Undoubtedly for its strength of design, Taleelayu and Family was chosen to grace the cover of the international touring exhibition catalogue The Inuit Print. Organized by the National Museum of Man, this 1977 exhibition was a masterworks retrospective of Inuit prints of the previous two decades. This lyrical and truly charming image presents a variation on one of the most recognizable figures from traditional Inuit stories, Taleelayu, or Sedna as she is usually called in the south. In Taleelayu and Family, Ananaisie Alikatuktuk gives the sea goddess a family of seven children. The eight swimming figures show a strong family resemblance save for the lower four, which do not sport the dots along their backs. Ananaisie explained that like their mother, only the female children are depicted with scales. A true triumph of the stencil printing technique, this school of creatures floats amidst veils of blue ink, the scattered arrangement and varying tones of which give a sense of movement as though we are seeing the ripples of water surrounding this mother and her brood.

References: Image reproduced in The Inuit Print, international travelling exhibition, (Ottawa: National Museums of Canada and the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, 1977), reproduced p. 219, pl. 129; Ingo Hessel, Inuit Art: An Introduction, (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1998), cat. 41, p. 55; Maria von Finkenstein, Nuvisavik: The Place Where We Weave, (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002), p. 153.