Inutsiaq

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In today’s blog post we will be taking a closer look at one of the most important people in Alootook Ipellie’s life: his maternal grandfather, Inutsiaq. Due to a strained relationship with his parents, brought on by a cycle of familial separation due to seeking medical treatment in the South and the alcoholism of his step-father, Ipellie lived with his grandparents from the ages of 10 to 15. During this time, he found peace, security, and acceptance in their loving home. Yet, he had to be separated from his family once more, to attend school in Ottawa. As an adult, Ipellie continued to pay tribute to his grandfather, even modelling his own life after him. For, Inutsiaq was also a gifted artist – he was a celebrated sculptor and storyteller with shamanic abilities. Yet, while Inutsiaq rejected these shamanic powers and converted to Christianity, we will learn in a later blogpost how Ipellie rejected these colonizing strategies, to instead fuse elements of Christianity with Inuit shamanism, in his seminal book Arctic Dreams and Nightmares. In Alootook’s portrait of his grandfather he also rejects a colonial strategy, namely, that of the colonial gaze and misrepresentation of Inuit people.

As an artist, writer, and activist, Ipellie desired to represent Inuit culture as living and continuously developing. He rejected the anthropological idea that Inuit culture was archaic and on the verge of extinction. Evidence of this idea is seen in Ipellie’s depictions of his grandfather, as he decides to re-appropriate a photograph taken by Robert Flaherty.

You may recognize the name ‘Robert Flaherty’. He is most well-known as the American filmmaker who produced the first commercially successful feature-length ethnographic documentary film, Nanoook of the North (1922). Nanook of the North follows the life of the character Nanook and his family, as they travel, search for food, and engage in trade. Both the mundane and the heroic are explored. Viewers see them build an igloo, perform their daily tasks, and hunt in extreme weather conditions. This film captured the attention of a wide audience in America and Europe. They were incredibly fascinated by the daily lives of Inuit, which felt so distant and remarkable to them. But, of course, this film is more akin to a romanticized and staged drama than it is to a truthful and documentarian representation of life in the Arctic. Although the film presents itself as an ethnographic documentary about the everyday lives of Inuit, Flaherty’s main goal was to analyze the core theme of humanity’s relationship with nature and our innate instinct for survival. In doing so, he created a “primal drama,” in which the theme of survival is transmitted in a dramatic and simplified narrative. Viewers were able to deduce this theme easily, as the film follows a narrative format that was already recognizable to them. Therefore, the film is less about the specificities of Arctic living, but rather a representation of Flaherty’s generalized vision of humanity.

The depictions of Inuit life in Flaherty’s film are in fact not consistent with actual lived experiences of the people that he portrayed. Instead Flaherty offers up a romantic framing of the way life might have been about fifty to one hundred years prior to the creation of this film. It’s worth noting, that due to the limitations of film equipment at the time, there was no way Flaherty could have documented these scenes without staging them. He and the actors staged the scenes, practiced them, and then filmed them in short sequences. Yet, Flaherty went a step further in dramatizing the narrative, by deciding to represent a version of Inuit life from a century prior. The choice to recreate an outdated way of living was deliberate on Flaherty’s part, as it would further reinforce the main theme of survival in harsh conditions. For instance, the infamous scene of the seal hunt, the climax of the film, would not have been quite as dramatic and awe-inspiring to Western viewers, had Nanook used a rifle. Yet, by the 1920s, Inuit had already been hunting with rifles for quite some time, even abandoning traditional subsistence practices. Not only did these choices create more intrigue for a Western/Southern audience, but they also effectively concealed and naturalized the effects of Western contact. While his representations of Indigenous people seem more positive and celebratory, compared to others at the same time, he still chose not to celebrate the truth. He erased all evidence of colonialism and created an illusion of Western innocence. Some scholars even suggest, that by depicting the well-recognized Western ideals of a nuclear family, the domesticity and submissiveness of women, and the strength and bravery of men, these social constructs become naturalized for the intended Western audience. Viewers could see their lives mirrored back to them, even in the most distant parts of the world! It’s possible that these sorts of romanticized depictions also served to dismiss some of the goals of the suffragist movements, as the social order of their life is presented as innately human in this so-called documentary film. In constructing a film to fit within his own ideologies, Flaherty creates an ethnocentric representation of Inuit, as his portrayals originate from within the social principles of his culture, not their own.

Similarly, in Flaherty’s photograph of Alootook Ipellie’s grandfather, Inutsiaq, he centres the Western ideal of individualism. The horizontal black and white photograph is a classic head and shoulder portrait of Inutsiaq. He looks directly into the camera with a steely, but kind gaze. He is wearing a sealskin jacket, with the hood folded down, exposing his long, dark hair to the wind. Besides the wind blowing through Inutsiaq’s hair, there is no other indicator of the Arctic environment or any of the changes that impacted Inuit ways of living. While this portrayal is not a negative representation, Inutsiaq is alone in this frame, without anyone or anything to ground him.

In contrast, in Ipellie’s rendition of his grandfather, he includes additional elements to ground Inutsiaq in the Arctic community. Ipellie has divided his illustration in two parts, with the reference to Flaherty’s photograph taking up the top two-thirds, while five children of varying ages take up the bottom third. Inutsiaq is drawn in a minimalist style with a great deal of negative space. Clean lines frame his face and fur coat. Most of the details are drawn in his hair, where Ipellie creates contrast, depth, and texture with numerous thin lines. Although this rendition is an illustration, this effect feels less flat than the reference photograph, where all the grays blend together. Then, in the foreground, five young children are visible. They are wearing Western mass-produced clothing, reminiscent of the 1980s and 1990s: graphic t-shirts and sweaters, woolen knits with plastic buttons, jeans, cotton pants, and running shoes. Yet, despite the differences in attire between Inutsiaq and the children, what grounds them across time and space is community. Inutsiaq – and other elders like him – serve an important purpose in Inuit and Indigenous communities. They are the storytellers, the ones who pass on their oral histories, geographies, and life lessons to the next generation. The next generation may need to adapt to a different way of living, but that does not mean they cannot continue to be grounded in Inuit ways of knowing.

Elders like Inutsiaq allowed Alootook Ipellie to become gifted in his art and activism. They are the ones who paved the way. Ipellie drew upon his heritage and made every effort to reject the misrepresentation of Inuit. Yet, he always centred contemporary life in all of his work, acknowledging the impact of continued colonial contact. His life and art were always punctuated by being both Inuit and having to navigate life in a Western/Southern society. By acknowledging the hybridity of his own experiences, he ensured that he would not misrepresent his own culture and pander to the illusory and romanticized narratives created for a Western audience. It would be dishonest to represent life in any other way.

Post author: Adele Ruhdorfer

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

Alootook Ipellie, "Walking Both Sides of an Invisible Border," in An Anthology of Canadian Native Literature in English, 2^nd edition, 1998.

Kimberley McMahon-Coleman, "Dreaming An Identity between Two Cultures: The Works of Alootook Ipellie," Kunapipi (Volume 28, Issue 1, Article 12), 2006.

John W. Burton,and Caitlin W. Thompson. "Nanook and Kirwinians: Deception, Authenticity, and the Birth of Modern Ethnographic Representation," Film History (Volume 14, Issue 1, 74-86), 2002.

Shari M. Huhndorf, “Nanook and His Contemporaries: Imagining Eskimos in American Culture, 1897-1922,” Critical Inquiry (Volume 27, Issue 1, 122-148), 2000.

Alan Marcus, "Nanook of the North as Primal Drama," Visual Anthropology (Volume 19, 201-222), 2006.

Images: Alootook Ipellie, Untitled (circa 1987), ink on paper, collection of Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated; Robert Flaherty (American, 1884-1951), Portrait of Enutsiak (1913-14), contemporary print from vintage negative, Library and Archives Canada/Robert and Frances Flaherty, MIKAN 3200003, Courtesy of the Robert and Frances Flaherty Study Centre, Claremont School of Theology, Claremont, CA 91711. Photo: Karen Asher.