How do we define art in the Northwest Territories (NWT)? How is it different from—or similar to—Yukon art or Nunavut art?
The NWT has a vibrant and expansive art scene that mirrors its unique realities: geographically each of the NWT’s five regions span broad areas of the North, making transportation and connection challenging; the Indigenous Peoples of these distinct regions each speak different languages and have their own customs, traditions and aesthetics; and culturally the 50/50 split between Indigenous and non-Indigenous residents means that there are multiple artistic movements in conversation with each other. These factors mean that defining NWT art is not confined to a singular category. Instead, it emerges as a dynamic amalgamation of culture, tradition, politics and creative expression linking the past and present. However, there are some core traditional practices that encompass the customs, principles and techniques of NWT artists; a sort of NWT aesthetic that includes hide tanning, porcupine quillwork, the Delta braid, the five-petal rose and moose hair tufting.
Hide is stretched and dried on a frame PHOTO MELAW NAKEHK’O
Hide Tanning
Hide tanning, a resurgent tradition which is extremely popular in the NWT, is the labour-intensive process of transforming caribou or moose hides into strong, durable, lightweight and warm materials for clothing, footwear, bags and more. Tanning a single hide can take a group weeks or months to complete. “Tanning hides is a foundational Indigenous art form,” says Dene artist, activist and hide tanner Melaw Nakehk’o [1]. “It was [used for] our homes, our transportation, our clothes and, in hard times, our sustenance. It is the canvas of our visual cultural identity.” Steps include the ethical hunting and skinning of the animal (being careful not to puncture any holes in the hide) before soaking, curing, removing the hair and membrane, stretching the hide, scraping and drying it. Once dried, the softening process can begin: the more the hide is scraped and worked, the softer it becomes. Smoking the hide over a fire follows as a final step to give the hide its beautiful golden colour and sweet smoky smell. “The smell triggers memories of grandmothers, the sound of scraping reminds us of our aunties working together and the beadwork and style of our moccasins represent our Nations.”
Caroline Blechert Enchanted Bird Necklace (2024) Delica beads, 24K gold-plated beads, porcupine quill, stroud, 24K gold chain and Swarovski crystals 7.6 x 10.2 cm COURTESY INUIT GALLERY OF VANCOUVER © THE ARTIST
Porcupine Quillwork
Porcupine quillwork, a beautiful and challenging form of decoration, has been practiced for centuries by Dene women. The intricate process involves collecting, washing, dyeing and weaving the quills into geometric patterns or sewing them onto the surface of clothing, birchbark baskets and other items. Using porcupine quills gathered from the natural environment reflects the deep knowledge possessed by the Dene peoples who secured their living from the land and the profound respect in which plants and animals were held. Contemporary artists continue to use quillwork in innovative ways, such as in earrings and other accessories.
Maureen Gruben Delta Trim (detail) (2018) Bubble wrap, reflective tape, Velcro, zip ties and moose hide 48.3 × 6.6 m PHOTO KYRA KORDOWSKI © THE ARTIST
Delta Braid
The Delta braid is a distinctive geometric design commonly used on the trim of parkas in the Beaufort Delta region. Each seamstress develops their own personal Delta trim pattern, generally only about half an inch high, to be used on both ceremonial and everyday parkas. Traditionally made with fur and skins, modern Delta braiders use colourful ribbons, bias tape and fabrics to create unique patterns. The designs create a highly complex geometric band that looks woven or braided and trims the bottom of a parka. Contemporary NWT artists like Maureen Gruben are reinterpreting the Delta trim in imaginative ways. Her 19-foot-long Delta Trim (2018) used moose hide, high-visibility reflective tape, green bubble wrap, zip ties, and Velcro to recreate and amplify her mother’s Delta braid pattern, evoking urgencies and intimacies within cultural knowledge, kinship, northern ecosystems and sustainable material usage.
Dustin Smith, Brian Rogers and Catharine Smith Black stroud jacket with five petal roses (2022) PHOTO LOFTYRAGS © THE ARTISTS
The Five-Petal Rose
The five-petal rose motif is used by both Dene and Métis beaders across Canada and is extremely popular in the Northwest Territories both historically and today. It arose from the introduction of brightly coloured seed beads in the middle of the nineteenth century from the Hudson’s Bay Company. The porcupine quills, which were core decorative appliques to that point, required simpler geometric designs, whereas the newly introduced metal needles, cotton and silk thread and glass beads allowed for more organic shapes to take hold, like the five-petal rose, and required much less processing compared to the harvesting and dying of quills. By the end of the nineteenth century distinctive regional styles had developed, reflecting the adaptability, creativity and innovation of the Dene and Métis beadworkers. Today artists commonly use a flat beadwork style to sew the five-petal rose onto moccasins, clothing, or accessories using a crouched technique where beads are threaded and laid in the desired position, and a stitch is made between every two or three beads.
Inuk360 Caribou Hair Tufted Ptarmigan (2016) © THE ARTIST
Tufting
Caribou hair and moose hair tufting originated in the Dehcho (the southernmost region of the NWT) in the 1920s and 1930s, around the Bouvier/Lafferty kitchen tables in Fort Providence by three Métis women: Catherine Bouvier (née Beaulieu), Madeleine Laffery (née Bouvier) and Celine Lafferty (née Laviolette). Hair tufting involves creating bundles of dyed hair threaded onto hide, fabric, or birchbark to form intricate 3D designs. The unique process of tufting requires precision, skill and patience. A single tufted flower can take six to eight hours to make. Once the hair is cleaned, sorted and dyed, a small group of 15-20 fibres are gathered to make a bundle, and then threaded tightly, causing the hairs to stand upright into a bristly tuft. The tufts are then trimmed and sculpted into the desired shape. In the 1980s the Arctic Trading Company in Churchill, MB, made a tufting kit generally available to promote and preserve the art of tufting, the final product of which was a single framed floral tufting. As a result, the simplified five-petal flower motif became the standardized design, twining the aesthetics of tufting and the five-petal rose together.
Kablusiak Shed (akunnirun kuupak series) (2018) Archival print 81.3 x 121.9 cm COURTESY NORBERG HALL © THE ARTIST
Bonus: Landscapes, People, and Ramshackle Architecture
While the other aesthetics mentioned here are closely tied to the NWT specifically, this last style is shared across the North more broadly, a newer visual identity that evolved with the colonization of Indigenous Peoples into settlements and the introduction of white settlers. Practiced by both settlers and Indigenous peoples today, many Northern artists reference the wildlife, landscape and built environments in their artwork, depicting the “ramshackle” aesthetics, or informal architectures and detritus, that define life in our northern communities. Paintings of small communities in Yukon by Jim Logan and sculptures of jerry cans by Nunavut artist Tarralik Duffy complement similar motifs of oil drums, wall tents, pallets and shacks by NWT artists like Jake Kimble, Pat Kane or Alison McCreesh who depict the debris scattering the tundra around them.
Laura Hodgins is a white-settler arts administrator and curator from Sǫ̀mbak'è on Chief Drygeese Territory in Treaty 8 (Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.) Laura holds an MA in Art History from Concordia University and a BFA in Art History and Visual Studies from the University of Victoria. As a Northerner, Laura is passionate about fostering and promoting the arts north of the 60th parallel; she is the President of the Yellowknife Artist Run Community Centre.
NOTES
[1] Interview with Laura Hodgins, December 2022.