "Ukkuqsi archaeological site", was excavated. Several frozen bodies (now known as the "frozen family") were recovered, autopsies were performed, and they were re-interred as the first burials in the then-new Imaiqsaun Cemetery south of Barrow.[152] Years later another body was washed out of the bluff. It was a female child, approximately nine years old, who had clearly been born with a congenital birth defect.[153] This child had never been able to walk, but must have been cared for by family throughout her life.[154] She was the best preserved body ever recovered in Alaska, and radiocarbon dating of grave goods and of a strand of her hair all place her back to about 1200 CE.[154] Health See also: Indian hospital During the 19th century, the Western Arctic suffered a population decline of close to 90 per cent, resulting from exposure to new diseases, including tuberculosis, measles, influenza, and smallpox. Autopsies near Greenland reveal that, more commonly pneumonia, kidney diseases, trichinosis, malnutrition, and degenerative disorders may have contributed to mass deaths among different Inuit tribes. Inuit believed that the causes of the disease were of a spiritual origin.[155] Canadian churches and, eventually, the federal government ran the earliest health facilities for Inuit population, whether fully segregated hospitals or "annexes" and wards attached to settler hospitals. These "Indian hospitals" were focused on treating people for tuberculosis, though diagnosis was difficult and treatment involved forced removal of individuals from their communities for in-patient confinement in other parts of the country. Dr. Kevin Patterson, a physician, wrote an op-ed in The Globe and Mail: "In October (2017) the federal Minister of Indigenous Services, Jane Philpott, announced that in 2015 tuberculosis ... Was 270 times ... More common among the Canadian Inuit than it is among non-Indigenous southern Canadians." The Canadian Medical Association Journal published in 2013 that "tuberculosis among Canadian Inuit has dramatically increased since 1997. In 2010 the incidence in Nunavut ... Was 304 per 100,000—more than 66 times the rate seen in the general population.[156] Traditional law Main article: Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit or Inuit traditional laws are anthropologically different from Western law concepts. Customary law was thought non-existent in Inuit society before the introduction of the Canadian legal system. In 1954, E. Adamson Hoebel concluded that only "rudimentary law" existed amongst Inuit. No known Western observer before 1970 was aware that any form of governance existed among any Inuit;[157] however, there was a set way of doing things that had to be followed: maligait refers to what has to be followed piqujait refers to what has to be done tirigusuusiit refers to what has to be avoided If an individual's actions went against the tirigusuusiit, maligait or piqujait, the angakkuq (shaman) might have to intervene, lest the consequences be dire to the individual or the community.[158] We are told today that Inuit never had laws or "maligait". Why? They say because they are not written on paper. When I think of paper, I think you can tear it up, and the laws are gone. The laws of the Inuit are not on paper. — Mariano Aupilaarjuk, Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, Perspectives on Traditional Law[159] Traditional beliefs See also: Inuit religion and Inuit astronomy Some Inuit (including Alaska Natives) believed that the spirits of their ancestors could be seen in the aurora borealis. The environment in which Inuit lived inspired a mythology filled with adventure tales of whale and walrus hunts. Long winter months of waiting for caribou herds or sitting near breathing holes hunting seals gave birth to stories of the mysterious and sudden appearance of ghosts and fantastic creatures. Some Inuit looked into the aurora borealis, or northern lights, to find images of their family and friends dancing in the next life.[160] However, some Inuit believed that the lights were more sinister and if you whistled at them, they would come down and cut off your head. This tale is still told to children today.[161] For others they were invisible giants, the souls of animals, a guide to hunting and as a spirit for the angakkuq to help with healing.[161][162] They relied upon the angakkuq (shaman) for spiritual interpretation. The nearest thing to a central deity was the Old Woman (Sedna), who lived beneath the sea. The waters, a central food source, were believed to contain great gods. Inuit practiced a form of shamanism based on animist principles. They believed that all things had a form of spirit, including humans, and that to some extent these spirits could be influenced by a pantheon of supernatural entities that could be appeased when one required some animal or inanimate thing to act in a certain way. The angakkuq of a community of Inuit was not the leader, but rather a sort of healer and psychotherapist, who tended wounds and offered advice, as well as invoking the spirits to assist people in their lives. Their role was to see, interpret and exhort the subtle and unseen. Angakkuit were not trained; they were held to be born with the ability and recognized by the community as they approached adulthood. Inuit religion was closely tied to a system of rituals integrated into the daily life of the people. These rituals were simple but held to be necessary. According to a customary Inuit saying, "The great peril of our existence lies in the fact that our diet consists entirely of souls".[163] By believing that all things, including animals, have souls like those of humans,[164] any hunt that failed to show appropriate respect and customary supplication would only give the liberated spirits cause to avenge themselves. The harshness and unpredictability of life in the Arctic ensured that Inuit lived with concern for the uncontrollable, where a streak of bad luck could destroy an entire community. To offend a spirit was to risk its interference with an already marginal existence. Inuit understood that they had to work in harmony with supernatural powers to provide the necessities of day-to-day life. Demographics In total there are about 148,000 Inuit living in four countries, Canada, Greenland, Denmark and the United States.[11][2][3][4] Inuit Demographics by Region Country Region Inuit population Inuit population concentration Inuit territory Russia Chukotka Autonomous Okrug 125[citation needed] 0.26% Yes (Big Diomede) United States Alaska 14,718[4][165] 2.00% Yes United States California 352[citation needed] <0.01% No United States Washington 1,863[4][166] 0.02% No Canada Yukon 260[167] 0.66% Inuvialuit Settlement Region (Inuit Nunangat) Canada Northwest Territories 4,155[167] 10.29% Inuvialuit Settlement Region (Inuit Nunangat) Canada Nunavut 30,865[167] 84.33% Inuit Nunangat Canada British Columbia 1,720[167] 0.03% No Canada Alberta 2,950[167] 0.07% No Canada Saskatchewan 460[167] 0.04% No Canada Manitoba 730[167] 0.06% No Canada Ontario 4,310[167] 0.03% No Canada Quebec 15,800[167] 0.19% Nunavik (Inuit Nunangat) Canada Newfoundland and Labrador 7,330[167] 1.46% Nunatsiavut (Inuit Nunangat) Canada New Brunswick 685[167] 0.09% No Canada Nova Scotia 1,100[167] 0.12% No Canada Prince Edward Island 180[167] 0.12% No Greenland Avannaata 10,693[7] 92.14% (87.53%) Yes Greenland Qeqertalik 6,284[7] 98.56% (93.63%) Yes Greenland Qeqqata 9,252[7] 98.10% (93.20%) Yes Greenland Sermersooq 23,416[7] 95.20% (90.44%) Yes Greenland Kujalleq 6,266[7] 96.28% (91.47%) Yes Denmark Nordjylland 2,168[168] 0.44% No Denmark Midtjylland 3,822[168] 0.33% No Denmark Syddanmark 4,411[168] 0.34% No Denmark Sjælland 2,664[168] 0.33% No Denmark Hovedstaden 5,498[168] 0.31% No Norway Oslo 293[citation needed] 0.04% No Faroe Islands Torshavn 163[citation needed] 1.16% No Iceland Reykjavik 65[citation needed] 0.03% No Netherlands North Holland 14[citation needed] <0.01% No Canada As of the 2016 Canadian census, there were 65,025 people identifying as Inuit living in Canada. This was up 29.1 per cent from the 2006 Canadian census. Close to three-quarters (72.8 per cent) of Inuit lived in one of the four regions comprising Inuit Nunangat (Nunavut, Nunavik, Nunatsiavut, and Inuvialuit Settlement Region). From 2006 to 2016, Inuit population grew by 20.1 per cent inside Inuit Nunangat.[169] The largest population of Inuit in Canada as of 2016 live in Nunavut with 30,140[169] Inuit out of a total population of 35,580 residents.[11][170] Between 2006 and 2016, Inuit population of Nunavut grew by 22.5 per cent.[169] In Nunavut, Inuit population forms a majority in all communities and is the only jurisdiction of Canada where Aboriginal peoples form a majority.[170] As of 2016, there were 13,945 Inuit living in Quebec.[170] The majority, about 11,795, live in Nunavik.[11] Inuit population of Nunavik grew 23.3 per cent between the 2006 and 2016 censuses. This was the fastest growth among all four regions of Inuit Nunangat.[169] The 2016 Canada Census found there were 6,450 Inuit living in Newfoundland and Labrador[170] including 2,285 who live in Nunatsiavut.[11] In Nunatsiavut, Inuit population grew by 6.0 per cent between 2006 and 2016.[169] As of 2016, there were 4,080 Inuit living in the Northwest Territories.[170] The majority, 3,110, live in the six communities of the Inuvialuit Settlement Region.[11] Inuit population growth in the region was largely flat between 2006 and 2016.[169] Outside of Inuit Nunangat, Inuit population was 17,695 as of 2016.[11] This was a growth of 61.9 per cent between the 2006 and 2016 censuses.[169] The highest populations of Inuit outside of Inuit Nunangat lived in the Atlantic provinces (30.6 per cent) with 23.5 per cent lived in Newfoundland and Labrador. A further 21.8 per cent outside of Inuit Nunangat lived in Ontario, 28.7 per cent lived in the western provinces, 12.1 per cent lived in Quebec, while 6.8 per cent lived in the Northwest Territories (not including the Inuvialuit region) and Yukon.[169] Included in the population of Newfoundland and Labrador outside of Inuit Nunangat is the unrecognized Inuit territory of NunatuKavut where about 6,000 NunatuKavut people (Labrador Metis or Inuit-metis) reside in southern Labrador.[171] Greenland Main article: Greenlandic Inuit According to the 2018 edition of the CIA World Factbook, Inuit population of Greenland is 88 per cent (50,787) out of a total of 57,713 people.[2] Like Nunavut, the population lives throughout the habitable areas of the region. Denmark The population size of Greenlandic people in Denmark varies from source to source between 15,000 and 20,000. According to 2023 figures from Statistics Denmark there are 17,067 people residing in Denmark of Greenlandic Inuit ancestry.[3] Most travel to Denmark for educational purposes, and many remain after finishing their education,[172] which results in the population being mostly concentrated in the big four educational cities of Copenhagen, Aarhus, Odense, and Aalborg, which all have vibrant Greenlandic communities and cultural centers (Kalaallit Illuutaat). United States According to the 2000 United States Census there were a total of 16,581 Inuit / Inupiat living throughout the country.[4] The majority, about 14,718, live in the state of Alaska.[165] According to 2019-based U.S. Census Bureau data, there are 700 Alaskan Natives in Seattle, many of whom are Inuit and Yupik, and almost 7,000 in Washington state.[166][173] Governance Inuit Circumpolar Conference members The Inuit Circumpolar Council is a United Nations-recognized non-governmental organization (NGO), which defines its constituency as Canada's Inuit and Inuvialuit, Greenland's Kalaallit Inuit, Alaska's Inupiat and Yup'ik, and Russia's Siberian Yupik,[174] despite the last two neither speaking an Inuit dialect[70] or considering themselves "Inuit". Nonetheless, it has come together with other circumpolar cultural and political groups to promote Inuit and other northern people in their fight against ecological problems such as climate change which disproportionately affects Inuit population. The Inuit Circumpolar Council is one of the six group of Arctic Indigenous peoples that have a seat as a so-called "Permanent Participant" on the Arctic Council,[175] an international high level forum in which the eight Arctic Countries (United States, Canada, Russia, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland) discuss Arctic policy. On 12 May 2011, Greenland's Prime Minister Kuupik Kleist hosted the ministerial meeting of the Arctic Council, an event for which the American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came to Nuuk, as did many other high-ranking officials such as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt and Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. At that event they signed the Nuuk Declaration.[176] Canada See also: NunatuKavut, Nunavut, Nunavik, Nunatsiavut, and Nunangit While Inuit Nunangat is within Canada, and the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami oversees only the four official regions, there remains NunatuKavut in southern Labrador. NunatuKavummuit retain a treaty with the Crown since 1765,[177] and the NunatuKavut Community Council (NCC) oversees governance in this region.[178] Regions of Inuit Nunangat The Inuvialuit are western Canadian Inuit who remained in the Northwest Territories when Nunavut split off. They live primarily in the Mackenzie River delta, on Banks Island, and parts of Victoria Island in the Northwest Territories. They are officially represented by the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation and, in 1984, received a comprehensive land claims settlement, the first in Northern Canada, with the signing of the Inuvialuit Final Agreement.[179] The TFN worked for ten years and, in September 1992, came to a final agreement with the Government of Canada. This agreement called for the separation of the Northwest Territories into an eastern territory whose Aboriginal population would be predominately Inuit,[180] the future Nunavut, and a rump Northwest Territories in the west. It was the largest land claim agreement in Canadian history. In November 1992, the Nunavut Final Agreement was approved by nearly 85 per cent of Inuit of what would become Nunavut. As the final step in this long process, the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement was signed on May 25, 1993, in Iqaluit by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and by Paul Quassa, the president of Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, which replaced the TFN with the ratification of the Nunavut Final Agreement. The Canadian Parliament passed the supporting legislation in June of the same year, enabling the 1999 establishment of Nunavut as a territorial entity. Greenland See also: Kalaallit and History of Greenland In 1953, Denmark put an end to the colonial status of Greenland and granted home rule in 1979 and in 2008 a self-government referendum was passed with 75 per cent approval. Although still a part of the Kingdom of Denmark (along with Denmark proper and the Faroe Islands), Greenland, known as Kalaallit Nunaat in the Greenlandic language, maintains much autonomy today. Of a population of 56,000, 80 per cent of Greenlanders identify as Inuit. Their economy is based on fishing and shrimping.[181] The Thule people arrived in Greenland in the 13th century. There they encountered the Norsemen, who had established colonies there since the late 10th century, as well as a later wave of the Dorset people. Because most of Greenland is covered in ice, the Greenland Inuit (or Kalaallit) only live in coastal settlements, particularly the northern polar coast, the eastern Amassalik coast and the central coasts of western Greenland.[182] Alaska Inuit of Alaska are the Iñupiat who live in the Northwest Arctic Borough, the North Slope Borough and the Bering Strait region. Utqiagvik, the northernmost city in the United States, is in the Inupiat region. Their language is Iñupiaq. Genetics See also: Saqqaq culture § Genetics, Dorset culture § Genetics, Birnirk culture § Genetics, Thule people § Genetics, and Sadlermiut § Genetics A genetic study published in Science in August 2014 examined a large number of remains from the Dorset culture, Birnirk culture and the Thule people. Genetic continuity was observed between Inuit, Thule and Birnirk, who overwhelmingly carried the maternal haplogroup A2a and were genetically very different from the Dorset. The evidence suggested that Inuit descend from the Birnirk of Siberia, who through the Thule culture expanded into northern Canada and Greenland, where they genetically and culturally completely replaced the Indigenous Dorset people some time after 1300 AD.[183] Inuit people tend to have the dry variant of human earwax.[184] Modern culture Two Inuit elders share Maktaaq in 2002. Inuit art, carving, print making, textiles and Inuit throat singing, are very popular, not only in Canada but globally, and Inuit artists are widely known. Canada has adopted some of Inuit culture as national symbols, using Inuit cultural icons like the inuksuk in unlikely places, such as its use as a symbol at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Respected art galleries display Inuit art, the largest collection of which is at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Their traditional New Year is called Quviasukvik.[185] Some Inuit languages, such as Inuktitut, appear to have a more secure future in Quebec and Nunavut. There are a number of Inuit, even those who now live in urban centres such as Ottawa, Montreal and Winnipeg, who have experienced living on the land in the traditional life style. People such as Legislative Assembly of Nunavut member, Levinia Brown and former Commissioner of Nunavut and the NWT, Helen Maksagak were born and lived the early part of their life "on the land". Inuit culture is alive and vibrant today in spite of the negative impacts of recent history. An important biennial event, the Arctic Winter Games, is held in communities across the northern regions of the world, featuring traditional Inuit and northern sports as part of the events. A cultural event is also held. The games were first held in 1970, and while rotated usually among Alaska, Yukon and the Northwest Territories, they have also been held in Schefferville, Quebec, in 1976, in Slave Lake, Alberta, and a joint Iqaluit, Nunavut-Nuuk, Greenland staging in 2002. In other sporting events, Jordin Tootoo became the first Inuk to play in the National Hockey League in the 2003–2004 season, playing for the Nashville Predators. An Inuit woman uses a traditional amauti and a modern western stroller. Although Inuit life has changed significantly over the past century, many traditions continue. Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, or traditional knowledge, such as storytelling, mythology, music, and dancing remain important parts of the culture. Family and community are very important. The Inuktitut language is still spoken in many areas of the Arctic and is common on radio and in television programming. Well-known Inuit politicians include Premier of Nunavut, P.J. Akeeagok, Lori Idlout, member of parliament for the riding of Nunavut, Eva Aariak, Commissioner of Nunavut and Múte Bourup Egede, Prime Minister of Greenland. Leona Aglukkaq, former MP, was the first Inuk to be sworn into the Canadian Federal Cabinet as Health Minister in 2008. In May 2011 after being re-elected for her second term, Aglukkaq was given the additional portfolio of Minister of the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency. In July 2013 she was sworn in as the minister of the environment.[186] Inuit seal hunter in a kayak, armed with a harpoon Visual and performing arts are strong features of Inuit culture. In 2002 the first feature film in Inuktitut, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, was released worldwide to great critical and popular acclaim. It was directed by Zacharias Kunuk, and written, filmed, produced, directed, and acted almost entirely by Inuit of Igloolik. In 2009, the film Le Voyage D'Inuk, a Greenlandic-language feature film, was directed by Mike Magidson and co-written by Magidson and French film producer Jean-Michel Huctin.[187] One of the most famous Inuit artists is Pitseolak Ashoona. Susan Aglukark is a popular singer. Mitiarjuk Attasie Nappaaluk worked at preserving Inuktitut and wrote one of the first novels ever published in that language.[188] In 2006, Cape Dorset was hailed as Canada's most artistic city, with 23 per cent of the labor force employed in the arts.[189] Inuit art such as soapstone carvings is one of Nunavut's most important industries. Ada Eyetoaq was an Inuit artist who made miniature sculptures out of soapstone. Recently, there has been an identity struggle among the younger generations of Inuit, between their traditional heritage and the modern society which their cultures have been forced to assimilate into in order to maintain a livelihood. With current dependence on modern society for necessities, (including governmental jobs, food, aid, medicine, etc.), Inuit have had much interaction with and exposure to the societal norms outside their previous cultural boundaries. The stressors regarding the identity crisis among teenagers have led to disturbingly high numbers of suicide.[190] A series of authors have focused upon the increasing myopia in the youngest generations of Inuit. Myopia was almost unknown prior to Inuit adoption of Western culture. Principal theories are the change to a Western style diet with more refined foods, and extended education.[191][192][193] David Pisurayak Kootook was awarded the Meritorious Service Cross, posthumously, for his heroic efforts in a 1972 plane crash. Other notable Inuit include the freelance journalist Ossie Michelin, whose iconic photograph of the activist Amanda Polchies went viral after the 2013 anti-fracking protests at Elsipogtog First Nation.[194] Notes The Inuvialuit Settlement Region (ISR) also includes the Yukon North Slope in the territory of Yukon, which is relatively small compared with the ISR in Northwest Territories and has no communities living within it—but is part of traditional and current Inuvialuit hunting, trapping, fishing, etc. grounds. References The Utkuhiksalingmiut Ukukhalingmiut, Utkukhalingmiut —the people of the place where there is soapstone—is one of 48 groups of Inuit in what is now Nunavut, Canada.[1] Their traditional land was around Chantrey Inlet (Tariunnuaq) area,[2] near the estuary of the Back River in, what was then called, the Keewatin District of the Northwest Territories.[3]: 4 The Utkuhiksalingmiut followed the traditional hunter-nomadic life moving from fishing the camp near the mouth of the Back River on Chantrey Inlet[4]: 3 to their caribou hunting camp in the Garry Lake area,[4]: 10 living in winter snow houses (igloos) and caribou skin tents in the summer.[5] They subsisted mainly on trout (lake trout and Arctic char), whitefish, and barren-ground caribou.[6] In his 1888 Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Smithsonian Institution, which was based on his trip to Cumberland Sound and Davis Strait and on "extracts from the reports of other travelers", the anthropologist Franz Boas listed three Inuit groups—the Netchillirmiut, Ugjulirmiut, and Ukusiksalirmiut as the Boothia Felix and Back River Inuit, calling them tribes of the "Central Eskimo", terms that are no longer in use.[7][Notes 1] The 2008 publication Uqalurait, an "authoritative and comprehensive compilation of the traditional knowledge of Inuit elders", lists the 48 Nunavutmiut groups and uses the spelling Utkuhiksalingmiut.[1] During his Fifth Thule Expedition, the Danish explorer, Knud Rasmussen, visited a Utkuhikhalingmiut camp. This represented the first time the Utkuhikhalingmiut made contact with non-Inuit. Rasmussen, whose mother was Inuk, traversed the Arctic region from Hudson Bay to the Bering Strait in dogsled from 1921 to 1924. In the 1980s, CBC radio aired a segment in which Jessie Oonark, OC RCA (March 2, 1906 – March 7, 1985)—a prolific and influential artist—described that encounter in the Utkuhiksalik language, which Oonark spoke fluently.[8] Oonark was one of three Inuit artists—along with Marion Tuu'luq (1910–2002) and Luke Anguhadluq (1895–1982)—the Utkuhikhalingmiut camp leader[9]—whose artworks reflect Utkuhiksalingmiut oral history and legends. Garry Lake 2006 By 1949, Roman Catholic mission post had been established in an island in Garry Lake Hanningajuq, an outflow of the Back River.[10]: 240 [11] In the late 1950s, there was a shift in the migratory patterns of the Beverly herd of the barren-ground caribou upon which the Utkuhikhalingmiut depended, causing a famine.[12] [13]: 10 : 10 During the winter months of 1957–1958, of the Utkuhikhalingmiut at Garry Lake—the Hanningajurmiut—58 people died before the federal government intervened. The Canadian armed forces airlifted 31 survivors to Baker Lake.[3]: 4 [10] Most never returned to Garry Lake on a permanent basis.[14][15][16][17][18][19] During a brief visit to the area in 2009 by one of survivors of the Garry Lake starvation, a bag and some small items that were still fresh, were found in the old Catholic mission that had been manned by Father Joseph Buliard. In Baker Lake, the Utkuhikhalingmiut were forced to change their nomadic lifestyle.[3]: 4 [20] They became a small minority in the hamlet where they were known as the Back River people.[14] In 2015, Nunavut Arctic College published Jean L. Briggs 700-page dictionary of the rare Utkuhiksalingmiut dialect, a multi-year, collaborative process.[21][22] Rosie Kigeak, who became Briggs' mentor in the early 1960s when she came to live with a family camp to understand to the Utkuhiksalingmiut culture, became Brigg's "most trusted collaborator on the dictionary".[21] Notable people William Noah Luke Anguhadluq Jessie Oonark Marion Tuu'luq Notes Boas identified the Baffin Land Inuit groups as Sikosuilarmiut, Akuliarmiut, Qaumauangmiut, Nugumiut, Oqomiut, Padlimiut, Akudnirmiut, Aggomiut, Iglulirmiut, Pilingmiut, and Sagdlirmiut. He identified the Inuit groups on the western shore of Hudson Bay as Aivillirmiut, and Kinipetu or Agutit, the Sagdlirmiut of Southampton Island, Sinimiut; the Inuit groups of Boothia Felix and Back River were identified as the Netchillirmiut, Ugjulirmiut, and Ukusiksalirmiut; the Inuit groups of Smith Sound were identified as Ellesmere Land and the North Greenlanders. The current names of the 48 groups of Nunavutmiut can be found on the map on page 340 of the 2008 publication, Uqalurait. References The National Gallery of Canada (French: Musée des beaux-arts du Canada), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's national art museum.[8] The museum's building takes up 46,621 square metres (501,820 sq ft), with 12,400 square metres (133,000 sq ft) of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the largest art museums in North America by exhibition space. The institution was established in 1880 at the Second Supreme Court of Canada building, and moved to the Victoria Memorial Museum building in 1911. In 1913, the Government of Canada passed the National Gallery Act, formally outlining the institution's mandate as a national art museum. The museum was moved to the Lorne building in 1960. In 1988, the museum was relocated to a new building designed for this purpose. The National Gallery of Canada is situated in a glass and granite building on Sussex Drive, with a notable view of the Canadian Parliament buildings on Parliament Hill. The building was designed by Israeli architect Moshe Safdie and opened in 1988.[4][5][6][9] The museum's permanent collection includes over 93,000 works from European, American, and Asian, Canadian, and Indigenous artists. In addition to exhibiting works from its permanent collection, the museum also organizes and hosts a number of travelling exhibitions. History The National Gallery was housed in the Second Supreme Court of Canada building from 1882 to 1911 The Gallery was first formed in 1880 by Canada's Governor General, John Campbell, 9th Duke of Argyll in conjunction with the establishment of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. In 1882, moved into its first home on Parliament Hill, housed in the Second Supreme Court of Canada building.[9] Eric Brown was named the first director in 1910.[10] In 1911, the Gallery moved to the Victoria Memorial Museum building, sharing it with the National Museum of Natural Sciences. In 1913, the first National Gallery Act was passed, outlining the Gallery's mandate and resources.[9] During the 1920s, the building was expanded. The art gallery was given four floors, and a separate entrance was created for the art museum. In addition, a firewall was built between the natural sciences museum and the National Gallery.[11] But, the Gallery was still in temporary space in the Victoria Memorial Museum building. Longterm plans were to move it to a new permanent location, with spaces dedicated to the viewing of art.[11] Victoria Memorial Museum building in 1911. The National Gallery of Canada was situated in the building from 1911 to 1960. By the 1950s, the space in the Victoria Memorial Museum building had grown inadequate for the museum's collections. In 1952, the museum launched a design contest for architects to design a permanent home for the gallery.[11] But the museum failed to garner support from the government of Louis St. Laurent, resulting in the museum having to abandon the winning bid. [11] To provide a workable compromise for the National Gallery, St. Laurent's government offered the National Gallery the eight-storey Lorne office building for use.[11] The National Gallery moved into the nondescript office building on Elgin Street.[12] The building has since been demolished and replaced by a 17-storey office building to house the Federal Finance Department. In 1962, Charles Comfort, the museum's director, was criticised after half of the works on display at an exhibition for Walter Chrysler's European works were exposed as forgeries by American journalists. Comfort had allowed the Gallery to host the exhibition although he had been warned about the works by the director of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.[13] The National Museums of Canada Corporation (NMC) absorbed the National Gallery of Canada in 1968.[14] During the 1970s, the NMC diverted funds from the National Gallery to form regional galleries.[14] The museum completed renovations to the Lorne building in 1976.[11] By 1980, it had become apparent that the National Gallery would need to relocate, given the poor condition of the building, historic use of asbestos there, and inadequate exhibition areas that provided only enough space for two per cent of the collection to be exhibited at any given time.[11] After the Canadian constitution was patriated in 1982, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau announced a shift in policy focus towards the "creation of a nation," with priority given towards the arts in an effort to enrich Canadian identity.[11] In same year, Minister of Communications Francis Fox declared the government's commitment to erect a new permanent buildings for its national museums, including the National Gallery, and the Museum of Man within five years.[14] The director of the National Gallery, Jean Sutherland Boggs, was chosen by Trudeau to oversee construction of the national gallery and museums.[15] The museum began construction for its permanent museum building on Sussex Drive in 1985, and was opened in May 1988.[16] The diversion of funds by the NMC to help fund regional museums was ended in 1982,[17] and the National Museums of Canada formally dissolved in 1987.[16] As a result of the dissolution, the National Gallery reacquired its institutional independence, and its mandate and powers outlined by its formative legislative act prior to 1968.[16] The Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (CMCP), formerly the Stills Photography Division of the National Film Board of Canada, was an affiliated institution of the National Gallery established in 1985. In 1988, the CMCP's administration was amalgamated to that of the National Gallery's. The CMCP later moved to its new location at 1 Rideau Canal, and continued to operate there until its closure in 2006. Its collection was later absorbed into the National Gallery's in 2009. In December 2000, the National Gallery announced it suspected approximately 100 works from its collection was plunder stolen by the Nazis during the Second World War.[18] The gallery posted images of works suspected of being stolen art online, permitting its last legal owners to examine and possibly lay claim to the works.[18][19] In 2006, the museum restituted a painting by Édouard Vuillard that had been looted by the Nazis from Alfred Lindon in 1942, The Salon of Madame Aron, to Lindon's heirs.[20] In December 2009, the National Gallery of Canada and the Art Gallery of Alberta issued a joint press release announcing a three-year partnership, which saw the use of the Art Gallery of Alberta's galleries to exhibit works from the National Gallery's collection.[21] The program was the first "satellite program" between the National Gallery of Canada, and another institution, with similar initiatives launched in other Canadian art galleries in the following years.[21] Marc Mayer was named the museum's director, succeeding Pierre Théberge, on 19 January 2009.[22] On 19 April 2019, he was succeeded by Alexandra Suda, who was appointed the 11th Director and chief executive officer of the National Gallery of Canada. Under Sasha Suda, the Gallery underwent a major re-branding, dubbed Ankosé, to be more inclusive and work towards reconciliation. After only three years, Suda resigned. Angela Cassie was then appointed interim Director and CEO in July 2022. Building The building is adjacent to the Ottawa River. The museum's present building was designed by Moshe Safdie & Associates, with construction beginning in 1985, and the building opening in 1988. The building has a total floor area of 46,621 square metres (501,820 sq ft). In 2000, the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada chose the National Gallery as one of the top 500 buildings produced in Canada during the last millennium.[23] The National Gallery of Canada is housed in a building on Sussex Drive, adjacent to the ByWard Market district. The building is the fourth edifice to house the art museum. An independent crown corporation, the Canadian Museums Construction Corporation was established to build the museum with a budget of C$185 million.[17] Following the 1984 Canadian federal election, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney dissolved the corporation.[16] However, because the groundwork for the building was already completed, Mulroney chose to continue funding construction for the museum, albeit at a reduced total budget of C$162 million.[16] Exterior The pink-granite walls of the building's western façade. The building's northern, eastern, and western exterior facade is made up of pink-granite walls, or glass-windows.[24] The southern exterior facade features an elongated glass wall, supported by concrete pylons grouped in fours.[24] The profile of the southern facade was designed to mimic a cathedral, with the concrete pylons being used similarly to the flying buttresses found on Gothic cathedrals.[24] The eastern portion of the building's southern facade transitions into a low-levelled crystalline glass cupola, which holds the museum's main entrance; and its western portion, which features a three-tiered glass cupola.[24] The building's southern facade, made up of a glass wall supported by concrete pylons, and a three-storey glass cupola in the southwest corner. The three-tiered glass cupola is formed out of rectangular glass and narrow steel supports.[25] The second tier of the cupola is formed out of rectangles and equilateral triangles that are further subdivided into eight or twelve smaller equilateral triangles.[26] All these glass pieces are joined by steel struts. The third tier of the cupola is formed with similar designs, although the triangular glass panes are isosceles triangles.[26] The isosceles triangles converge upwards, with its apexes towards the centre.[26] The building's three-tiered cupola is positioned in a manner in which the cupola would be flanked by the Peace Tower and the Library of Parliament to the west when approaching the museum from the east.[27] Interior The building lobby's ramp towards the Great Hall The interior entrance lobby is floored with pink-granite, and includes a straight four metres (13 ft) wide ramp which slopes upward towards the west.[28] Safdie noted the importance of the ramp in his design, stating that one should "go through some kind of procession to make your way into something as important as the National Gallery," and that it gave the visitor the feeling of making an ascent to a ritual, a ceremony.[29] The walls of the entrance lobby are lined with rectangular cut pink granite, excluding the southern wall, which is part of the glass-walled exterior facade.[30] A glass and steel ceiling reminiscent of Gothic cathedral architecture, extends the entire way of the ramp.[30] However, as opposed to most Gothic cathedrals, the ceiling has several concrete columns spaced out to support the roof.[30] The summit of the ramp leads towards the Great Hall of the building, situated in the three-storey glass cupola.[25] The interior courtyard of the building includes the Taiga Garden. The garden was designed by Cornelia Oberlander, who modelled the painting Terre Sauvage by A. Y. Jackson;[31] a painting in the National Gallery's permanent collection. The garden attempts to mimic the landscape depicted in the painting, the Canadian shield; although limestone is substituted in place of the granite typically found at the Canadian shield.[31] Collection As of October 2018, the National Gallery of Canada's permanent collection holds over 93,625 works,[1] representing several artistic movements and eras in art history. The Gallery has a large and varied collection of paintings, works on paper, sculptures and photographs. The earliest works acquired by the museum were from Canadian artists, with Canadian art remaining the focus of the institution. However, its collection also includes several works from artists around the world. The museum's collection has been built up through purchases and donations. The museum organizes its own travelling exhibitions to exhibit its collection, travelling across Canada and abroad.[32][33] The National Gallery is the largest lender of artwork in Canada, sending out approximately 800 pieces a year.[34] Sculptures on display in the museum's sculpture courtyard in 2005 The museum's prints and drawings collection includes 27,000 works on paper dating from the 15th century to the present. The prints and drawing collection includes 10,000 works on paper by Canadian artists; more than 800 of these prints and drawings being crafted by Inuit artists.[35] The prints and drawing collection also includes 2,500 drawings and 10,000 prints by American, Asian, and European artists. The museum also has approximately 400 works from Asian artists, dating from the 200 CE to 19th century. The museum's Asian collection began in the early 20th century, with a number of works originating from the collection of Nasli Heeramaneck.[36] The museum's also has a collection of photographs. A number of the photographs in the collection originated from the defunct Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. Until the mid-1980s, the Gallery's mandate did not include collecting art by Indigenous peoples. It was a settler institution. This has been much critiqued and led to important changes in the gallery from the 1980s onwards.[37] Despite a major re-hang in 2003 of the Canadian galleries to include Indigenous art for the first time, the Gallery continues to work towards more equitable representation of Indigenous art, particularly in the historic galleries.[38] The largest work in the Gallery is the entire interior of the Rideau Street Chapel, which formed part of the Convent of Our Lady Sacred Heart,[12] The interior decorations of the Rideau Street Chapel were designed by Georges Couillon in 1887.[10] The chapel interior was acquired by the museum in 1972, when the convent was slated for demolition. The interior's 1,123 pieces was dismantled, stored and reconstructed within the gallery as a work of art in 1988.[10] Canadian and Indigenous works The museum's Canadian collection includes works dating from 18th century New France, to the 1990s.[39] The collection includes paintings from pre-Confederation; abstract paintings and other postwar art; and the Henry Birks Collection of Canadian Silver.[39] Early pre-Confederation paintings were among the first items in the Canadian collections, with the National Gallery's earliest works originating from Canadian artists at the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.[39] The Jack Pine by Tom Thomson. The Canadian collection includes a number of works by Thomson. The museum's Canadian collection holds a large number of works by the Group of Seven.[39] The museum also holds a large collection of Tom Thomson works,[39] with the museum adding The Jack Pine to its collection in 1918.[40] The museum also holds the largest collection of works by Alex Colville.[41] Other artists featured in the collections includes William Berczy, Jack Bush, Paul-Émile Borduas, Emily Carr, Robert Field, Vera Frenkel, Theophile Hamel, Joseph Légaré, Cornelius Krieghoff, Fernand Leduc, Alexandra Luke, Ken Lum, James Wilson Morrice, John O'Brien, Antoine Plamondon, William Raphael, Jean-Paul Riopelle, William Ronald, Michael Snow, Lisa Steele, Jeff Wall, Joyce Wieland, Paul Wong, and members of the Regina Five.[39][40] In commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Canada in 2017, the museum of undertook a C$7.4 million renovation to open the Canadian and Indigenous Art: From Time Immemorial to 1967 gallery.[42] The gallery exhibits the progression of Canadian art and history, exhibiting Canadian and Indigenous works side by side.[42] These works are exhibited in a manner which examines the intertwined relations between the two groups of people.[42] The Indigenous collection includes works by Indigenous artists around the world, although it has an emphasis on works by the Indigenous peoples of Canada. The museum collection acquired its first works by First Nations and Metis artists in the early 20th century.[43] However, the makers of these works were often not acknowledged as Indigenous, because the Gallery's mandate did not include collection of art by Indigenous peoples until the 1980s. The museum acquired its first Inuit works in 1956, crafted by artists in Nunavik.[35] The Gallery's acquisition of Inuit works, at a time when it was not actively collecting art by other Indigenous peoples, is related to the Government's instrumentalization of Inuit art to create jobs in the North and to assert Canadian sovereignty there.[44] In 1979, Henry Birks bequeathed a large collection to NGC consisting primarily of Quebecois pre-confederation silver; this bequest of more than 12,000 objects included around 16 works by Indigenous artists.[45] In 1989 and 1992, the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development bequeathed 570 works by Inuit artists.[35] Artist and Shaman between Two Worlds by Norval Morrisseau on display at the museum A number of Indigenous artists whose works are featured in the collection include Kenojuak Ashevak, Kiawak Ashoona, Qaqaq Ashoona, Carl Beam, Faye HeavyShield, Osuitok Ipeelee, Rita Letendre, Norval Morrisseau, Shelley Niro, David Ruben Piqtoukun, Abraham Anghik Ruben, Lucy Tasseor Tutsweetok, Jeffrey Thomas, John Tiktak, and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun.[40][43][35] Contemporary Maman by Louise Bourgeois, displayed outside the museum The museum's contemporary collection includes 1,500 works from artists since the 1990s.[46] The collection features a number of works from Canadian, and its Indigenous artists. The first Indigenous Canadian contemporary artwork acquired by the National Gallery was in 1987, a piece by Anishinaabe artist Carl Beam. In 2017, Bob Rennie donated a contemporary art collection to the National Gallery in honour of Canada' 150th anniversary.[34] The collection includes 197 paintings, sculptures, and mixed-media pieces with most of it originating from Vancouver-based artists including Geoffrey Farmer, Rodney Graham, Brian Jungen, and Ian Wallace.[34] The Rennie collection also includes some international contemporary works, including from Doris Salcedo.[34] In 1990 the Gallery bought Barnett Newman's Voice of Fire for $1.8 million, igniting a storm of controversy. However, since that time its value has appreciated to approximately C$40 million as of 2014.[40] In 1999, the museum acquired a sculpture of a giant spider, Maman, by Louise Bourgeois for a cost of C$3.2 million.[40][47] The sculpture was installed in the plaza in front of the Gallery.[40] In 2011 the gallery installed Canadian sculptor Joe Fafard's Running Horses next to the Sussex Drive entrance, and American artist Roxy Paine's stainless steel sculpture One Hundred Foot Line at Kìwekì Point behind the gallery. Other contemporary artists whose works are featured in the National Gallery's collection includes David Altmejd, Lee Bul, Janet Cardiff, Bharti Kher, Christian Marclay, Elizabeth McIntosh, Chris Ofili, Paine, Ugo Rondinone, and Joanne Tod.[46] European, American, and Asian The Death of General Wolfe by Benjamin West. The painting is part of the museum's collection. The European, American, and Asian collection area includes most of the museum's works by non-Canadian artists. The museum acquired its first European work in 1907, the painting Ignatius Sancho by Thomas Gainsborough.[48] Conversely, the museum did not begin to develop its collection of American art until the 1970s.[why?][48] The museum's collection includes American and European works dating from the Renaissance through to the 20th century.[48] In addition to Western art, the collection area also has 400 works from India, Nepal, and Tibet.[49] The museum's European collection has since expanded either through acquisitions or gifts. Such works include La Tour Eiffel by Marc Chagall, acquired by the museum in 1956 for $C16,000.[50] In 2018, the museum planned to sell the piece to fund other acquisitions, but abandoned those plans after it was found to be unpopular with the public.[50] In 2005, the Gallery acquired a painting by Italian Renaissance painter Francesco Salviati for $4.5 million.[51] In 2018, the museum acquired The Partie Carée by James Tissot from the collection of David R. Graham, putting it on display in December 2018.[52] It is the third work by Tissot to be acquired by the museum since 1921.[52] Other works from the collection include The Death of General Wolfe by Anglo-American artist Benjamin West.[40] Other artists featured in the museum's European collection includes Alejo Fernández, Vilhelm Hammershøi, Gustav Klimt, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Henri Matisse, Charles Meynier, Claude Monet, Rembrandt, and Vincent van Gogh.[40][36] Library and archives The library and archives of the National Gallery of Canada holds an extensive collection of art literature on Canadian art.[53] The library and archives was established alongside the museum in 1880, and contains documents on western art from the Late Middle Ages to the present.[53] The collection includes 275,000 books, exhibition catalogues, and periodicals; 76,000 documentation files; and 95,000 microforms.[53] The archives serves as the institutional archive for the museum. The library and archives' special collections includes over 50,000 auction catalogues, in addition to 182,000 slides and 360,000 research photographs.[54] The Library and Archives' Exceptional Materials and Notable Subject Collections contains a number of rare imprints, books, and bookplates on Canadian artists, as well as items relating to historians of Canadian art.[54] Management The federal government assumed responsibility for the museum in 1913, with the enactment of the National Gallery of Canada Act. The museum became a Crown corporation on 1 July 1990 with the proclamation of the Museums Act. The Museum Act serves as the museum's governing legislation. It empowers a board of trustees to serve as the museum's governing body, with the board, through the chair, being accountable to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, who is ultimately responsible for the Museum.[55] The CEO and director are charged with day-to-day management of the gallery.[56] The museum is affiliated with several associations, including the Canadian Museums Association, the Ontario Association of Art Galleries, the Canadian Heritage Information Network, and the Virtual Museum of Canada. Directors The following is a list of directors of the National Gallery of Canada: Eric Brown (1910–1939)[57] Harry Orr McCurry (1939–1955)[57] Alan Jarvis (1955–1959)[57] Charles Comfort (1960–1965)[57] Jean Sutherland Boggs (1966–1976)[17] Hsio-yen Shih (1977–1981)[58] Joseph Martin (1983–1987)[59][note 1] Shirley Thomson (1987–1997)[60] Pierre Théberge (1998–2008)[61] Marc Mayer (2009–2019)[62] Alexandra Sasha Suda (2019–2022)[62] Angela Cassie (interim 2022–)[63] Selected works Canadian collection Tom Thomson, Spring Ice, 1915–16 Tom Thomson, Spring Ice, 1915–16 J. E. H. MacDonald, The Tangled Garden, 1916 J. E. H. MacDonald, The Tangled Garden, 1916 David Milne, Vimy Ridge from Souchez, Estaminet among the Ruins, 1919 David Milne, Vimy Ridge from Souchez, Estaminet among the Ruins, 1919 Franklin Carmichael, The Upper Ottawa, near Mattawa, 1924 Franklin Carmichael, The Upper Ottawa, near Mattawa, 1924 Bill Vazan, Black Nest, 1989–1991 Bill Vazan, Black Nest, 1989–1991 Charlotte Schreiber, The Croppy Boy, 1879 Charlotte Schreiber, The Croppy Boy, 1879 Tom Thomson, Northern River, 1914–15 Tom Thomson, Northern River, 1914–15 Edward Wadsworth, Dazzle-ships in Drydock at Liverpool, 1919 Edward Wadsworth, Dazzle-ships in Drydock at Liverpool, 1919 European and American collection Auguste Rodin, Age of Bronze, 1875–1876, cast in 1901 Henri Matisse, Yellow Odalisque, 1926 M. C. Escher, Stars, 1948 Barnett Newman, Voice of Fire, 1967 Lorenzo Lotto, Madonna and Child with Saint Roch and Saint Sebastian, c. 1518 Lorenzo Lotto, Madonna and Child with Saint Roch and Saint Sebastian, c. 1518 Paolo Veronese, Fragment of the Petrobelli Altarpiece: The Dead Christ with Angels, c. 1563 Paolo Veronese, Fragment of the Petrobelli Altarpiece: The Dead Christ with Angels, c. 1563 J. M. W. Turner, Shoeburyness Fishermen Hailing a Whitstable Hoy, c. 1809 J. M. W. Turner, Shoeburyness Fishermen Hailing a Whitstable Hoy, c. 1809 Honoré Daumier, The Third-Class Carriage, 1863–1865 Honoré Daumier, The Third-Class Carriage, 1863–1865 Claude Monet, Waterloo Bridge: the Sun in a Fog, 1903 Claude Monet, Waterloo Bridge: the Sun in a Fog, 1903 Camille Pissarro, Hay Harvest at Éragny, 1901 Camille Pissarro, Hay Harvest at Éragny, 1901 Sandro Botticelli, The Triumph of Mordecai, c. 1475 Sandro Botticelli, The Triumph of Mordecai, c. 1475 Hans Baldung, Eve, the Serpent, and Death, c. 1510–1515 Hans Baldung, Eve, the Serpent, and Death, c. 1510–1515 Titian, Daniele Barbaro, 1545k Titian, Daniele Barbaro, 1545k El Greco, St. Francis and Brother Leo Meditating on Death, c. 1600–1605 El Greco, St. Francis and Brother Leo Meditating on Death, c. 1600–1605 Prints and drawings collection Giorgio Vasari, Abraham and the Three Angels, c. 16th century Giorgio Vasari, Abraham and the Three Angels, c. 16th century Caspar David Friedrich, Boy Sleeping on a Grave, c. 1801–1803 Caspar David Friedrich, Boy Sleeping on a Grave, c. 1801–1803 Eugène Delacroix, The Barque of Dante, c. 1820 Eugène Delacroix, The Barque of Dante, c. 1820 Francisco Goya, Holy Week in Spain in Times Past, c. 1825 Francisco Goya, Holy Week in Spain in Times Past, c. 1825 Ford Madox Brown, Portrait of Emma Madox Brown, 1853 Ford Madox Brown, Portrait of Emma Madox Brown, 1853 John Everett Millais, Portrait of Effie Ruskin, c. 1853 John Everett Millais, Portrait of Effie Ruskin, c. 1853 Odilon Redon, The Raven, 1882 Odilon Redon, The Raven, 1882 Mary Cassatt, Woman Bathing, c. 1890–1891 Mary Cassatt, Woman
- Condition: Usado
- Artist: JESSIE OONARK
- Type: Print
- Year of Production: 1976
- Theme: Art, People
- Subject: Figures
PicClick Insights - Jessie Oonark Artista Inuk Estampado De Sello 840/1000 Firmado 1976 Inuit Panadero Lago PicClick Exclusivo
- Popularidad - 1 seguidor, 0.1 nuevos seguidores por día, 14 days for sale on eBay. Cantidad normal en seguimiento. 0 vendidos, 1 disponible.
- Mejor Precio -
- Vendedor - 809+ artículos vendidos. 2.9% votos negativos. Buen vendedor con buena retroalimentación positiva y buena cantidad de calificaciones.
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