by Kerry McCluskey
Northern News Services

NNSL (May 04/98) - When we think of Inuit sculpture, we tend to think of a piece of stone that has been carefully manoeuvred to liberate the spirit and the essence of Arctic life.

For the last 50 years, this is exactly and intentionally how the carvings have been presented and sold.

But long-time Northerner George Diveky tells another story.

After living in the community of Inukjuak in the mid-1960s, then Port Harrison, Diveky had a unique opportunity to discuss the origins of marketing Inuit sculpture with some of the first carvers discovered and promoted by James Houston.

"From what I know, especially in the Eastern Arctic, there was a long tradition of decorating artifacts but they didn't really have a tradition of carving things for their own sake," says Diveky.

"People in Port Harrison told me they used to carve little cribbage boards or wonderful little ivory figurines of boats or saws to sell to whalers and other Europeans. If they didn't sell, they gave them to their kids to play with. But they were never really organized and commercial carving was practised very sporadically," says Diveky who was first recruited from Ottawa to teach in Inukjuak in 1964.

During his indoctrination into teaching in the Arctic, Diveky recalls watching a film about Inuit carvers.

"The theme of the movie is that the carver looks at the stone and liberates the spirit. He draws deep on his cultural roots and liberates the spirit of the stone. It makes for a beautiful image and this was the message James Houston got out."

Houston, who is thought of as the man who got Inuit carving off the ground, first travelled to Inukjuak in 1949 and bought some carvings to show to dealers in Ottawa and Montreal. The excitement continued to build and Houston returned North.

"It was the start of modern commercial carving. Houston's account of it is he was there and people were drawing all over the place. Their account of it, he was going around and showing them drawings and saying, 'can you carve this?' They said why and he said for money."

Diveky says this started the romantic notion of the noble aboriginal carver.

"My experience is not that at all. My experience is the artist liberated $5 or $10 or $15 in that stone and my evidence is the people. It's not an artistic impulse but well designed economics."

He adds that the government quickly got involved and began to hand out booklets on the appropriate shape and size of the carvings.

"They were told don't make them too convoluted because it's too hard for the housewives to dust and they were encouraged to make ashtrays and candle holders and scenes of Arctic life."

While Diveky enjoys handing down an alternative view on the birth of Inuit carving in the marketplace, he is quick to add that the money did fill a hole left by the decline of trapping.

"The place carving had in the overall economic life of the community...it helped find an economic tie in to the rest of the world."