Inuit prints and seal bones: Arctic 4

Heart of the Arctic 4, Wednesday July 27, 2022

Kinngait from the hilltop

There is so much to learn and so many people capable of teaching me but I feel slightly overwhelmed. I’m here on this ship, in the middle of the Arctic. The land passes by in the clear blue of Arctic summer and I need to choose. I can watch the PowerPoint slides, so carefully prepared by the people who know, the people who lived into and who love their subjects. They are an invaluable resource and there is not enough time.

Not enough time to simply sit on the deck in the sunshine. Not enough time to make pencil marks in my sketchbook or to add the colours of the Arctic light to the pages I have already sketched in.

And so today before lunch and before we take to zodiacs to go onto the land, I sit in the cabin with my keyboard. I am missing a presentation on the ancient peoples of the Eastern Arctic. I know it will be interesting and that this presenter will have prepared with care. I need the quiet at this moment, need to download some of what has been running circles in my head.

It has been two years since I was north of 60 and each time I come I relearn what a special place this is. Yesterday we were in the community of Kinngait (Cape Dorset) where Innuit printmaking started. We watched as a veteran printmaker applied colour to a plate, confidently using first yellow and then black until the surface was covered to exactly the right extent. When the ink was on he took a sheet of paper and a sheet of wax paper and put them together. Then he laid the papers onto the stone with the waxed paper facing up. He took a bundle of some sort also covered in waxed paper and rubbed it over the surface of the paper to transfer the ink.

He stopped, looked around at his appreciative audience and then said in Inuktitut, that he had to get the special tool. He walked over to a drawer, reached in and held up a spoon, an ordinary dessert spoon. He grinned showing gaps in his teeth, returned to his print and began rubbing the edges of the image with the spoon. I suppose the spoon is such a good tool because it is rounded and allows him to apply pressure exactly where he wants it without the danger of tearing the paper. When he had finished with the spoon he ran his hand over the back of the paper then grasped it carefully by its top corners and pulled it away from the stone block. [ed. I regret I didn’t write down the printmaker’s name and now I don’t remember it.]

Spoon as a printmaking tool

Again he smiled and slowly turned, holding the print up to all 360 degrees of the room while cameras captured that moment. He laid the print on the table in front of him, took a bottle of what looked like oil of some kind, squirted a bit onto the block and wiped it off with a rag.

The translator stressed how important it was to clean the block. Someone asked how he managed to get the prints so close because he was applying the different colours by eye. The answer was practice which turns into experience. The two prints were not completely identical but they were very close.

Our guide then told us that each artist makes a total of 65 prints so he can choose the best 50, the number of prints in the limited edition. I found out later that the prints we saw him make would be destroyed after we left. They were for demonstration purposes only and he had already done a run of that particular design.

Photo credit: Richard Gaskell

In the gallery I spotted a lovely carving of an owl all in white. I admired it very much but it was too big and heavy. I wanted something smaller and lighter to carry home. Then I spotted a little ookpik made of green stone. It had one wing raised as if in greeting. Knowing that there were others coming through the gallery I didn’t hesitate to pick it up and carry it with me for the rest of the tour. I also like the brilliantly coloured designs on t-shirts, but t-shirts discolour and wear out and the little owl will sit in my study waving its wing at me long after the t-shirts have been turned into rags. I paid cash for my little friend although at the print shop they also took credit cards.

After the young woman calculated the GST there were a few coins left in change. I didn’t particularly want to carry coins so I suggested she put them to the side of the cash register. She smiled and did so. She directed me into the next room to have my purchase wrapped by Mike.

My little owl 

Mike is an affable sort and as he worked to cut off a cardboard tube with a hand saw to package up the print purchased by the person ahead of me, he talked about joining the military directly after high school. He said that boot camp was like baby camp to him, so familiar was he with being out on the land. He said he had been deployed all over the place.

When it was my turn I told him that I had wanted to come to Kingait for a long time. His hands stopped moving for a moment. He looked into my face and smiled, “I'm glad you finally got to come,” he said, his hands folding the bubble wrap and tearing strips of tape. I thanked him and he thanked me and I walked out into the brilliant sunshine with my bubble-wrapped owl held in one hand.

In the afternoon we went to the site of a Thule encampment. All around a small pond were bones of seals and walrus. Our ship guide Marc St. Onge, a geologist, told us that at the time of the encampment the land would have been at sea level. It was now on a saddle between the sea and another large body of water. When the ice from the most recent ice age melted, the land began to spring back now relieved of the weight of the ice.

As we walked through the park, we saw wildflowers in purple, yellow and white, and we found a few tiny mushrooms. The rocks sparkled with flecks of mica. On the other side of the saddle was an inukshuk a couple of feet taller than a person. The interpretive sign explained that inuksuit (the plural of inukshuk) were used to communicate many different things. One might be placed as a message to land at that place on the shore. Another might signal a good hunting spot.

As we looked out onto the sea beyond the saddle we noticed something breaching the surface of the water off near the distant shore. Dozens of binoculars came out and pointed in the direction of the splash. Again a breach in the surface of the water and this time we could see that it was a beluga whale, perfectly white. As we watched we identified at least two individuals, perhaps three. I didn’t bring my mirrorless camera with the telephoto on this walk because I decided to save battery for the next expedition where there would be more birds and probably more likelihood of seeing seals and maybe polar bears.

There was one woman on board who thought that her charging cradle might fit my battery and she took it to her room to check. It didn’t. I thought that would probably be the case but it was generous of her to try. People have been very understanding, commiserating with me about not being able to recharge my batteries. This morning Andrea, one of the Inuit, on board characterized her culture as one of reciprocity: I will do this for you now because I can know that later when I need something and you can help me you will. That’s the feeling I have about the folks on this ship.

Perhaps it’s the north; perhaps it’s the welcome we received from our Inuit friends; or perhaps it has something to do with the mindset of people who choose to take a trip like this. I don’t know. I do know that as I go about the ship or on excursions I hear a lot of laughter, people talking and listening, genuinely interested in the experience of others. I have also heard very little complaining. There are things people won’t be happy with but it seems, so far, that we have embraced the spirit of adventure and taken all the changes in plans in stride. We are privileged to be here, privileged to be welcomed into this land by the people who call it home. When I first came on one of these trips, it was to be the trip of a lifetime. Since then I have come on 4 more trips and will likely come on more. I want to travel in these waters and on this land as long as it retains its hold on me and as long as I can get into and out of a zodiac.

Some love the excitement of cities. I love the vastness of the Arctic landscape when the small plants bloom and the world is embraced by northern light.