Alaska on Madison

10/22/2019

Many of you will have seen the New York Times article entitled, “Drawn From Poverty: Art Was Supposed to Save Canada’s Inuit. It Hasn’t.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/19/world/canada/canada-indigenous-art.html?searchResultPosition=1

I have submitted the following letter to the editor:

“Drawn From Poverty: Art Was Supposed to Save Canada’s Inuit. It Hasn’t.” paints a grim picture of life in Cape Dorset, on Baffin Island. I have visited Cape Dorset and other communities in Nunavut, and I am familiar with the Inuit art market. Unfortunately, the article only scratched the surface of a complex problem, and concentrated on sensational details.

Yes, there are serious problems with substance abuse and domestic violence in the North. But there are real structural economic issues that the article doesn’t acknowledge. Further, the reporter appears to be complaining that Cape Dorset doesn’t look like a suburban American community (“no downtown . . . streets are unnamed . . .”), and is dismissive of significant improvements like the new community center.

Like other communities in Nunavut, Cape Dorset is a small (population about 1400) community on the seacoast. There are no roads between towns; all transportation is either by air, by boat, or (when sea ice permits) by snowmobile. The airport is frequently closed, because of poor weather. It is far north of treeline; agriculture is not a possibility. Many Inuit still rely on traditional hunting, fishing and foraging for the bulk of their food. Climate change is threatening traditional hunting, by changing historical game migration patterns.

Employment opportunities are limited; the major employers are the government or the cooperative store. Art is the most significant cash crop available to the Inuit. It was probably never realistic to expect art to make Cape Dorset self-sufficient. Now, however, we are about 70 years removed from the beginnings of the Inuit art market, and the earlier generations of Inuit artists are gone. Unlike their forebears, who portrayed their experience living on the land, today’s rising generation is far removed from a traditional life.

There is no easy answer to providing infrastructure – physical, economic and social – for communities like Cape Dorset. But, having forced the Inuit to move into permanent communities in the 1950s and 1960s, the Canadian government has an obligation to do a better job.

Indigenous work is all the rage in the Canadian art world. But life in the North is as much a struggle as ever.

03/21/2019

Please help feed Savoonga, Alaska.
https://www.gofundme.com/manage/help-feed-savoonga-alaska
This winter has been a terrible one for the Yu'pik Eskimo on St. Lawrence Island, in the middle of the Bering Strait. In addition to the usual rigors of an Arctic winter -- frigid temperatures and winds of up to 100 mph -- the 800 residents of Savoonga and their neighbors in Gambell have been challenged by the consequences of climate change. As you may have read, climate change is happening faster in the Arctic than anywhere else on earth. This winter, sea ice never formed, and the Bering Strait waters have been extraordinarily rough. This has been devastating for the people of St. Lawrence Island, who are subsistence hunters. This winter's conditions have prevented them from hunting for food.

In addition, a major source of income -- digging for artifacts and carving walrus ivory -- has also been disrupted, as a result of public confusion about the rules governing sales of ivory. (The people of Savoonga are allowed to dig artifacts and to carve walrus ivory.)

Now, it is essential that the people of St. Lawrence Island have a successful spring hunting season. In order to hunt, they need to buy fuel for their snowmobiles and boats, and also heating oil for their hunting camps. They estimate that they will need about $30,000 to cover the costs of the hunt.

I have started a gofundme page for the people of Savoonga. I hope that you will visit it and donate. Every $5 donated will purchase one gallon of fuel or heating oil. I hope that you will take a moment and make a contribution of any size.

Thank you.

12/30/2014

Read our January 2015 Newsletter, featuring the opening reception for Thirty From the Sixties: The First Decade of Inuit Printmaking, and a farewell to Kiugak (Kiawak) Ashoona, at http://www.alaskaonmadison.com/news/31/

12/03/2014

Read our December 2014 newsletter, which features an online exhibition of loons and our forthcoming exhibition Inuit Prints of the 1960s, at www.lesk.com/gallery/news-dec2014.html .

10/05/2014

Read our October 2014 newsletter, which features a magnificent hundred-year-old Haida hat, at www.lesk.com/gallery/news-oct2014.html

08/31/2014

Opening Reception Women of the Kivalliq and Kitikmeot http://conta.cc/1sTnraK

The works cluster around two themes:  the intimacy of family relationships, and the power of shamanism.  These two themes are improbably but beautifully combined in the keynote work for the exhibition, Victoria Mamguqsualuq's masterful wallhanging that features lovingly detailed scenes from a fishin…

06/11/2014

Read our June newsletter, which features new acquisitions, ongoing online exhibitions, and a link to a once-in-a-lifetime exhibit of Charles Edenshaw’s work, at http://alaskaonmadison.com/news. Pictured is an exquisite example of Abraham Etungat’s Arctic birds.

06/11/2014

First Atlas of Inuit Arctic trails launched by Cambridge University

For centuries, indigenous peoples in the Arctic navigated the land, sea, and ice, using knowledge of trails that was passed down through the generations.

Now, researchers have mapped these ancient routes using archival and published accounts of encounters with Inuit stretching back through the 19th and 20th centuries, and have released it online for the public as an interactive atlas – bringing together hundreds of years of accrued cultural knowledge for the first time.

The atlas, found at paninuittrails.org, is constructed from historical records, maps, trails and place names, and allows the first overview of the "pan-Inuit" world that is being fragmented as the annual sea ice diminishes and commercial mining and oil drilling encroaches. - See more at: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/first-atlas-of-inuit-arctic-trails-launched .DWMWC2oJ.dpuf

For centuries, indigenous peoples in the Arctic navigated the land, sea, and ice, using knowledge of trails that was passed down through the generations. Now, researchers have mapped these ancient routes using archival and published accounts of encounters with Inuit stretching back through the 19th…

02/16/2014

VIEWS FROM THE NORTH: ORIGINAL DRAWINGS FROM CAPE DORSET has been extended through March 30, 2014. Read about this exhibit and two exquisite wooden bowls in our February newsletter at http://www.lesk.com/gallery/news-feb2014.html

Alaska on Madison is a gallery of indigenous art of Alaska and Canada run by collectors for collectors. We feature Inuit art of the twentieth and twenty-first century Canadian Arctic, two-thousand-year-old objects from the Old Bering Sea cultures, and nineteenth century art from the Northwest Coast...