People from Our Side This page intentionally left blank People from Our Side A life story with photographs by Peter Pisteolak and oral biography by Dorothy Harley Eber McGill-Queen's University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Buffalo For the grandchildren Nakashook, Palaya, Pudlo Peesee, Kitty, Pitseolak, Jimmy, Annie, Charlie, Johnny, Martha, Jeannie, Nina, Mark, Mary, Pudlo, Terry, Udluriak, Mary, Numa, Mark, Emily, Joe, Pauloose, Kavavow, Peter, Akavak, Annie, Uluta Udluriak, Aksutungwaq, Matteosie, Jamasee, Adamie, Atsiqtaq, Udluriak. Dorothy Harley Eber 1993 ISBN 0-7735-0996-8 (cloth) ISBN 0-7735-1118-0 (paper) Legal deposit second quarter 1993 Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec Printed in the United States on acid-free paper Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Pitseolak, Peter, 1902-1973 People from our side: a life story with photographs and oral biography New ed. Includes index. ISBN 0-7735-0996-8 (bound) - ISBN 0-7755-1118-0 (pbk.) 1. Pitseolak, Peter, 1902-1973. 2. Inuit- Northwest Territories Cape Dorset. 3. Inuit - Northwest Territories - Cape Dorset - Biography. I. Eber, Dorothy. II. Title. E99.E7P54 1993 971.9'5 C93-090207-6 Front cover: Ice Fishing. Peter Pitseolak. One of a series of small-scale works in graphite, felt pen, and coloured pencil which the artist created circa 1967-73 using photographs as templates to illustrate traditional Inuit life. The figures here draw inspiration from photographs taken about 1958 (some appear on pages 114-15) which, according to Aggeok, show her daughter-in-law, Mary, "not really going fishing, just pretending to go fishing." Courtesy of the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative Back cover: Peter Pitseolak with his favourite camera, photographed about 1947 by his wife Aggeok. Notman Photographic Archives, McCord Museum of Canadian History Translation of Peter Pitseolak's manuscript: Ann Hanson Photographic advisor: Stanley Triggs, curator of photography, McCord Museum of Canadian History Interpreters for interviews: Ann Hanson, Udjualuk Etidluie, Letia Parr, Annie Manning, Pia Pootoogook, Sapa Aliqui Contents Preface to the 1993 reprint 9 About the story 12 About the photographs 17 Before I was born 47 My early life 127 Modern times 150 Postscript 151 Water colour portrait 152 Map 154 List of principal characters 156 Family trees 158 Acknowledgments 159 Photographic note 160 Index Preface to the 1993 reprint This reprinting of People from Our Side comes twenty years after Peter Pitseolak's death in Cape Dorset in 1973. Much has happened in the intervening period. At the time of his death it was still uncertain whether this book would see publication. After a number of disappointments, however, the first edition appeared in 1975 under the imprint of the innovative publisher Mel Hurtig. An American edition, published by Indiana University Press, Bloomington, followed in 1977. Peter Pitseolak's photographs became increasingly well known but this book — with its story of changing times in Seekooseelak, where Peter Pitseolak, at eleven, saw the Hudson Bay Company's traders arrive in 1913 to set up their post in Cape Dorset — soon went out of print. But happily it was not forgotten As the fur trading era has become more distant, scholars have become more interested in searching out first-hand accounts of the period, and Peter Pitseolak stands almost alone in having provided an Inuit account of these days. Inuit readers from south Baffin Island say they find here family history and, in the pictures of Seekooseelak campers, family photographs. Marta Pudlat of Cape Dorset told me she could not remember her mother, Etooshajuk, who died of tuberculosis when she was a baby and had never seen her picture until she saw Peter Pitseolak's photograph on page 68. I am delighted with the decision of McGill-Queen's University Press to bring the book back into print. Since their appearance here Peter Pitseolak's photographs have been the subject of a number of major exhibitions. At the time of his death, however, only a very few people outside Cape Dorset knew of the existence of the photographs or that Peter Pitseolak had been a passionate photographer. While he mentioned his photography from time to time during the interviews we did together and had identified a selection of key photographs, very little was known about his techniques and the cameras he used. He always referred to his cameras by the film he used, not by the manufacturer's name or lens opening. (His large, favourite "122" used 122 film and took postcard-sized pictures.) Much remained to be learned. Fortunately Aggeok Pitseolak (1906-1977) who, after Peter Pitseolak's initial experiments, became his principal developer and printer, was able to take up the story of how they improvised equipment and developed film in igloos, tents, and huts. Prior to publication of the book Aggeok and I worked together, with Letia Parr as interpreter, identifying many of the subjects of the photographs. New and important information was also collected at the time of a small exhibition of new prints of Peter Pitseolak's work mounted by Stanley Triggs, curator of the Notman Photographic Archives, at the McCord Museum (now the McCord Museum of Canadian History). When Peter A visual play on heraldic elements in the rampant elks and an elongated golden star Hudson's Bay Company flag. Peter for the HBC coat of arms. The field behind Pitseolak sometimes used this flag as is dark blue. a backdrop for photography (see Collection of the West Baffin Eskimo Co- page 143). In this drawing he has operative Ltd, on loan to the McMichael substituted rampant white foxes for Canadian Art Collection. Pitseolak first sent a selection of negatives south, I had asked for help from the Archives, one of Canada's great photographic repositories. In 1975, as the result of negotiations conducted by the McCord, at the time under the acting directorship of Harriet Campbell, the Department of Secretary of State acquired 1623 of Peter Pitseolak's negatives - the size of the collection at the time was unknown and initial estimates varied from 1000 to 2000 - and a small number of original prints from the Pitseolak estate, placing them on deposit at the Notman. (The collection would certainly have been larger were it not for arctic conditions: "Sometimes in the hut it got very cold and then it would get very hot so some of the negatives got mildewed. I had to burn them. Because of my experience I knew what would print," Peter Pitseolak explained to me during one of our interviews.) The purchase was in accordance with his express wish that a way be found to ensure that the negatives be "kept safe." Stanley Triggs and his staff have given the negatives expert care ever since. Aggeok, accompanied by interpreter Rosie Kelly, had come down from Baffin Island for the McCord's initial celebratory exhibition. The Archives' enlargements, beautifully printed by staff technician Tom Humphry, stirred memories and one evening, with Rosie interpreting, Aggeok talked in fascinating detail about Peter Pitseolak's early photography - "He was always inventive with his camera" — and I was able to record a key interview. This information has informed all later publications, starting with the American edition of this book.1 Preparation got underway for a further exhibition, "Peter Pitseolak: Inuit Historian of Seekooseelak," a retrospective of photographs and drawings shown first at the McCord and then at the Canadian Museum of Man (now the Canadian Museum of Civilization), a National Film Board film strip, and a pioneering travelling exhibition that took the photographs home to the North in a tour of thirty-one arctic settlement schools in both the eastern and western Arctic - photographs were mounted on folding screens specially designed to go through the smallest short take-off aircraft door. Further information was gathered from Kooyoo Ottochie, Peter Pitseolak's daughter, and Aggeok's son Ashevak Ezekiel (who is shown on page 42 acting out Cape Dorset's well remembered story of Taktillitak for Peter Pitseolak's camera). Others who were first-hand observers or participants in the photographic activities also supplied anecdotal material and sometimes photographic identifications. 1 Dorothy Eber, "Peter Pitseolak: Artist and Author," The Beaver (Winter 1975): 36-9; Dorothy Harley Eber, "How it Really Was," Natural History (February 1977): 70-5; David Bellman, ed., Peter Pitseolak (1902-1973) Inuit Historian of Seekooseelak (Montreal: McCord Museum, 1980). Our knowledge of the photographs has continued to increase. Peter Pitseolak mentions in his manuscript (p. 108) that it was when "American people" were camped at Schooner Harbour in the winter of 1922 that he first heard of moving pictures. (These movies, of Greenland Eskimo, cowboys, and soldiers according to other Cape Dorset Inuit, were shown to appreciative audiences aboard the famous exploration ship Bowdoin when she wintered over on south Baffin Island and put in at Cape Dorset on her voyage along the coast.) After Peter Pitseolak's death I often wondered, as his written text was unclear, if he had actually seen these films himself. It was only during one of my last conversations with Kooyoo — she died in 1992 - that I learned that he certainly had and had often talked about them. We now know that both Robert Flaherty, the maker of Nanook of the North, whose presence on south Baffin Island Peter Pitseolak tells of here (pp. 87- 8), and the films seen on the Bowdoin were early influences. "Those pictures were very old and my father thought if he took photographs they would last a long time like those movies," Kooyoo once told me. "He used to say that in the future people were not going to wear any more caribou clothing and he wanted to take pictures before it vanished so his grandchildren could see something of the old way." At one point Peter Pitseolak also possessed two movie cameras himself, but he told me he didn't enjoy them much "because you couldn't develop the film." (In the later stages of his photographic career he sometimes sent film or negatives "out" for processing, necessitating a wait of many months. He noted that one man entrusted with taking "some of the best negatives" down south was never heard from again. On another occasion, prints came back with a note saying there was no charge "because we have taken a picture.") Increasingly Inuit recognize the photographs as a legacy. Stanley Triggs has described the photographs as "extremely valuable because they document the life of a community at a certain point in time and were taken by a member of the community itself — extremely rare in any society."2 Work on the photographs continues. Field notes and identifications are being transferred to index cards and the collection is available to researchers. It is hoped that eventually all information will be cross-referenced and stored in a computer for easy use. Since his death, interest in Peter Pitseolak's art work has also grown. This was sparked primarily by the return to Canada of a series of watercolour drawings (now in the collections of the Canadian Museum of Civilization) done about 1939 for the young John Buchan, son of Lord Tweedsmuir, Canada's Governor General, when he was a trader with the Cape Dorset 2 Eber, "How it Really Was," 70-5. This photograph, heavily outlined, is one of a number set up for the camera by Peter Pitseolak as an aid to drawing and, according to Aggeok, "to show how for the future." Notman Photographic Archives, McCord Museum of Canadian History. Hudson's Bay Company post. Almost certainly the earliest Inuit watercolours, they demonstrate remarkable skill and show how important the traders were to Inuit life of the period. Future students of Inuit art and culture will undoubtedly also be very interested in his illustrations of Inuit myths and legends, many with accompanying texts, and to a series of brilliant small-scale drawings in which he has employed — to stunning effect — photographs taken specifically to demonstrate Inuit life and traditional techniques. Peter Pitseolak had no need to copy, but he liked to make his art work "real." The idea of using photographic templates was not new: in the early 1980s the late Lake Harbour hunter Isaccie Ikidluak, who appears in some of Peter Pitseolak's pictures, showed me an old photograph of three women, inscribed on the back to his grandmother Surusimiituq from the Rev. Archibald Fleming, later Bishop of the Arctic, who lived at Lake Harbour and photographed in the area for two two-year periods between 1909 and 1915. Each figure was heavily outlined in black pencil, suggesting that the photograph had supplied templates for incised pictures on ivory tusks, a speciality of Lake Harbour people. In Peter Pitseolak's series of drawings, photographs are used in a similar manner to depict the Inuit material culture, rendered in vivid colour. (Peter Pitseolak loved bright colours - he Peter Pitseolak's resulting drawing of a harpooner in the act of throwing his once made me a map of the northern arctic regions and on handing it to me weapon. remarked that he was sure I'd be surprised by his choice of colours: orange Collection of the West Baffin Eskimo Co- and red.) This series of some 40 drawings, in the collection of the West operative Ltd, on loan to the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. Baffin Eskimo Cooperative Ltd, is now on long-term loan to the McMichael Canadian Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario. For the interpreters and myself, doing interviews with Peter Pitseolak was always a happy and invigorating experience. It could also be demanding. "It's hard," Annie Manning once admitted when questioning her grandfather repeatedly about a phrase she was interpreting, "but I keep on doing it so as not to be sorry later." We were always aware that we were hearing stories and learning of "the old way" from a master. Peter Pitseolak was, of course, capable of being difficult. "I was always a driving man — one who gave orders," he once wrote about himself.3 His fights with Sowmik — James Houston, who introduced Inuit art to the south — and with his brother-in-law Kavavow are legendary and had far-reaching effects.4 But our work sessions were always harmonious: Peter Pitseolak patiently responded to even stupid questions, and with clever answers too! He is still 3 In Peter Pitseolak, Peter Pitseolak's Escape from Death, introduced and edited by Dorothy Eber (New York: Delacorte, and Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977). 4 Dealt with here on page 145 and also in Dorothy Harley Eber, "Images of Justice," Natural History (January 1990) and in Dorothy Harley Eber, "Peter Pitseolak: A Historian for Seekooseelak," in Bellman, Peter Pitseolak.