Jennifer McPhee
Northern News Services

Iqaluit (July 08/02) - There once was a hunter who was always very mean to his wife. To get away, the woman changed into a narwhal.

"He used to abuse his wife," artist Okpik Pitseolak says, and once the wife escaped, the hunter was sad.

"He wanted her back, but it was too late. There have been narwhals ever since. My grandmother used to tell it."

That's one of the stories Pitseolak tells through her printmaking. It's a way of passing on the legends and stories her family told her years ago.

"Before there was television, it seemed like we were watching a movie when our parents told us stories," she says, speaking in Inuktitut.

Pitseolak's prints show other legends of people changing into animals, as well as childhood memories in Kimmirut. Her work was for sale at a recent legends and stories print show at the Arts and Crafts Building in Iqaluit.

In one piece taken from her childhood, children are walking with their legs inside the sleeves of their parkas.

"We were just playing. There was nothing else to play with. We had no toys."

Some of the stories her family told were funny, some scary and some were about the kind of life they hoped for.

Years later, she told her own daughter the same stories at bedtime.

Most people who buy her art are Qallunaat. "And we buy Qallunaat (things)," she says, with a laugh.

Another artist at the show, Serapio Ittusardjuat, created a print that tells a story he heard from an elder two months ago.

A long time ago, before organized religion changed things, people used to tattoo marks on their faces to protect themselves. But Ittusardjuat's great-grandfather did not have these marks. He was snatched away by a caribou that turned into a human. The elder said people still do see these strange creatures on the mainland.

Some of the artists at the exhibit don't base their art on stories from the past but from their imagination.

"I just make them up," says Noah Nakashook. "It just pops into my head and I start drawing." In his prints, whales dance. "I'm really into whales and seals."

An avid hunter from Kimmirut, Noah has killed his share of seals. "And last March, I shot my first polar bear," says the 21-year-old proudly.