Born in Nunavik, Ennutsiak was still young when his family joined the migration south across Hudson Strait to southern Baffin Island, a journey of more than one hundred kilometres by umiaq and no small feat for the families crowded aboard. He spent many years in the Kimmirut (Lake Harbour) area and likely moved on to Iqaluit (Frobisher Bay) in the mid-1940s. By about 1950, he had begun carving, selling to a local market shaped in part by Southern servicemen and the workers involved in constructing the DEW Line during the Cold War.

Ennutsiak is best remembered for his tableau-like scenes of shared, communal activity: birth, hunting, the butchering of sea mammals, travel on the land, even moments of Bible reading. His umiaq migration scenes form a considerably rarer subject and are among his more ambitious works. In them, that same emphasis on shared effort and collective life is played out on a broader scale, lending these carvings a greater sense of breadth and complexity.

In stone, Ennutsiak gives us the classic form of the Nunavik umiaq, the large communal boat used for travel. Complete with oars, sail, and rudder, it retains the distinctive shape of the original skin vessel.

Rarer still is the inclusion of a kayaker who paddles alongside the craft, which to our knowledge is unique in the artist’s oeuvre. This figure likely represents a man travelling in company with the larger boat, one ready to scout, hunt, or otherwise manoeuvre independently.

Impressively, the water and the hulls of both the umiaq and the kayak are carved from a single piece of stone. His cast of figures, too, are part of the monolith. Here, Ennutsiak packs them tightly into the umiaq, shoulder to shoulder — dare we say even cheek by jowl — so that the boat feels fully inhabited. Men and women of various sizes and ages are compressed within the narrow hull with scarcely any space to spare, conveying the close quarters of collective travel.

References: For another important Umiaq Migration by Ennutsiak see First Arts, 28 May 2019, Lot 40. For another example see Waddington’s catalogue Nov. 2011, Lot 249. See also Maria von Finckenstein ed., Celebrating Inuit Art 1948-1970, (Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1999) pp. 131-133.

ND