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NAPACHIE POOTOOGOOK This exhibition presents a very special body of work by the Cape Dorset graphic artist, Napachie Pootoogook (1938 - 2002). Late in her life and motivated in part by her failing health, Napachie decided to tell the stories of her life and times: her local history, her personal experience and the stories of other people and events - both true and legendary. Employing her years of experience as a graphic artist, she illustrated her stories - sometimes on multiple sheets - and incorporated into each drawing a section of syllabic text to explain the circumstances and the people depicted. No artist in Cape Dorset had ever done anything quite like this before. Napachie's drawings refer eloquently to a time of profound transition in the lives of the 'Sikusilaarmiut' - the people of the south Baffin coast where Napachie was born in 1938. She grew up during the waning years of the traditional camp system, when Inuit gradually relocated to permanent communities established around the existing Hudson's Bay posts. Napachie experienced first-hand the hardships brought about by the collapse of the fur trade during the Depression years, and the shortages then caused by World War II. The world she presents in many of these drawings is unpredictable, unforgiving and frequently tragic. Napachie's forthright text and clear, elegant drawing style make it possible for her audience to understand and appreciate a way of life inconceivable to most southerners. Starvation, for instance, was a terrible reality, sometimes leading to infanticide and cannibalism. Seemingly impossible choices and decisions sometimes had to be made, particularly when a member of the camp became disruptive and dangerous. As Napachie stated in one of her last interviews, "there were no emergency lines, and people lived in isolated camps where they were solely responsible for the survival of the camp. They had a hard life." Napachie was particularly attuned to the experiences of women, and spoke candidly in these drawings about their collective suffering at the hands of dominant and often dangerous men. Arranged marriages were still customary when Napachie was growing up, and she has done several powerful drawings of both herself and other women being taken in marriage against their will, in her own words, "struggling with all their might." Leadership and co-operation were essential to the survival of camp members, and several of Napachie's drawings feature the powerful south Baffin leader Attachialuk and the epic rivalry between him and Kininiq from the Arctic Quebec coast of the Hudson Strait. The two personalities have come to embody the traditional rivalry between the two regions or "sides", which is still felt to this day. Many powerful leaders were also shamans, and Napachie has done several drawings featuring shamans well known to 'Sikusilaarmiut', including her paternal grandfather, Namonai. Shamanism was not a religion and 'angakkuit' (shamans) were not priests, but more akin to specialists who dealt in the most dangerous, unseen powers of the world. Although there were "good" shamans - like the couple Alariaq and Aliguq - in Napachie's view, most were people to be feared. Inuit of her generation associate the disappearance of the shaman with the coming of Christianity. References to Christianity and its early influence are evident throughout Napachie's drawings. Widely accepted by the time Napachie was born, Christianity's perceived power guided men like Attachialuk and Kininiq in battle, and "saved" others like Napachie's grandfather, Namonai. Some individuals viewed themselves for a time as "prophets" of the new religion, and convinced people to rid themselves of their material possessions, arguing that they would only weigh them down in their ascent to heaven. Many of Napachie's stories were told to her by her mother, the late Pitseolak Ashoona, who also used drawing as a way of expressing what she referred to as "the old Eskimo ways". Napachie also thought of herself as a local "historian" and took pride in her memory and in her ability to visualize these stories. Beyond her desire to communicate her way of life to an outside audience, Napachie's work also constitutes a record of local history, customs, folklore and social relationships that will not now be lost to future generations. Napachie noted in her last interview with me that her children and grandchildren were amazed by her drawings: "They ask questions and I tell them the stories", she said. "There is so much that happened to me and to people I have known or heard about; it is almost overwhelming. There is so much that people know." Leslie Boyd Ryan
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