B. Inupiat Art and Aesthetics across generations

 

Iñupiaq Bow Drill collected around 1910, incised and inscribed ivory with wooden and metal drill.

National Museum of Natural History Object ID E260132

–Christopher Green

The graphic arts of the Inupiat of the Alaskan Bering Strait region have long been rooted in a deep indigenous tradition. The precise prehistoric beginnings of pictorial representation remain shrouded by time and lacking in evidence, allowing for some inconclusive discussion on the topics of pre-Thule petroglyphs and possible Asian-Siberian influences on early engraving styles. Yet from the 1778 voyage of Captain Cook, the source of one of the earliest extant engraved ivory drill bows, to the last decade of the nineteenth century, a moment which saw the production of the Iñupiaq drawings on paper in this exhibition, the existence of a substantial material record allows for a relatively clear picture of the form the graphic art of the Inupiat took over the long century.

The hundred-plus years separating the collection of these objects were exceptionally eventful for the indigenous peoples of the Bering Strait, seeing drastic increases in foreign whaler, trader, and tourist traffic and the arrival of missionaries and schools, particularly after a Euro-American nation to nation sale of the land that the Iñupiat had long inhabited. The drawings in particular are the products of this increased period of contact and exchange between Euro-Americans and the Inupiat; almost definitely produced out of the Wales mission school, they are drawn in ink, pencil, and watercolour on the reverses of published engravings from magazines and collected illustrations.  Yet, as the essays linked below demonstrate, it is possible to see aesthetic ideas passed down across generations of Iñupiaq artists.

The Expansion of the Inupiaq Graphic Art Tradition in the Late Nineteenth Century

The material culture of the Messenger Feast and Wolf-Eagle Dance

Other Iñupiat artists