Daron Letts
Northern News Services
Published Monday, July 14, 2008

SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Carvings by Goota Ashoona continue to draw national attention.

The fourth generation Inuit artist has seven pieces currently on display at the Musee National Des Beaux-Arts in Quebec City.

All seven of the whale bone carvings depict Sedna, a mermaid-like being inspired by Inuit legend. The carvings were donated to the museum's permanent collection by Hydro Quebec.

The Sedna, said Ashoona, "is one of the best things to carve. "It makes me think: I wonder if there was a real Sedna. It could be just a story. But that's OK. People like stories. Stories are good."

Another of Goota's Sedna carvings will be featured in an upcoming book of Inuit art and the Sedna legend being published by University of Alaska Press.

Ashoona grew up in Cape Dorset in one of the most prominent Inuit art families in the North.

She is the daughter of world renowned carver, Kiawak Ashoona, and granddaughter of famed printmaker Pitseolak Ashoona.

She learned to carve by watching her father work on stone and her mother, Sorroseeleetu, draw prints, including a famous image of a Sedna printed by Dorset Fine Arts and displayed at the National Gallery of Canada, the Winnipeg Art Gallery and other prestigious Canadian galleries.

Sedna is a popular southern term for the Inuit goddess of the ocean.

In Inuit oral tradition, the character is referred to as Nuliajuk - a woman who is thrown into the sea by her father. Her body creates the whale, walrus, seal and all the sea life that sustains the Inuit.

In addition to carving, Ashoona also works with textiles to make dolls and wall hangings.

She performed as a throat singer during Nunavut Day celebrations and Aboriginal Day celebrations in Yellowknife this summer, where she lives with her family.