The beginnings of commercial carving on display in Ottawa

MONTREAL — It’s only a tiny soapstone carving of a caribou, but it’s had an enormous impact on the North.

More than 50 years ago, Nayoumealuk, a hunter living near what is now Inukjuak, gave this carving to a young artist from Toronto.

The piece of crafted stone started James Houston thinking about how to market Inuit-made art.

Houston was impressed that Nayoumealuk produced this carving while living in “wretched conditions” and using only the most simple hand tools. He believed that with some encouragement and a market for carvings, such a talent might be able to earn money and respect for its creator.

“I got a little more hopeful,” said Houston, who soon afterwards organized the first sales of Inuit carvings in the South.

Nayoumealuk’s historic gift to Houston is the first piece of art that visitors to the Canadian Museum of Civilization will see when they enter the Ottawa museum’s new exhibit, Iqqaipaa. The exhibit, due to open March 30, celebrates Inuit art produced between 1948 and 1970.

Nearly half a million people are expected to pass by Nayoumealuk’s caribou by the time Iqqaipaa closes in January, 2000.

Some 120 carvings in stone, ivory, whalebone and antler, as well as 30 prints and wallhangings are also on display.

“I went for the best,” said Iqqaipaa’s curator, Maria von Finckenstein. “I chose the pieces with the most evocative power and the ones most eloquent of the culture.”

From the museum’s collection of 3000 pieces, she selected works such as a scene of a family traveling with dogs,and another of a woman holding a fox fur.

“They can stand up with the finest art in the world,” she said. “We should be proud.”

Inutsiaq, an Iqaluit carver who died in 1967, finished his piece called “Family Migrating” in 1957. In those days, during the summer and fall families traveled overland, carrying their belongings on their backs. In Inutsiaq’s piece, an older child is lying on top of the father’s pack, while the mother carries a baby in her amauti. The dogs carry the tent poles.

Eli Weetaluktuk’s “Woman with Fox” also dates from 1957, the year before the Inukjuak carver’s death.

“The few known pieces by this artist all show the same tendency towards refinement and exquisite detail,” writes von Finckenstein in the exhibition catalogue. “Here the dark stone has been enlivened with infinitely fine tattooing on the woman’s face and delicate stitching along her skin boots. She is holding a fox by its hind paws, its tail flipping over.”

Trapping, notes the curator, was an important part of Inukjuak’s economy before the collapse of the fur market.

Houston also loaned 21 pieces from his own collection to the exhibit. He chose early, mainly unpolished, carvings to illustrate techniques and a vision no longer present in contemporary works.

“I’m not seeing as much life in the stone today,” admitted Houston.

Iqqaipaa’s display starts off in Nunavik, where Houston first met Nayoumealuk, then progresses chronologically through the other regions where commercial carving spread. A multi-media catalogue, guided tours, and demonstrations by carvers will take visitors through the exhibit.

Houston isn’t sure just how he managed to hold on to his first carving for so many years, but he hopes to integrate recently-found footage of a visit with Nayoumealuk into the display.

For Houston, the opening of Iqqaipaa, more than half a century later after this meeting, will be a deeply emotional event.

Iqqaipaa’s opening will be followed by the launch of two other exhibits on Nunavut.

Inuit and Englishmen: the Nunavut Voyages of Martin Frobisher, chronicles the explorer’s attempt to establish a colony on Kodlunarn Island in the mid 1500s. It also details what’s been called the first mining fraud in North America.

An exhibit of photos by Eugene Fisher called Nunavut: Jewel of the Arctic will also show at the museum until January, 2000.