William Noah was the youngest of Jessie Oonark’s children and, like his other talented siblings, carved out his own distinctive career as an artist — specifically as a gifted printmaker and graphic artist. Noah admitted to knowing almost nothing about shamanism but was encouraged to produce shamanic drawings and ended up creating some of Baker Lake’s most memorable shamanic images by remembering stories and using his imagination. Wolf Man probably references shamanism and certainly alludes to animal-human transformation, which was an important aspect of traditional Inuit spiritual belief, but it is also very much a visual pun. The distinctive yellow stripes on the parka reference the uniform of an RCMP officer. Apparently, Inuit often referred to RCMP officers as “wolf men”; whether the term was pejorative or meant in jest is debatable. The RCMP has had a chequered history of relations with Inuit, having played a central role in the colonization of the Arctic, but in Noah’s memory they also probably saved his family’s life [1]. With its bold patterning and decorative detail, Wolf Man is a stunning image, brilliantly conceived by Noah and masterfully printed by Barnabas Oosuaq and William’s wife Martha Noah. No surprise, then, that it was chosen for the cover of the 1971 Baker Lake print catalogue.

1. See Noah’s essay “A View from Baker Lake” in Ingo Hessel, Arctic Spirit (Vancouver: D&M / Phoenix: Heard Museum, 2006:228-233), p. 232.

References: This print image was used as the front cover of Jean Blodgett’s 1979 Eskimo Narrative exhibition catalogue at Winnipeg Art Gallery, see also op. cit., cat. 53, p. 42. See Noah’s essay “A View from Baker Lake” in Ingo Hessel, Arctic Spirit: Inuit Art from the Albrecht Collection at the Heard Museum, (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre / Phoenix: Heard Museum, 2006), pp. 228-233. For an account of the evacuation of Oonark and her family and Noah’s account of finding his mother, see Jean Blodgett and Marie Bouchard, Jessie Oonark: A Retrospective, (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1986), pp. 13-16. For another first-hand memories by Noah see “Starvation on the land and my experiences in Baker Lake” in Judith Nasby, Marion Jackson and William Noah, Qamanittuaq: Where the River Widens: Drawings by Baker Lake Artists, (Guelph: Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, 1994), pp. 16-22.