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Karoo Ashevak
Karoo Ashevak (Inuktitut: ) (1940 – October 19, 1974) was an Inuk sculptor who lived a nomadic hunting life in the Kitikmeot Region of the central Arctic before moving into Spence Bay, Northwest Territories (now Taloyoak, Nunavut) in 1960. His career as an artist started in 1968 by participating in a government-funded carving program. Working with the primary medium of fossilized whale bone, Ashevak created approximately 250 sculptures in his lifetime, and explored themes of shamanism and Inuit spirituality through playful depictions of human figures, '' angakuit'' (shamans), spirits, and Arctic wildlife. In 1970, the Canadian Eskimo Art Council held the Centennial competition in Yellowknife. Ashevak's sculptures won third prize in that competition, and he became a recognizable artist after his solo exhibition at the American Indian Art Centre in New York in 1973. Unlike other Inuit primitivist carvings, Ashevak's work abandoned cultural references and adopted a modern expres ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kitikmeot Region
Kitikmeot Region (; Inuktitut: ''Qitirmiut'' ) is an administrative region of Nunavut, Canada. It consists of the southern and eastern parts of Victoria Island with the adjacent part of the mainland as far as the Boothia Peninsula, together with King William Island and the southern portion of Prince of Wales Island. The regional centre is Cambridge Bay (population 1,766;). Before 1999, Kitikmeot Region existed under slightly different boundaries as Kitikmeot Region, Northwest Territories. Transportation Access to the territorial capital of Iqaluit is difficult and expensive as the only direct flight is from Cambridge Bay, which began during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. For example, Iqaluit is approximately from Kugaaruk, the closest Kitikmeot community. A one-way flight to the capital costs between $2,691 and $2,911 (as of November 2016) and involves flying to, along with an overnight stay in, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, approximately southwest of Kugaa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Netsilik Inuit
The Netsilik (Netsilingmiut) are Inuit who live predominantly in Kugaaruk and Gjoa Haven of the Kitikmeot Region, Nunavut and to a smaller extent in Taloyoak and the north Qikiqtaaluk Region, in Canada. They were, in the early 20th century, among the last northern indigenous peoples to encounter missionaries from the south. Language The missionaries introduced a system of written language called Qaniujaaqpait, based on syllabics, to the Netsilik in the 1920s. Eastern Canadian Inuit, among them the Netsilik, were the only Inuit to adopt a syllabic system of writing. The Netsilik's spoken language is ''Natsilingmiutut''. The Utkuhiksalingmiut, a Caribou Inuit band, speak a variant of it, Utkuhiksalik. Hunting and fishing The harsh Arctic environment that the Netsilik inhabited yielded little plant life, so the Netsilik had to rely on hunting to acquire most of the resources they needed to survive. In the summer months, the Netsilik would hunt caribou on the tundra. The car ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polar Bear
The polar bear (''Ursus maritimus'') is a hypercarnivorous bear whose native range lies largely within the Arctic Circle, encompassing the Arctic Ocean, its surrounding seas and surrounding land masses. It is the largest extant bear species, as well as the largest extant land carnivore. A boar (adult male) weighs around , while a sow (adult female) is about half that size. Although it is the sister species of the brown bear, it has evolved to occupy a narrower ecological niche, with many body characteristics adapted for cold temperatures, for moving across snow, ice and open water, and for hunting seals, which make up most of its diet. Although most polar bears are born on land, they spend most of their time on the sea ice. Their scientific name means "maritime bear" and derives from this fact. Polar bears hunt their preferred food of seals from the edge of sea ice, often living off fat reserves when no sea ice is present. Because of their dependence on the sea ice, polar be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walrus Ivory
The walrus (''Odobenus rosmarus'') is a large flippered marine mammal with a discontinuous distribution about the North Pole in the Arctic Ocean and subarctic seas of the Northern Hemisphere. The walrus is the only living species in the family Odobenidae and genus ''Odobenus''. This species is subdivided into two subspecies: the Atlantic walrus (''O. r. rosmarus''), which lives in the Atlantic Ocean, and the Pacific walrus (''O. r. divergens''), which lives in the Pacific Ocean. Adult walrus are characterised by prominent tusks and whiskers, and their considerable bulk: adult males in the Pacific can weigh more than and, among pinnipeds, are exceeded in size only by the two species of elephant seals. Walruses live mostly in shallow waters above the continental shelves, spending significant amounts of their lives on the sea ice looking for benthic bivalve mollusks to eat. Walruses are relatively long-lived, social animals, and they are considered to be a "keystone species" i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Baleen
Baleen is a filter-feeding system inside the mouths of baleen whales. To use baleen, the whale first opens its mouth underwater to take in water. The whale then pushes the water out, and animals such as krill are filtered by the baleen and remain as a food source for the whale. Baleen is similar to bristles and consists of keratin, the same substance found in human fingernails, skin and hair. Baleen is a skin derivative. Some whales, such as the bowhead whale, have longer baleen than others. Other whales, such as the gray whale, only use one side of their baleen. These baleen bristles are arranged in plates across the upper jaw of whales. Depending on the species, a baleen plate can be long, and weigh up to . Its hairy fringes are called baleen hair or whalebone hair. They are also called baleen bristles, which in sei whales are highly calcified, with calcification functioning to increase their stiffness. Baleen plates are broader at the gumline (base). The plates have b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reindeer
Reindeer (in North American English, known as caribou if wild and ''reindeer'' if domesticated) are deer in the genus ''Rangifer''. For the last few decades, reindeer were assigned to one species, ''Rangifer tarandus'', with about 10 subspecies. A 2022 revision of the genus elevated five of the subspecies to species (see Taxonomy below). They have a circumpolar distribution and are native to the Arctic, sub-Arctic, tundra, boreal forest, and mountainous regions of northern Europe, Siberia, and North America. Reindeer occur in both migratory and sedentary populations, and their herd sizes vary greatly in different regions. The tundra subspecies are adapted for extreme cold, and some are adapted for long-distance migration. Reindeer vary greatly in size and color from the smallest species, the Svalbard reindeer (''R. t. platyrhynchus''), to the largest subspecies, Osborn's caribou (''R. t. osborni''). Although reindeer are quite numerous, some species and subspecies are in d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Whaling
Whaling is the process of hunting of whales for their usable products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that became increasingly important in the Industrial Revolution. It was practiced as an organized industry as early as 875 AD. By the 16th century, it had risen to be the principal industry in the Basque coastal regions of Spain and France. The industry spread throughout the world, and became increasingly profitable in terms of trade and resources. Some regions of the world's oceans, along the animals' migration routes, had a particularly dense whale population, and became the targets for large concentrations of whaling ships, and the industry continued to grow well into the 20th century. The depletion of some whale species to near extinction led to the banning of whaling in many countries by 1969, and to an international cessation of whaling as an industry in the late 1980s. The earliest known forms of whaling date to at least 3000 BC. Coasta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thule People
The Thule (, , ) or proto-Inuit were the ancestors of all modern Inuit. They developed in coastal Alaska by the year 1000 and expanded eastward across northern Canada, reaching Greenland by the 13th century. In the process, they replaced people of the earlier Dorset culture that had previously inhabited the region. The appellation "Thule" originates from the location of Thule (relocated and renamed Qaanaaq in 1953) in northwest Greenland, facing Canada, where the archaeological remains of the people were first found at Comer's Midden. The links between the Thule and the Inuit are biological, cultural, and linguistic. Evidence supports the idea that the Thule (and also the Dorset, but to a lesser degree) were in contact with the Vikings, who had reached the shores of Canada in the 11th century as part of Norse colonization of North America. In Viking sources, these peoples are called the ''Skrælingjar''. Some Thule migrated southward, in the "Second Expansion" or "Second Phase". ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prehistory
Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of symbols, marks, and images appears very early among humans, but the earliest known writing systems appeared 5000 years ago. It took thousands of years for writing systems to be widely adopted, with writing spreading to almost all cultures by the 19th century. The end of prehistory therefore came at very different times in different places, and the term is less often used in discussing societies where prehistory ended relatively recently. In the early Bronze Age, Sumer in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley Civilisation, and ancient Egypt were the first civilizations to develop their own scripts and to keep historical records, with their neighbors following. Most other civilizations reached the end of prehistory during the following Iron Age. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Avrom Isaacs
Avrom Isaacs, D.F.A. (March 19, 1926 – January 15, 2016) was a Canadian art dealer. Career Avrom Isaacovitch, known as Av Isaacs, was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and moved to Toronto with his family in 1941. Isaacs graduated with a bachelor's degree in Political Science and Economics from the University of Toronto in 1950. He began his career in the arts in 1950 when he opened the Greenwich Art Shop, a small framing store on Hayter Street in Toronto. In 1955, when he shared a room with artist Graham Coughtry, Coughtry, along with Michael Snow, persuaded him to open the Greenwich Gallery. The inaugural show, understandably, had paintings by Coughtry and Snow. The gallery was renamed the Isaacs Gallery in 1959 and moved to a new location at 832 Yonge Street in 1961. In it he represented numerous Canadian artists, including Coughtry, Snow, William Kurelek, Gordon Rayner, Jack Chambers, Joyce Wieland, Mark Prent, John Meredith, Dennis Burton, Robert Markle, Gathie Falk ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ottawa
Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the core of the Ottawa–Gatineau census metropolitan area (CMA) and the National Capital Region (NCR). Ottawa had a city population of 1,017,449 and a metropolitan population of 1,488,307, making it the fourth-largest city and fourth-largest metropolitan area in Canada. Ottawa is the political centre of Canada and headquarters to the federal government. The city houses numerous foreign embassies, key buildings, organizations, and institutions of Canada's government, including the Parliament of Canada, the Supreme Court, the residence of Canada's viceroy, and Office of the Prime Minister. Founded in 1826 as Bytown, and incorporated as Ottawa in 1855, its original boundaries were expanded through numerous annexations and were ultimately ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inuit Art
Inuit art, also known as Eskimo art, refers to artwork produced by Inuit, that is, the people of the Arctic previously known as Eskimos, a term that is now often considered offensive. Historically, their preferred medium was walrus ivory, but since the establishment of southern markets for Inuit art in 1945, prints and figurative works carved in relatively soft stone such as soapstone, serpentinite, or argillite have also become popular. The Winnipeg Art Gallery has the largest public collection of contemporary Inuit art in the world. In 2007, the Museum of Inuit Art opened in Toronto, but closed due to lack of resources in 2016. History Pre-Dorset and Dorset cultures Around 4000 BCE nomads known as the Pre-Dorset or the Arctic small tool tradition (ASTT) crossed over the Bering Strait from Siberia into Alaska, the Canadian Arctic, Greenland, and Labrador. Very little remains of them, and only a few preserved artifacts carved in ivory could be considered works of art. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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