INUIT AND KENYAN ARTISTS SHARE EXPERIENCES

An article written by Mary Craig, Fine Art Director of La Fédération des Coopératives du Nouveau-Québec, and printed in the 1987 fall issue of Inuit Art Quarterly (IAQ), vol. 2, no. 4:10.

In August 1986, sculptor Jimmy Arnamissak of Inukjuak travelled to the Kisii district in western Kenya as a guest of the sculptor and teacher Elkana Ong'esa. This year Ong'esa visited Inukjuak and Povungnituk. The exchange was orchestrated by staff at McGill University's Centre for Cognitive and Ethnographic Studies where Ong'esa had earned a Master of Education degree before returning home to teach at Kisii College. The exchange has prompted some interesting comparisons between the circumstances in which Kenyan and Canadian soapstone carvers work.

In Kenya, Arnamissak worked side by side with soapstone carvers native to the district. Although the stone was unfamiliar and the environment even more so, he coped very well. He did have problems tactfully turning down offers to buy his finished carvings. The prices offered by Kenyans were miniscule compared to those he would have received from the co-operative in his home village of Inukjuak. When the Kenyan carvers realized this, there were many excited discussions - their experience was very different from Arnamissak's.

Kisii carvers are governed by quotas and deadlines in the production of standardized carvings which vary only in size. If an artist has any creative energy left after filling his quota, he may carve a subject of his own choosing, but as that is not part of a specific order he must do his own marketing. That usually entails a bus trip to Nairobi where he must peddle his wares from one gallery to the next. If successful, he returns home with a pitiful fraction of the price his carving will eventually command. And, unless he is one of a favoured few, he will forever remain anonymous, "a Kisii soapstone carver" to whom no one has bothered to attach a name.

Kenyan carvers do have some distinct advantages over their Inuit counterparts. Quarrying soapstone in Kisii is "a piece of cake" compared to the struggle described by Nutaraaluk Iyaituk of Ivugivik (in "A Conversation with Nutaraaluk Iyaituk," IAQ, Spring 1987) and shared by most Inuit artists. Also, working in a poorly heated, dust-laden carving shack during an Arctic winter is certainly less pleasant than working in Kenya's fresh air and sunshine.

Nevertheless, in other respects Inuit artists lead pampered lives, in control of what and when they carve and assured of fair and prompt remuneration for their work. Not surprisingly, the Kisii carvers showed great interest in Arnamissak's description of the Arctic co-operatives and the support they provide to Inuit carvers.

Late in March I accompanied Ong'esa, and Thomas Eisemon and Lynn Hart from McGill University, to Inukjuaq and Povungnituk. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation had sent a film crew which, by a fluke of northern travel, arrived in Inukjuak just minutes before Ong'esa. They were ready to film him deplaning amidst what looked to be a large welcoming committee (it is a common practice in the Arctic for most of the village to meet the infrequent planes).

From then until the film crew left, it was less the reporting of an interesting event than a CBC production. They organized and filmed, among other things, a caribou hunt, the building of an igloo, a dog team expedition and a throat-singing evening, interspersed with the inevitable sunrises and bleak landscapes. Finally, there was the interview, almost cancelled by a disgruntled Ong'esa who felt that his visit was being portrayed as a mere pleasure jaunt. He is an unfailingly gracious person, however, and his responses to interviewer Rejean Gaudreau's intelligent questions saved the film, in my opinion, from becoming just one more Arctic travelogue.

The Arctic climate was a great shock to the Kenyan artist. During the caribou hunt in Inukjuak, his feet were very cold, probably for the first time in his life. He seriously worried about frostbite and subsequent amputation until Johnny Inukpuk's son, Saurnik, traded him his own warm kamiks. He was also unsettled after watching the northern lights, which, according to local mythology, could lead to such personal disasters as beheading. Later in Povungnituk, Ong'esa was interested to see a sculpture by the late Davidialuk depicting this legend.

In Inukjuak, Ong'esa met with the Board of Directors of the co-operative who listened sympathetically to his account of problems faced by carvers in Kisii. Drawing on their own experience, the directors told Ong'esa about the difficulties and pitfalls of trying to set up co-operatives.

While in the North, Ong'esa worked with Inuit carvers as much as possible, spending time in Johnny Inukpuk's carving shack, for instance. In Inukjuak, he and Thomassie Echaluk cut stone blocks, illustrating legends from their respective cultures. Prints were pulled from these and will be combined in a poster to promote a national tour of Inuit and Kisii carving, organized by McGill and called Stories in Soapstone. The exhibition was launched in Montreal last spring, and plans are underway to circulate it nationally.

In the Povungnituk print shop, Ong'esa cut another block, this time in the company of Josie Papialuk who seemed quite baffled but as anxious as ever to please. For the first block, Ong'esa had used Kisii soapstone, which is uniform in density. He found the Povungnituk stone, which is pocked with traces of metallic substances, much more difficult to work.

Ong'ega's visit to Povungnituk coincided with the annual general meeting of La Fédération des Coopératives du Nouveau Québec and a celebration of the Federation's twentieth anniversary. He spoke to the meeting about the problems in Kisii and the Inuit delegates, representing all of the Arctic Quebec co-operatives, promised help in every way possible. This was not mere politeness but a sincere desire to reach out to another culture whose needs they recognized as being greater than their own. It was, really, a celebration of their own successes after 20 years of struggling for self-reliance.

In thanking the delegates at the meeting, Ong'esa described a ritual practiced in his own country when there is a need for cooperative effort. The leader, raising his right arm, shouts "Harumbee!" The people, raising their own right arms, reply "Hai!" On leaving the meeting room, Ong'esa raised his arm and shouted, and everyone in unison raised their arms and responded appropriately. From then on, each day's meeting ended with the cry of "Harumbee" and the response "Hai! Let's all work together!"