Yellowknife (Apr 11/05) - It's not your ordinary collection of Inuit art. In one carving, there's blood pouring out of stab wounds.

In another, a wife has a secure grip on the garrote around her husband's throat as he writhes on the ground.

Eli Nasogaluak with one of his own carvings at his studio. - NNSL file photo

It's not CSI NWT, it's the Sissons-Morrow Collection, maintained by the NWT's Department of Justice. Referred to by insiders as the S and M collection, the artwork illustrates the significant - sometimes violent - events of noteworthy cases in Northern legal history.

"These pieces depict crime scenes, so they're quite expressive pieces," said Eli Nasogaluak, originally from Tuktoyaktuk, now living in Yellowknife.

After years in "secure storage," the Department of Justice commissioned the Inuvialuit carver to restore and, in six cases, reproduce the original sculptures.

"They're pretty graphic stuff," he said.

Though they're not the sort of art Nasogaluak would create on his own, he approached the work with the respect one carver has for another's art.

"They were done in the 1950s and the artists have passed on so it was an honour to keep them going," said Nasogaluak.

Artists whose work are in the collection include Peggy Ekapina, Bob Ekalopialok, Sam Anavilok and Abraham Kingmeatook.

The Yellowknife courthouse had the artworks on public display for the month of March as part of the NWT supreme court's 50th anniversary celebrations.

Jack Sissons, the first judge of the supreme court in the North, commissioned most of the scary carvings between 1956 and 1966.

The collection began when Allan Kaotak appeared in Sissons' court, charged with murdering his father.

After his acquittal, Kaotak made two carvings, one illustrating how he felt in the courtroom: a tiny Kaotak faces a giant Justice Sissons behind the bench; the second carving depicts his father's suicide.

Kaotak gave the first carving to Sissons. After that, Sissons began commissioning carvers, mostly in what is now Nunavut, to create pieces based on notable cases.

They're not all about murder and mayhem.

One depicts a landmark ruling on adoption and another shows a rescue.

After Sissons retired in 1966, Justice Morrow added three carvings. When Sissons died in 1969, the entire collection was given to the people of the North, in the care of the Supreme Court of the NWT.

Ironically, six of the carvings of criminal cases have gone missing over the years, and are thought to have been stolen.

Nasogaluak started working on the collection last October and finished his last reproduction at the end of March.

"It was more challenging than I thought it would be," said Nasogaluak.

"At first I thought they would be very simple and easy because they were the old style of carving. But to bring it out to be as close as possible to the original, that was challenging because it's not my style."

While reproducing a piece depicting a rescue, where one man balances another on his back, Nasogaluak grew to realize just how much care the original carver took in his or her craft.

"They must have taken a lot of time for that piece," he said. "There was a lot of undercutting and a lot of detail."

Nasogaluak had to do some detective work of his own in restoring the collection.

When reproducing a missing carving, sometimes he had only one photo to go by. That meant deducing what the opposite side would have looked like.

He encountered another mystery while carving a duplicate of the Fish Thief sculpture.

The photos of the missing carving had deep shadows, and the carving had been photographed against a black background. Both circumstances made it hard to pick out details.

The thief has a fish in his right hand, but the object in his left is ambiguous. Nasogaluak thinks it might be a sealskin bag.

Repairs often meant replacing tiny accessories, such as knives, spears and blood.

To re-arm the little criminals, Nasogaluak studied the old photos to discern what materials were used.

Knives tended to be made of slivers of copper. Some accessories were carved from bone and the blood gushing from stab wounds was made of some sort of shredded fabric.

"It's something like a red cotton," said Nasogaluak.

"Once again, I had to guess from the picture. I used some red fake fur. I think it looks closely like the original."NNSL file photo

Eli Nasogaluak with one of his own carvings at his studio.