While Jean Blodgett describes that much of Tookoome's graphics, including the present print, illustrate shamanistic elements and their "intermediary role between the world of humans and that of the animals" in a 2005 interview with Sally Qimmiu'naaq Webster, cited in Ingo Hessel's Arctic Spirit, Tookoome explained the image as follows:

"When the world was first created, humans and animals used to llve together and talk together. They lived together as one community. Then a caribou murdered a person and, from that time on, the humans and the animals became separated. The humans became afraid, and they built on igloo and did not dare to leave.

People get the wrong idea about this picture. When I drew It I did not have shamanism in mind. The white people [at the print shop] got the wrong idea and they wrote it down that way."

Hessel comments on Tookoome's remarks,
"The artists second comment is some­what disconcerting as it contradicts what has always been assumed about this famous image. It Is possible that Tookoome has changed his own view over thirty years but we should probably take him at his word. Even discounting the reference to shamanism in the official title, the essential message remains the same: Inuit and animals have been inextricably bound together from the beginning of time."



1. Blodgett, Grasp Tight the Old Ways, 1983, p. 66
See Hessel, Arctic Spirit, 2006, p. 114