Janet Kigusiuq’s early drawings are distinguished by their density, their narrative reach, and their wonderfully personal sense of pictorial order. This sheet is an especially fine example. Rather than describing a single moment, Kigusiuq fills the page with a succession of incidents, figures, animals, and fragments of experience, each given its own scale and space.

Here, two monumental figures dominate the upper left, enclosed within great fields of red and blue, while smaller figures sit, stand, speak, and gather across the opposite side of the sheet. Below them, caribou, muskoxen, and a polar bear move through their own loose register. Scale shifts freely throughout. Kigusiuq has little interest in conventional perspective. Instead, size follows significance, allowing one figure to swell while another recedes, and one episode to sit beside another without needing to occupy the same physical space.

Colour is used with similar freedom and purpose. Red, blue, purple, yellow, green, and brown appear in concentrated passages, while large areas remain bare. These saturated fields separate one scene from the next and give the drawing a sense of structure without confining it. The graphite lines remain delicate and descriptive, while the coloured pencil settles more densely into clothing, animals, and broad enclosing forms.

Most compelling is the way image and inscription work together. The syllabic text at upper left makes the drawing feel spoken as much as seen, carrying memory, correction, and family knowledge into the composition itself. A translation of Kigusiuq’s text is provided in an unknown hand on the verso of the work:

'Naatuq, My Grandmother's Story. /

'[Stop?] lying!" "Do not say (that it was) Kanayuq." (not Kanaguyq's stories) /

[unknown, paper skinned] these are Naatuq's stories." "We also used to /

[unknown, paper skinned - hear ?] them from my grandmother."

[unknown, paper skinned - I ?] have just read that the stories came from Kanayuq." /

apparently you (all of you) have been telling lies (about who is telling the stories) /

"My grandparents, the Noahs, used to tell truthfull stories. /

I know, because now I have seen these things on T.V. and in /

the movies." (in space travel etc, travel to the moon) /

"Here is (the legend of) the brother and sister." / (the brother + sister who became the sun and the moon.)"

In brief, the story tells of a brother and sister whose relationship takes a terrible turn when the sister discovers that the man visiting her at night is her own brother. Determined to expose him, she marks him with soot and recognizes him by the stain. She flees with a burning torch, and he follows in pursuit. His flame soon fades to a dull ember, while hers continues to blaze. Their chase carries them into the sky, where she becomes the brilliant Sun and he the paler Moon.