Alma Houston - Notes on Eskimo Art: Cape Dorset

Notes on Eskimo Art - - Cape Dorset

By Alma Houston Cape Dorset, on the southwestern tip of Baffin Island, has a population of three hundred and fifty Eskimos. At high tide, Cape Dorset is an island, with rocky coastline and hills up to nine hundred feet high. The settlement is at the mouth of a large bay, which provides a good harbour for ships, and a landing piece for aeroplanes on floats in summer; in winter, ski-equipped aircraft land on the bay’s thick ice.

The only scheduled air service is a once-monthly mail flight from Moosonee, on the mainland of Ontario - - monthly, except at ‘freeze-up’ in autumn, and ‘break-up’ of the sea ice in spring, when a period of six to eight weeks, Cape Dorset is inaccessible by air. Ocean transport is possible from mid-July until the middle or end of October. Communication with the rest of the world is possible the year round by two-way radio.

Local medical services consist of a nursery station, staffed by one or two government-employed nurses; the ‘C.D. HOWE’, a Canadian Government hospital ship, visits once a year. X-rays, dental care, examinations are available to all Eskimos. The ship has facilities for removing patients to the nearest hospital or transportation point. Most Eskimos are hospitalized in the south, although those suffering from minor illnesses are treated at Frobisher Bay on Baffin Island, some three hundred miles away.

The Federal Government day school at Cape Dorset has four classrooms, and represents one of the major reasons for the growth in population of the settlement itself. Eskimo parents are reluctant to be separated from their children, and the government-built hostels are not much used. Rather, the parents have moved from their traditional camps to reside permanently near the school. Some of the children who complete the Grade Eight level the school offers, go on to the government’s vocational school at Churchill, Manitoba.

The Hudson’s Bay Company built its trading post at Cape Dorset in 1913, trading rifles, ammunition, tea, tobacco, cloth, kerosene for lamps and primus stoves, in return for fox pelts and sealskins. Today, at the Hudson’s Bay Company store at Cape Dorset sells everything from costume jewellery, tape recorders, hi-fidelity record players, movie cameras, all kinds of ready-made clothing, imported tinned and packaged food to freight canoes, outboard motors, in addition to the now traditional tea, tobacco, ammunition and rifles.

In the early nineteen fifties, the great leader Pootagook was catechist of Cape Dorset’s Anglican Eskimo community. Although the people had been practising Anglicans for two generations, Cape Dorset had never had a church, nor a resident Anglican minister. Pootagook advised the Bishop of the Arctic diocese that he and his people would provide fox pelts to pay for materials for a church, and that they would build it themselves. The church has been used regularly since its completion in 1953. The Eskimo catechists were helped by a visiting

missionary until 1961, when he established a permanent mission residence near the little church. Many of the Eskimos at Cape Dorset are devout Christians.

In 1951, under a grant from the Canadian Government, James Houston arrived in Cape Dorset. His purpose was to encourage the people to make their carvings for export. He found many skilled carvers, and some talented artists. He was to work with the Cape Dorset people for ten years. In 1957, he introduced print-making - - stone cut and stencil techniques. Copper engraving was not introduced until 1962.

In 1959, the Cape Dorset Eskimos formed the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative, at that time, a ‘Producers Cooperative’, making prints, exporting the carvings, parkas and other crafts, made by individual members. Later, in competition with the Hudson’s Bay Company, the Cooperative opened its own retail store.

In the meantime, the Federal Government has assisted the people with their housing problems. Eskimos are able to buy or rent small frame houses, pre-fabricated in the south, erected on the site by Eskimo themselves. Snowhouses are still used for travelling, or by visiting families, who still live in their traditional camps. Every summer, most Eskimo families move out of their little frame dwellings into tents. The tents are sewn by the women from white canvas, and each has a wooden door.

Most of the male artists and craftsmen of Cape Dorset are still hunters first. Their area still abounds with game: seals, walrus, polar bears, fish, game birds - - such as Canada and blue geese, ptarmigan, and ducks. Still they trap the white fox and mainly in winter, go inland to hunt caribou. The women’s lives are easier, as ready-made clothing and boots are worn except in the coldest weather, when their sinew-sewn caribou, sealskin, and blanket-cloth clothing is superior to any of the imported items to be found in the two stores. The new small houses are far from elegant, but they are warmly heated by imported fuel oil, and they are dry.

In the school, their children learn English. The curriculum closely resembles that of southern Canadian schools. Of the adults, only a few are English-speaking, and of these, none of the artists.

The prints, the new printed textiles, and the older established carvings from Cape Dorset, are made by artists rooted in the traditional life of their people. The new influences began seriously to reach them only about 1950, when the first schools were built. In 1951, two families lived in the settlement on a year-round basis, the other seventy families living on the land except for something like two weeks in summer, at ship time. In 1966, about sixty families live permanently in the settlement, and the hunters leave their families there and go out farther now in search of game, the danger lessened, if not removed, by the substitution for the fragile on-man kayaks, of sturdy freight canoes and whale boats with outboard motors and sometimes inboard engines. In winter, the hunters and trappers rely upon their dog-teams, although

recently the ‘Skidoo’ has made its appearance. To people whose survival in the past depended upon making use of any possible material, the push-button starter of a ‘Skidoo’ is irresistible.

With larger groups of people living together, the burden of hunting to feed large and hungry teams of dogs becomes heavier. Any one hunting area will support only a few families. The alternative, the ‘Skidoos’, lack romance for the southerner, who likes his Eskimos as they are, but its practicality appeals to the Eskimos, and anyway, it’s novel, it’s fun.

New material comforts they have. Still they live simply, compared to most of the rest of Canada. Plumbing is almost unknown, although there are electric lighting and some telephones.

Running water in the home is enjoyed by very few, and in the long winter, water is ice, brought from the lakes in blocks, and melted in kettles.

Life begins to be structured. School begins and ends at regular times; work in the settlement is on a nine-to-five basis. The print shop, however, belongs to their own Cooperative, and it is not surprising that some flexibility, that a concession to nature, is to be found. On days when the weather is suitable for hunting, the printers forget that they are printers and become hunters again. The print shop is closed; as printers, as such, are non-existent on those cloudless, calm days; they do not have to be paid. The climate being what it is, there are more than enough windy days - - days of blizzards with no visibility, when hunting would be impossible; and dark, bitterly cold days, when powdery snow moves like smoke along the land; when hunting was in the past possible only out of dire necessity. Today, with social security, dire necessity has become a thing of the past.

Traditionally, most of the carving was done by men. Their hands were skilled, they made their hunting weapons, even their tools. The kayak, fish spear, not to mention the snowhouse, were perfectly suited to their requirements. They lived in a harsh environment, with only their dogs as helpers. Everything a family needed, had to be made by some member of that family, if they lacked stone for meat pots and seal oil lamps, great journeys had to be undertaken to find stone, or to trade with Eskimos who had stone. The women were kept busy sewing clothing for all of the family, tents of sealskin for summer, the skin covers of kayaks and the large skin boats called “umiak” or women’s boats. Today, the women have more leisure; their native skills have not been lost, and in addition to sewing and embroidering parkas, making dolls, mittens and slippers for export, more and more women have taken up carving. Among the print makers, over half are women, the men say women’s imaginations are richer because they are closer to the spirits. As a hunter said, “In vain, man goes in search of game, but those who sit by the lamp are strong and it is their strength that guides us.”

Eskimos carve and make prints for a living; their natural serenity and poise allow them to carve with confidence. Perhaps they need to make art for other reasons. The new influences, growing more pervasive every year, must remove meaning from their lives, as old traditions die.

One of the purposes of art is to give life a meaning. Certainly their arts have gained the Eskimos recognition, and, perhaps, greater respect than they might otherwise have been shown.

Kenojuak may be taken as an example of the younger artists, unique though she is. In her drawings and prints, she has explored the world of her imagination, of enchanted birds and visions of spirits, of strange and beautiful aquatic forms. Over a period of ten years, many of her prints have been drawn from her dreams, but nowhere has she ‘dreamed’ about contemporary life in Cape Dorset. This year, her prints are few. She announced quite suddenly that she intends to work in stone now. In her sculpture, as great as her prints, but quite different, she finds inspiration in her surroundings, her visible-to-all environment. Her ‘Mother with Two Children’ and ‘Boy Holding Young Dog’, are universal and, at the same time, very typical of life in Cape Dorset.

To the older artist, Parr, life is measured by seasons, the migrations of geese, the summer fish run, the growth to manhood of his grandchildren, the death of one of his contemporaries. For him, the great time change never happened. In his simplicity, the people are individuals who accept him or ignore him, who like his drawings or laugh at them perhaps.

Just like Eskimos. The new people have done something for him, they have sought his drawings, paying for them. To a man who has been unable to hunt for twenty-five years, it is good to be independent. And with the money, one can buy things undreamed of a few years ago.

Kananginak is another of the young artists, who grew up as a hunter. A son of the great and influential Pootagook, brother of three hunter-artists, five years ago, Kananginak would have become his father’s successor - - leading hunting expeditions in the family’s forty-foot Peterhead boat, making decisions for the family and the lesser people who depended upon the leader for guidance and sustenance.

The coming of some of the trappings of civilization changed his life. Men who waited for his father’s decisions, now spoke up at community meetings. Poor men who depended upon his family, now had their own boats, their own spheres of influence. People, who needed help, looked to the Government. In the cooperative, the fact that he was President, was reassuring, but part of the new way was revealed in the fact that the President had only one vote, like all the others on the Board of Directors. Being the son of Pootagook, he left the Cooperative executive, left the print shop, and went back to make his name on the land, as a hunter. It lasted two years.

Then he returned. Worked at the Cooperative; learned. Became an expert textile printer, made copper engravings, carved. Hunted, whenever he could. For the second time in 1966, he was elected President of the Cooperative, this time because he has proved himself worthy of that position. He is realistic about his future - - he knows the new influences are here to stay, that he will be a force in the community in direct relationship to his own ambition, ability and humanity.

Some experts feel that the art of the Canadian Eskimos will inevitably disappear, which is to say that their culture as such, is expected to die.

Their language was unwritten until 1890, when an Anglican missionary adapted Dr. James Evans’ Cree syllabarium to the Eskimo language. In spite of this, the old legends, creation myths and ancient hunting songs were passed down without change for centuries. The one Eskimo language was common to Eskimos from Siberia to Greenland. Groups who had no contact with each other for centuries were found to know the same stories, told in almost exactly the same way.

The introduction of social security changed their culture irrevocably. Their old philosophy could be illustrated by the constantly used word, “Iyonamut”, “There is no help for it” - - “It cannot be helped.”

Faced with death or disaster, or even ordinary hardships, the people were conditioned to accept without complaint. One of the mansions in the hereafter was called “The Land of the Crestfallen,” where everyone sat around with nothing to do, with long faces, bored. This was the lot of those who went about apathetically in life on earth. The spirits were displeased with those who did not display cheerfulness and good humour.

Again, the old way of life was so hard, dependent upon the cycles of animals, the weather, that perhaps only the strong survived. Their health was excellent, which must have helped considerably towards maintaining the good humour they aspired to.

The new influences include distractions. Eskimos have always enjoyed visiting, and now that they live in larger communities, there is less quiet - - there is radio, films, the children are in school from the age of six. Young women are refusing to marry the partners chosen by their parents. Some of the young men are confused, bewildered by the future. Perhaps there is no alternative to the disappearance of Eskimos as we know them. Among the young people are a few who have lived and worked in southern Canada. Almost every one of these I have met, feels strongly the need to help his people. He does not refer to material comfort, but to their vulnerability to the outside pressures, which threaten to break their culture apart.

Their great teacher - - Nature, remains unspoiled. Vast, moody, unforgiving. Rarely gentle in that land. Demanding the best these humans had to offer. In its harshness, forcing them to live close together in small snowhouses and tents - - there is warmth in large families crowded into small spaces - - no room was left for luxuries, especially the luxury of small quarrels. The people were dependent upon each other. Husbands could not exist without wives to sew their waterproof boots, and their warm clothing. Everyone depended upon the hunters.

Children grew up knowing about birth and death, and such was the lack of privacy, and the honesty of the people, that children were aware of themselves as individuals with strength and failings. From this realistic beginning, they developed poise. They posessed [sic] serenity, which leads to happiness, as it enables the possessor to see the beauty hidden in everything.

This serenity shines forth from the face of Kenojuak, and others to this day. It is beautiful to behold, this lack of self-consciousness. Often sophisticated southerners expect Eskimos visiting from the north to be shy, awkward, even timid. With some exceptions, this is not true.

The Eskimo knows what he can and cannot expect of himself. He is not a perfectionist.

He is tolerant of the failings of others, and sometimes amused. When Kananginak attended the opening at Stratford, Ontario, of an exhibition of Cape Dorset prints and carvings, he exhibited poise, dignity and humour. Asked after the opening, what his impressions were, he said “it was rather like being under a cliff when gull’s nests were being raided.” When asked afterwards if he had been nervous about appearing on television, he laughed. He thought the question was meant as a joke, a gentle way of poking fun at the “nervousness” of the interviewer and others connected with the program. Gently, Eskimos admit that Kanoonas (ourselves) are generally ‘uimajaktu’ (oo-e-ma-jak-too), which loosely translated means nervous, or lacking serenity. A few of those who have lived in the south add ‘opinane’ - - “no wonder”!

As their art shows, Eskimos have great powers of observation. Their lives have depended upon these powers for centuries.

Ancient carvings, dating back 2000 years or more, were mostly animals and birds, a few spirits. In the contemporary period, this is generally also true. Birds, seals, bears, walrus, and always some human figures are made. It is interesting to observe their carvings of humans over the past eighteen years. Where the art remains reasonably pure, human figures are carved in individual styles, all exhibiting power and simplicity. Where many influences have affected the lives of the artists over a long period, we see exaggerated attention to details of dress, figures in action, more and more complex. It is possible that already some of the people are losing themselves, are becoming assimilated.

The vast majority of carvings made by Canadian Eskimos are made for sale, for money.

Because there are few ways to make living [sic], many people perhaps carve who would prefer to do something else. And yet, it is typically Eskimo to survive by applying oneself to making the best of whatever means are available.

In the past, carvings were said to be made as grave furniture, as amulets, toys. Perhaps they were almost always made for reasons other than the sheer joy of carving - - or art for art’s sake.

Whatever his reason for carving, the Eskimo artist has enriched substantially Canadian art as a whole. He has brought joy to private collectors and public museums. He has carved financial independence out of the modern complexities. He has communicated through his art as he never could through his unique and virtually unknown language.

An Eskimo artist exclaimed on the completion of a pencil drawing of the ‘moon spirit’, “I never knew before what the moon spirit looked like exactly - - now I know.”

Let us hope that the same inspiration shows these people, who have such remarkable endurance that they have survived for centuries in the most hostile climate in the world, whatever spirit they need to survive the interest and the influence of their admiring fellow Canadians.