This delightful miniature pole is stylistically identical to a larger, slightly more complex “totem pole” by Oomayoualook in the collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts [1]. Oomayoualook was probably inspired by the quaint illustration of a totem in James Houston’s notorious 1951 instructional booklet Sanajasak: Eskimo Handicrafts - unless Houston was himself inspired by totem-like carvings that reminded him of Northwest Coast poles; the jury is still out on that one. The pole is beautifully carved considering that the artist must have been working with the most basic of tools; he polished the surfaces he could reach as best he could.

1. See Darlene Coward Wight, Early Masters, (WAG, 2006), p. 58.

Literature: For similar poles by the artist see Darlene Coward Wight, Early Masters: Inuit Sculpture 1949-1955 (Winnipeg Art Gallery,, 2006), pp. 58-59; one is also illustrated in Darlene Coward Wight, Creation and Transformation: Defining Moments in Inuit Art (Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2012), cat. 4. See James Houston, Sanajasak: Eskimo Handicrafts, (Montreal: Canadian Handicrafts Guild / Ottawa: Department of Resources and Development, January 1951), p. 11 for Houston’s quaint drawing of an “Eskimo totem pole.”