Images of Justice. A Legal History of the Northwest Territories as Traced through the Yellowknife Courthouse Collection of Inuit Sculpture, Dorothy Harley Eber, McGill-Queen's University Press, 1997; xii + 224 pp (original) (raw)
Related papers
Nalunaikutanga: Signs and Symbols in Canadian Inuit Art and Culture
Polarforschung, 1976
The caneept na]unaikulak is applied in many contexts in Eskimo life anel i s best glossed in English as: sign, symbol, marker, guide, characteristic or. most aptly, distinctive feature. Literally the ward me ans "i ts imp orlau t de-confuser" because, in action-oriented Inuit culture, it is the feature wh ich facihlates the initiation of a process of recognition and action, by cnding ignorance and confusion naJugiak end supplying the key to appropriate action and role behavior. Thus nalunaikulanga characterize not only sexes and spccies but also pl aces and people. enabling the Inuit to go ab out th e i r everyday lives of relating, cooperatinq, travelling, hunting and knowing. More recently, w ifh th e growth of individualism in Inuit commercial arts, individual arti s ts ' nalunaikutanga h av e been deve lopcd as aspects of style, subject matter, de te il or even m aterials us ed. While modern sculptures arc gene rally able to e xh ib i t the tr adi tional nalunaikutanga of the SUbjCTt matter portrayed canine teeth for polar b e ar s , heaks for hawks , amauUk parkas for w crnen , hunting weepons for men, e tc .-there i s danger th at the content of contemporary Inuit ethnic arts will stultify as an exhibition of th e whiteman's nalunaikutanga of th e distinctive but il1-remembered Inuit past.
"If Only It Makes Them Pretty": Tattooing in "Prompted" Inuit Drawings
Études Inuit Studies, 2018
Tattooing was a widespread cultural practice amongst Inuit women for millennia before the first Europeans arrived in the Arctic. However, by the nineteenth century, colonial, imperial, and missionary mechanisms led to the decline of many pre-contact Inuit belief systems and practices, including tattooing. Although tattooing had begun to disappear from Inuit bodies by the late nineteenth century, it did not vanish altogether. Beginning in the early twentieth century, a number of Inuit, aided by newly introduced Western materials, transferred their knowledge of tattooing from skin to paper to create pictorial records of the pre-contact custom. This article begins by establishing an early precedent for post-contact Inuit drawing through the examination of work depicting tattooing collected by Reverend Edmund James Peck and Diamond Jenness. It then moves on to consider a group of twelve drawings collected by Danish-Inuk explorer and anthropologist Knud Rasmussen during the Fifth Thule Expedition. These drawings occupy a precarious place alongside other types of Inuit visual culture as they were originally collected as ethnographic artifacts, thus denying their aesthetic importance and interior Inuit cultural value. When reconsidered, these early drawings demonstrate the Inuit ability to appropriate Western materials as a form of both cultural endurance and record. Consequently, I argue that such drawings allowed tattooing to persist, albeit pictorially, despite the overall decline of the practice in its bodily form.
From map to horizon; from trail to journey: Documenting Inuit geographic knowledge
Canadian University Music Review, 2005
This paper describes how new cartographic and information technologies were used to record and represent Inuit geographic and environmental knowledge in Igloolik, Nunavut. The method proved a powerful tool to document an approach to geography that is mainly oral. It was also helpful in documenting how people relate to a highly dynamic environment as the Arctic. The method includes the merging of different geographic databases that acquire full meaning when seen as layers of the same map. It also involves the search for new ways of representing, including simulated horizons, photographs of horizons embedded on maps, and recordings of oral descriptions of trails and locations. An example of such method can be seen in the Igloolik Multimedia Project, a CD-Rom that is being currently piloted in the Igloolik high school.
Visual Anthropology, 2017
This article considers the implications of research conducted on cross-cultural representations of Inuit tattooing at the Northwest Territories Archives in Yellow- knife, Northwest Territories, Canada. The results however were fraught from the outset due to my interest in a group of eleven photographs from the Dr. Wyn Rhys-Jones collection, nine of which depict partially nude, tattooed Inuit women. Here I reflect on and analyze my research experience with regard to these photos, and contextualize the images alongside similar post-contact Western representations of tattooed Inuit women. In doing so I analyze archival policies, practices and responses, focusing on issues of accessibility.
Ethnohistoric documents as analogical tools: A case study from northwest Alaska
Archaeologists endeavour to reconstruct technological, environmental, social, cultural, and even ideological aspects of past groups and individuals using the fragmented material past. Many, if not all, of these analyses rely on analogy. Archaeologists have used the direct historical approach extensively in the Arctic to develop more nuanced understandings of the prehistoric Inuit. In many cases, the direct historical approach is not truly direct; archaeologists often assume that secondary activities, such as those that occur contemporaneously with initial deposition but that are not described in the ethnographic record such as cleaning and post-depositional processes such as weathering, alter the archaeological patterns and inhibit direct comparison to ethnohistoric sources. In this study, I analyse the relationship between the archaeological record and documentary sources to establish which patterns and activities are visible in the archaeofaunal record. I test expectations based on the documentary record, ethnoarchaeological studies, and taphonomic processes against the faunal assemblage from an early Thule Inuit semi-subterranean dwelling at Cape Espenberg, Alaska. Despite expected disturbances from contemporary activities and post-depositional processes, the faunal assemblage closely resembles expectations of primary household activities described in ethnohistoric accounts relating to consumption, preparation, and storage of subsistence resources. Only a few expectations based on secondary activities are supported. Further work is needed to test these results throughout the Arctic and across time. However, these results suggest that archaeologists can use the direct historical approach, and related ethnographic analogies, directly to interpret archaeofaunal patterning in Thule semi-subterranean houses and middens.
Museum Anthropology, 2008
Inuit have been making miniatures for thousands of years, and they are still very attractive to many Inuit today. In this paper, we explore the intrinsic ambiguity of Inuit miniatures. They seem like innocent toys or ornaments, but turn out to have great transformative power. As toys, they are instrumental in transforming children into adults; as ornaments, they may be charms or amulets; as amulets, they may be weapons against enemies; and as weapons or offerings, they may take life or generate it. Appearing as images of the world, they are in fact at its origin. Every living being traditionally derived its existence from a miniature image (the tarniq). Miniatures evoke a play of deception, transforming what appears to be real into an image of the miniature.
Hunters, Carvers and Collectors: The Chauncey C. Nash Collection of Inuit Art (Lutz)
Museum Anthropology Review, 2015
Drawing from a collection of almost three hundred sculptures and prints brought together by Harvard University alumnus, Chauncey C. Nash (Class of 1907) and donated to the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in the late 1960s, Hunters, Carvers and Collectors: The Chauncey C. Nash Collection of Inuit Art provides a well-researched and finely illustrated introduction to the early years of contemporary Inuit art. The author, librarian, and ethnomusicologist, Maija M. Lutz brings this collection to light with a thoughtful discussion that interweaves the cultural history of Inuit art in Arctic Canada-particularly the early years of printmaking in Kinngait (Cape Dorset)-with the personal history of the collector and his close relationship with Harvard University and the Peabody Museum.