I'm splittin'

Click photo to enlarge

We end the week by continuing Wednesday’s consideration of Alootook Ipellie’s cartoons published in Inuit Today magazine in the 1970s. In addition to a comic strip series that followed the adventures of the Nook family, Ipellie created what he called “filler” comics. The curators of his touring retrospective exhibition Walking on Both Sides of an Invisible Border observe that:

These smart editorial cartoons often followed the context of the magazine’s articles, even the content of the pages upon which they were printed, expressing the artist’s distinct views on the conversations presented. Ipellie tackled challenging topics, including climate change, sovereignty, colonialism, politics and housing. As he said in an interview in 1995, ‘If I am thinking about something that is affecting my people in some way, then if I can somehow make it simpler in one picture, or one cartoon, then maybe I can help people understand it better and have a laugh at the same time.’ 

In the cartoon at the top of this post, known as “I’m splittin’”, Ipellie once again turns to satire as he cheekily references Robert Flaherty, the ethnographic filmmaker who was notorious for his pseudo-documentary Nanook of the North (1922). On Monday’s blog post, Adele Ruhdorfer shared how Flaherty captured the imagination of North American and European settlers with his purposely misleading portrayal of Inuit society and people as static and naïve, thereby perpetuating negative and outdated stereotypes. One of the key plot lines in Flaherty’s film is the re-creation of a seal hunt where he insisted that the character Nanook – portrayed by lead actor Allakariallak – use a harpoon rather than the rifle that he had been accustomed to hunting with.

In Ipellie’s cartoon, the filmmaker is an Inuk who holds both a video camera and a rifle as he films his polar bear protagonist. There are some witty double entendres in this scenario. For example, the name that Flaherty gave to his film’s main character, “Nanook”, means “polar bear” in Inuktitut. Ipellie offers a funny and literal interpretation by substituting a human with a polar bear as his lead actor. Further, the filmmaker is literally ready to “shoot footage” of his subject with a gun and a camera in his hands.

The thought bubbles in this comic indicate a telling miscommunication between the two characters. This miscommunication reveals an underlying reversal of power wherein the bear actor expresses his agency and resistance by walking away from and refusing to participate in the staged scene, while the human filmmaker is shown to be dogged and naive in thinking he is getting great coverage. If we think of the bear as a stand-in for Allakariallak and Inuit more generally and the human as a substitute for Flaherty and settlers, then this is a light-hearted yet clever and coded strategy that Ipellie uses to dismantle power inequities between Qallunaaq and Inuit.

Click photo to enlarge

Another of Ipellie’s single frame comics from this era points to the absurdity of paternalistic attitudes toward Inuit held by settlers. On the right, a Qallunaaq is speaking to an Inuk. The height differences between the two figures suggests that the taller person is an adult while the shorter person is a child. The Qallunaaq holds a harpoon and a small axe in his hands and tells the Inuk that these items “belonged to your 25^th great-grandfather.” Once again, there is a communication disconnect between the two characters as the Inuk scratches his head in bewilderment, disbelief or even exasperation at what the Qallunaaq is saying. Ipellie’s readers must have chuckled at the ignorance of a non-Inuk haughtily portaining to teach them about their own culture, an encounter they may have experienced themselves on one too many occasions.

A second, underlying narrative implied by this cartoon is the excavation and removal of Inuit material culture from their original territories followed by their placement in museum collections located in the south. Today, this remains an ongoing concern as Inuit advocate for the creation of the Nunavut Heritage Centre in Ipellie’s hometown of Iqaluit and the subsequent repatriation of Inuit artifacts.

These two examples of Alootook Ipellie’s self-described “filler comics” from the 1970s show how the artist used his quick wit to poke fun at oppressive settler-colonial attitudes thereby expressing the resilience of his people.

Post author: Jennifer Gibson

Sources:

Sandra Dyck, Heather Igloliorte and Christine Lalonde, Walking Both Sides of an Invisible Border, exhibition section panel, 2018.

Michael P. J. Kennedy, “Alootook Ipellie: The Voice of an Inuk Artist,” Studies in Canadian Literature (Volume 21, Number 2), 1996. Accessed March 21, 2020.

Amy Prouty, “Drawing Inuit Satiric Resilience: Alootook Ipellie’s Decolonial Comics,” esse, Number 93 (Spring 2018). Accessed March 21, 2020.

Images: Alootook Ipellie, [I’m splittin’], published in Inuit Today, October 1976, ink on paper, estate of the artist. Photo by Justin Wonnacott, courtesy of Carleton University Art Gallery. Detail of Walking Both Sides of an Invisible Border, exhibit installation at Gallery 1C03 showing the comic [your 25^th great-grandfather] published in Inuit Today (1974-1981). Photo by Karen Asher.