New edition of book honours Cape Dorset artist

The memories and talents of Pitseolak Ashoona, the noted Cape Dorset artist who died in 1983, are honoured and preserved in Pitseolak: Pictures out of my life.

This readable and well-illustrated book contains information that is likely to become increasingly important as the last generation who grew up on the land passes away.

Published by McGill-Queen’s University Press, the second edition of this book, first published in 1971, features interviews, in Inuktitut and English, conducted by Dorothy Eber with the artist in 1970, as well as an updated text.

Eber’s interviews with Pitseolak were interpreted by Annie Manning and then translated in English by Ann Hanson.

“It was the first project I did in the North,” said Eber from Montreal. “And I remained on good terms with Pitseolak, with whom I shared the royalties from this book.”

Eber said Pitseolak feared traditional Inuit life might seem like a myth or fairytale to coming generations.

But Pitseolak’s memories, captured by Eber’s book, preserve information that make these old ways of life come alive.

During her lifetime, Pitseolak was well-known for her prints and drawings that show “the things we did long ago before there were many white men.”

Pitseolak’s artwork ranges from detailed, practical images that show exactly what people wore and what they did, to more symbolic drawings and creatures or situations derived legends or her imagination.

Sometimes, after speaking to Eber, Pitseolak would illustrate their discussions, using her favourite medium – colourful felt pens.

Although she also produced stone cuts and lithographs, Pitseolak was, according to Eber, “the queen of magic markers.”

Pitseolak began printmaking under James Houston in the 1950s. In 1974, she was elected a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Art and was also made a member of the Order of Canada.

“I am happy doing the prints… I am going to keep on doing them until they tell me to stop. If no one tells me to stop, I shall make them as long as I am well. If I can, I’ll make then even after I am dead.”

This new edition of the book, appearing more than 30 years after the first, contains more drawings and prints and a new introduction by Eber, who returned to Cape Dorset a couple of years ago and interviewed Pitseolak’s descendents, including Pitseolak’s son Namoonie.

Namoonie’s favourite drawing, which is reproduced in the book, shows Pitseolak’s attention to detail, her humour and her artistry.

“My mother did art that showed our culture and I remember she did a drawing of us when we were walking way up inland and a drawing of herself with a baby on her back, a backpack and something on her head where she was drying clothing – walking with the clothesline on her back. I think back and I see her and I admire her – she had so much patience,” Namoonie told Eber.

“Both in summer and winter we used to move a lot. In summer, there were always very big mosquitos. I have made many drawings of moving camp in summertime,” Pitseolak says in the book.

“And I always put in the mosquitos. I do not like insects…the flies were around all through the month of July, especially if we had cloudy days. Even if you went out on a very nice clear day and there was no wind, the mosquitos or flies were going to go into your eyes, mouth, everywhere, we had no mosquito repellent then, but we had wings – bird wings – and we used them to brush the mosquitos away.”

Eber, also the author of Images of Justice, When the Whalers Were Up North, and, with Peter Pitseolak, People from Our Side, was one of the first southerners in the Arctic to use small tape recorders as a way of recording oral histories.

According to Eber, the value of this book is that it records Pitseolak’s life just as Pitseolak wanted, and not how others would have done it.

Eber’s next project is based on oral histories that are still told about the visits of early European explorers to the Arctic.