Across almost ten years, Hattie Mannik recorded the recollections of twenty-six Baker Lake elders, George Tatanniq among them. For some six pages, the artist recounts a life largely ordered by the caribou: their crossings and seasons, the rhythms of hunting and caching, and the practical knowledge that sustained a community on the land. This intimacy, surely, gives the present work its authority. Tatanniq was not carving from fancy or formula but from a life where the caribou was inseparable from food, clothing, movement, labour, and survival itself. No wonder, then, that he renders the creature with such certainty and force. The vigour of this carving — with its broad, solid form relieved by a gentle rise of the back and the elegant lift of the antlers — feels grounded not only in skill but in memory.

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