 The Dawn of Contemporary Inuit Art
Until the late 1940s, Canada's Inuit lived in about 800 small family groups scattered across the Eastern and Western Arctic, moving among seasonal camps in pursuit of game and sea animals. Contact with Canada's south consisted of occasional trips to the Hudson's Bay fur trading posts which had been established in the early 1900s. Photographer: Peter Pitseolak, CMC/McCord 
The Inuit experienced great turmoil and cultural upheaval during the two decades between 1950 and 1970. Their nomadic lifestyle of trapping, hunting and fishing had collapsed and many groups suffered deprivation and periods of starvation. The Canadian government intervened by encouraging Inuit families to abandon their nomadic lifestyle and settle into the fledgling communities that had developed around a trading post, a missionary church and an RCMP station. Photographer: Peter Pitseolak, CMC/McCord By slowly joining the cash economy, these accomplished hunters, trappers and seamstresses found themselves in a situation where none of the skills that had enabled them to survive in an extremely inhospitable environment were of any use.
They did not speak English, read or wrote only in syllabics, and rarely could do arithmetic or drive a motorized vehicle. It was difficult to maintain a sense of pride and cultural identity when confronted with another culture that seemed to possess a more powerful and advanced technology. 
It soon became clear to a few key people that these nomadic hunters and gatherers possessed at least one skill of great value that could generate cash — an innate talent to fashion artifacts out of bone, ivory and local stone. In order to survive they had to develop an acute power of observation, an amazing visual memory and a spontaneous creativity born out of having to create daily tools with existing natural materials. These skills served them well as artists. Photographer: Peter Pitseolak, CMC/McCord 
In 1948, James Houston, a young artist from Toronto, visited one of the camps near Inukjuak and was impressed by the small carvings people offered him as gifts. He collected a few and showed them to the Canadian Handicrafts Guild (now the Canadian Guild of Crafts) in Montreal. That was the dawn of contemporary Inuit art. James Houston with Inuit children, 1953. 
Soon after, Houston returned to encourage art production in various regions, and with the help of the crafts guild and the Hudson's Bay Company, the barter of small carvings for tobacco, flour and pots blossomed into a large-scale enterprise. The handicrafts developed into full-scale sculptures which enchanted the world by their charm, their freshness and their innocence. Houston eventually settled in Cape Dorset, where he introduced printmaking and lived for 12 years. James Houston in Print Shop, 1962. 
Ultimately it was the arts, especially sculpture, which gave back to many Inuit a sense of efficacy and of cultural pride. The hunter who had provided for his family by killing a caribou could now carve a caribou out of stone or bone and sell it to buy food. Pride in the culture came from the fact that it was scenes and figures from Inuit life — the animals and people and their way of doing things — that people wanted to buy. Ipeelee Osuitok. |
