St. Lawrence University: Festival of the Arts

February 21-April 12, 2001 Richard F. Brush Art Gallery

Arctic Dreams and Nightmares

Drawings and Cartoons by Alootook Ipellie

Alootook Ipellie was born in a camp near Iqaluit (formerly Frobisher Bay), the capital of Nunavut, where he spent his childhood and teenage years experiencing the transition from a traditional nomadic Inuit way of life to life in government-sponsored Inuit village settlements. In 1973, after a short stint as an announcer and producer for CBC Radio in Iqaluit, he moved to Ottawa to study and pursue a career in art. He has since become a noted artist and central figure in the Inuit literature movement. Ipellie is the former editor of Inuit Today, published by the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, and Inuit, published by the Inuit Circumpolar Conference. His essays, stories, and poetry have been featured in Northern Voices: Inuit Writing in English (University of Toronto Press, 1988) and An Anthology of Canadian Native Literature in English (Oxford University Press, 1998), and his artwork has been exhibited in Canada and Greenland. Ipellie notes, "I've always thought writing and storytelling were means of exploring some parts of truth about human nature, and that stories need to be told or written in order to understand ourselves better. They are essentially tools we use to help express our 'silent voice' within our conscious or unconscious minds.... Writing and storytelling allow us to escape our own predicaments in this physical world and free our minds to go beyond it."