This print captures the fluid, mutable boundary between human and animal forms, a theme central to shamanic belief. The caribou glides across the sheet, its body merging with that of a man whose seal-like flippers extend from his head and transform into hind limbs. Inked in black against a mottled blue field, suggesting either sky or sea, the spectral figure floats on a surface textured by the impression of caribou skin or whalebone, through which the white paper flickers like light [1].

As in other works from 1960-61, a subtle mark signals the hand of the artist: a small ‘eye’ above the syllabic signature identifies this as the work of Eegyvudluk Ragee, not Eegyvudluk Pootoogook.

1. James Houston notes that the “background itself is a rubbing taken from Caribou skin” (Eskimo Prints, 1967, p. 104). Helga Goetz, citing Terry Ryan, records instead that it was “inked with a slab of whalebone” (The Inuit Print, 1977, p. 56).

ND