High on Nunavut’s mainland sits Kugaaruk, a small village west of the Melville Peninsula. The bay, also known as Arviligjuaqy (the great bowhead whale habitat), provided an abundance of marine life to help inspire and provide for art making. Small ivory works and scenes have been a mainstay of the community's output, since lighter and smaller works made for a more economical choice to ship out to galleries and collectors in the south.

Rookery, like many of its contemporaries, exudes both a preciousness and a timeless quality to it. The bone base, a facsimile for a craggy piece of the tundra, is a perch to a flock of tiny, delicate birds, most of which are trained in one direction along the rock’s surface. One bird is further aloft, a lookout for the others, and stoically watches the landscape. One can’t help but feel they are peering into a scene with a work like this, an intimate moment in time that has been frozen for viewing.