Popular Nunavut fishing spot gets new sculpture

Igloolik filmmaker and hunter Zacharias Kunuk stands behind a bowhead skull that he and other locals recently erected on the shore of Ham Bay near Igloolik. (PHOTO BY GREGORY COYES/GOOD MEDICINE MEDIA)

When it was lying on the ground, Zach Kunuk said it looked like an amautik — an Inuit woman’s parka with its large hood for baby-carrying.

But once Kunuk and his brothers in Igloolik stood the enormous bowhead whale skull upright, it looked like an owl descending on a crucified Jesus.

Kunuk, on the phone from his office at Kinguliit Productions in Igloolik and notoriously critical of Christianity’s influence on northern peoples, laughs at the reference.

Call it what you want, says Nunavut’s famous filmmaker. It’s art from the land to decorate a popular shoreline on Ham Bay. And it serves as a good selfie spot too.

“We put it there just so it’s not sitting on the ground. Kids loved it and then some people come and take pictures with it. That’s what it’s there for,” said Kunuk.

“We had it sitting the other way for a number of years and we thought, what would happen if we turn it upside down? And we finally did it and it looks great.”

Kunuk said he and others in the north Baffin community had been admiring the large, stripped away bowhead skull for years, wondering what they could make with it.

So at the end of July, Kunuk, along with his brothers and friends, pulled the skull upright with the help of Kunuk’s truck.

They then dug down into the permafrost on the shores of Ham Bay — a popular fishing and camping spot — and inserted the skull’s narrow “nose,” into the hole.

They steadied the bone sculpture by attaching it to a post, filled the hole with gravel and piled rocks at the base to prevent it from falling over.

And voilà: Jesus with owl. Or a giant tundra version of Norwegian artist Edvard Munch’s famous painting, “The Scream.”

Kunuk said because he and other locals spend so much time at the bay, they often make sculptures with other natural and found objects such as old Christmas trees and barrels.

It just helps to break up the landscape, he said.

“We are fishing there, we have nets, we’re working on the fish — it’s nice to have these things around to look at,” he said.

Kunuk was taking a break from editing his new feature film, tentatively titled Maliglutit.

Set at the turn of the 20th century, the all-Inuk film is based on the plotline of a 1956 John Wayne western called The Searchers.

Kunuk and producer Jonathan Franz did most of the shooting for the film last winter and are nearly finished their first run-through edit.

They hope to have it completed by next year.