Inuit Out on the Land

“Born near Garry Lake in the Central Canadian Arctic, Hannah Kigusiuq grew to adulthood living much the same as her Inuit ancestors had before her—residing in snow houses in the winter and skin tents in the summer. Married as a very young woman, Kigusiuq remembers travelling on the land and following the Arctic game animals in order to survive. She was in her mid-twenties in 1956 when her husband, Kuuk, and others from her camp were afflicted with tuberculosis—a condition that forced them to move to the settlement of Baker Lake, Northwest Territories, where he could receive medical treatment. During her husband’s subsequent two-year hospitalization in the South of Canada and as a means to supplement her meager income while she awaited his return to Baker Lake, Kigusiuq respnded to encouragement from the local crafts officer, Boris Kotelewitz, to try her hand at drawing.