Uqqurmiut Centre to supply Team Nunavut hats

PANGNIRTUNG—The colours of the wool—red, yellow and blue—that a self-described “Pang hat maker” was picking up from the Uqqurmiut Centre for Arts and Crafts towards the end of July provided a clue.

“Yes. The kit she just picked up is for Team Nunavut,” said Elena Akpalialuk, manager of the centre, confirming that the centre had received the contract to supply Pangnirtung hats for Team Nunavut to wear at major sporting events.

Akpalialuk said they have to provide the iconic crocheted hats by January. This means Team Nunavut will have their stylish headgear in good time for the Arctic Winter Games in Whitehorse, Yukon, in March.

She added that the hats will be made by 20 people in the community who regularly make the iconic crocheted Pangnirtung hats for the centre.

Pangnirtung MLA Margaret Nakashuk had expressed concern in the Nunavut legislature this past June about the contract to supply “Pang hats” possibly being given to a manufacturer overseas.

Nakashuk asked Lorne Kusugak, minister for community and government services, whether his department’s tendering process would ensure that Team Nunavut’s crocheted hats are “made in Pangnirtung by artists from Pangnirtung.”

Woven welcome

The Uqqurmiut centre is also well known for the tapestries woven in its beautiful circular studio.

Travellers passing through Pangnirtung’s small airport have a chance to admire one of the centre’s tapestries, which introduces visitors to the community through scenes of contemporary life, with an incoming plane flying in past the mountain and a snowmobile pulling a qamutik loaded with plastic boxes and jerry cans, alongside more traditional scenes.

The central image in the tapestry is an inuksuk guiding travellers along Akshayuk Pass through the spectacular mountains of Auyuittuq National Park, which can be reached by boat or snowmobile, depending on the season, from Pangnirtung.

The last large commissioned tapestry that the Pangnirtung weavers produced, according to Akpalialuk, was, curiously enough, a prairie scene in 2014.

But Akpalialuk added, even though they aren’t working on one big tapestry, the five weavers at the centre have plenty to do.

“The weavers are always busy. There’s always orders.”

The weavers make scarves, blankets, amauti ties, and small tapestries based on their archive of images, which were “designed years ago.”

The five weavers are all very experienced, with head weaver Kawtysie Kakee having been there since the beginning of the tapestry studio, close to 50 years ago.

When asked whether younger people were interested in taking up weaving or crocheting, Akpalialuk said, “No, but during the summer when we have summer students [from the high school], they come in here and learn to weave … and work for the summer at the centre.”

The weavers sell their products in the gift shop at the centre, alongside printed T-shirts, carvings, prints, jewellery and mittens, and through the Nunavut Development Corporation’s wholesale sales division in Mississauga, Ont., from which southern galleries make purchases.

Akpalialuk said that the Worldwide Quest cruise company ordered 150 scarves this year. The weavers have just completed that order.

Akpalialuk said that three cruise ships came to Pang last year, “but there’s only one coming this year,” so there are not so many opportunities for direct sales.

And as for that prairie scene, renowned Pangnirtung artist Andrew Qappik made a pencil drawing based on photographs provided by the client that the weavers used as a template for the tapestry.