Nuna and Vut

 Click photo to enlarge

The year after he published his collection of drawings and short stories, Arctic Dreams and Nightmares, Alootook Ipellie initiated a new comic strip. The curators of his retrospective exhibition, Walking Both Sides of an Invisible Border, summarize this work:

Between 1994 and 1997, Ipellie drew the cartoon strip Nuna and Vut for the Eastern Arctic newspaper Nunatsiaq News. Nuna and Vut follows the antics and adventures of two Inuit brothers in the years preceding the signing of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, which led to the creation of the territory in 1999. During this period, Nunatsiaq News covered the political debates between the North and the South regarding the formation of Nunavut and the separation from the Northwest Territories, including the drawing of boundaries and the division of land and resources. Ipellie’s lighthearted series contributed fresh perspectives to those debates.

As with Ice Box, his first comic strip which was published in Inuit Today from the mid-1970s through early-1980s, Ipellie’s main audience for Nuna and Vut was fellow Inuit living in the North. And, as before, he uses humour as a foil while reflecting upon the political and social issues of the day. His main characters are once again members of a family unit and he draws them as comical caricatures. While the Nook family protagonist of Ice Box had a bowl haircut and buck teeth, the duo of Nuna and Vut are physical opposites. Nuna is short and round (his torso is literally a circle) and Vut is tall and thin (his upper body is a rectangle).

Nuna and Vut find themselves in situations that are simultaneously akin to the slapstick routines of Laurel and Hardy, yet at the same time reflect current affairs. The small sampling of Nuna and Vut cartoons included in Walking Both Sides of an Invisible Border show that Ipellie addressed a variety of issues, from climate change – the characters find themselves caught off guard in a treacherous spring break up and flood-like spring run-off – to the emergence of access to the internet in the North – Nuna and Vut try to see if they can find the end of cyber space.

A unique aspect of the Nuna and Vut series is Ipellie’s insertion of himself into the narrative in his role as the cartoonist. In one scene, Ipellie depicts himself observing Nuna and Vut’s actions through binoculars. In another, he draws his self-portrait with the characters clinging to his goatee. His thought bubble reads “Funny how those you helped create seem to cling on to you for the rest of your life and vise versa.” Here, he suggests the interlocking identities of comic strip creator and creations. In a third comic sequence, Vut is shown playing golf. The golf ball bounces against the comic panel’s border and comes back hitting him in the head. The text reads “Vut, yet again, forgets to sign an agreement with the cartoonist to leave out the border-lines…” This thinly veiled reference to the Nunavut land claim agreement negotiations would have certainly enlisted laughs from his readers.

Click photo to enlarge

The comic sequence in the featured image shows one large, wide panel above a series of four smaller, square panels. In the first panel, Nuna and Vut stand on top of a globe of the earth and throw square snowballs at Qallunaat. The Qallunaat blast Nuna and Vut with round snowballs from a cannon. Writing between the two sparring factions reads “When Nuna & Vut have snowball fights against southerners, their methodology is uniquely Eskimo...” Vut says “What extravagance! Must be politicians!” Nuna says “No doubt!” The Qallunaat say “Go Ottawa go! Go Ottawa go!”

In the following four panels, Nuna and Vut have a conversation. Vut stands upside down on the ground and Nuna stands right side up, also on the ground. The dialogue between them reads: “Hey, Vut, you still with us?” “I should be asking you that question!” “But…look at you!” “Me? It’s you – not me!” “Have you gone mad?” “Nope! Not me – you have!” “We live in an up-side down world!” “You’re driving me nuts!”

Both storylines in this sequence suggest a disconnect in terms of perspective, communications and defense strategies. Once again, Ipellie’s visual humour and use of satire could be appreciated by the readers of Nunatsiaq News as Inuit leaders continued their long battle to achieve an acceptable land claims settlement for their people.

Post author: Jennifer Gibson

Sources:

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

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

Images: Alootook Ipellie, Nuna and Vut, published in Nunatsiaq News, March 18 and 25 1994, ink on illustration board, Estate of the artist, photo by Justin Wonnacott, courtesy Carleton University Art Gallery; Alootook Ipellie, Nuna and Vut, ink on illustration board, Estate of the artist, These Nuna and Vut comic strips were published in Nunatsiaq News from January 1994 through October 1996, photo by Karen Asher.