Ruth Qaulluaryuk's fellow Baker Lake artist Simon Tookoome describes in words the wondrous scene evoked so beautifully in this print:

The caribou used to gather in a very large herd to migrate. You could hear them for two days, walking over the frozen tundra. We would sit where they would pass and wait for them. It would take three to five days and nights for the herd to pass our camp. The land would be all torn up. They were not afraid in such big numbers [1].

Hundreds and Hundreds, Herds of Caribou is itself a wondrously intricate, almost Escher-like image; featured on the cover of the 1975 Baker Lake Annual Print Catalogue, it is one of the most complex and captivating prints ever produced in that community. Qaulluaryuk’s image is spectacular and original; the view of the herd is compressed, as if we were looking through a telephoto lens. But we must also acknowledge the herculean efforts of the printmaker Thomas Suvaaraq who painstakingly cut the stone block and printed the edition. [2] It’s a magnificent achievement.

1. Simon Tookoome with Sheldon Oberman, The Shaman's Nephew: A Life in the Far North, (Toronto: Stoddart, 1999), p. 28.

2. The print catalogue features two photos of Suvaaraq carefully using a piece of antler as a baren to press the ink onto the paper.

References: This print, along with Qaulluaryuk's original graphite pencil drawing, is illustrated in the Winnipeg Art Gallery exhibition catalogue Baker Lake Prints and Print Drawings 1970-76, (WAG, 1983), p. 79. The print is also illustrated in Chisel and Brush, (Ottawa: Department of Northern and Indian Affairs, 1986), cat.4, unpaginated.