Eulogy

nine children. Winnie is best known for her sewing. She was well known for her ‘delta braid.’ She taught sewing classes and passed on her skills and talents to many, including her children.

In the early 70’s Winnie set up her camp at John Keevik’s Point. A few years later she moved across the river where her camp is now located. Her children and many, many nieces and nephews, as well as children from all over the region have enjoyed staying there.

Almost every day we climbed ‘mom’s hill’ to pick berries or just to play on the hill. She always made sure that we children had a picnic at the end of each day. She was a great cook!

Winnie has been a member of the Catholic Women’s League since 1970.

Winnie Cockney

(Lennie) was born at Pederson, Mackenzie Delta on May 8, 1922. Her parents were Lennie Inglangasuk & Sarah Kaye.

Winnie grew up in Nulluk with her family. She married Walter Cockney on July 3, 1945. They lived at Hershel Island, Komakuk Beach and Stokes Point, as well as many of the DEW Line sites, before moving to Inuvik in 1969. They had

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We will miss our mother. When mom was in the hospital, we told her that we loved her; she always answered, me too, I love all you kids. She was a good teacher and protector. May she rest in peace and enjoy being in the presence of Jesus.

We love you mom.

James (Kitty), Rudy, Jane (Noel), Turpin, Rosa (Gerry), Topsy, Cathy (Tyson), Rosalie (Stan) and Esther Semmler.

was born on June 26th, at 12:45 pm. His mother is Janina Gruben and his father is Jimmy Kalinek.

The 18 th Great Northern Arts Festival (GNAF) took place over 10 days in July, from the 14th to 23rd , and was an opportunity for Northern artists to showcase their work to the public, as well as exchange ideas and network with other artists. If you’ve ever been amazed by someone’s intricate beadwork, painting style, carving technique or a multitude of other talents, be it painting, photography, knife making or basket weaving, the GNAF provided a chance for you to take a workshop with these artists. Many visitors went home pleased with their handmade artwork, and were inspired to continue, “living the legacy of our elders” (theme of this year’s GNAF) through their own artistic interpretations.

Inuvialuit artists from the entire ISR were represented. From Tuktoyaktuk, there was the Nasogaluak family of carvers (Joe, Eli, and Emsley), Mary Ann Taylor with her “intimate carvings of women at their handiwork” and Verna Taylor. Julia Ekpakhoak and Mary Inutalik from Ulukhaktok brought artwork inspired by stories passed on by elders, Roberta Memogana and Mary Okheena made prints and wall hangings based on “stories and memories of culture”, while Inuvik artists Wayne Elanik, Jr. showed off his flash drawings and carvings, along with the work of carvers Pat Harrison and Raquell Nuttal. Fred Trimble from Inuvik also had his “whalebone and soapstone carving chosen for 2005 image”. Brendalynn Inuk Trennert and Julia Pokiak Trennert came from Hay River to share their art of “moose and caribou hair tufting”.

The artists were pleased overall with the international exposure the GNAF allows them, and had rare opportunities such as websites and promotional materials created for them.

Sachs Harbour artists Edith Haogak, and Lena Wolki both enjoyed their time at GNAF, although they both said it was a “slower” year than usual. “It used to be really busy,” said Edith, “I’ve been here since they had the first arts festival!” At her workshops, she taught beading, “what kind of strout, beads and stitches to use.” She enjoys “passing on knowledge to the next generation” even back home, and creating beautiful embroidery work. When in Sachs, she spreads the word to look for buyers when she completes a piece; at the arts festival, she received so many orders that she had to work “overtime” to satisfy the customers who had fallen in love with her mukluks! Edith was also a model for the Arctic Fashion show! She really liked the watercolor paintings that MaryAnne Wettlaufer did, and enjoys being exposed to different ways to create art.

Lena Wolki kept busy at the arts festival spinning qiviuk and knitting. “I had lots of customers for the knitting machine workshop, knitting scarves and mitts with muskox wool, ” she said. “When I first learnt to use this machine, I had to go away from Sachs to Calgary.” She exchanged a knitted qiviuk toque for a stainless steel ulu with George Robert, the artist who specializes in knives with ornate handles made of wood, bone, antler, stone and even fossilized mastodon!

Joe Nasogaluak showed us his carving-in-progress of a wolf dancer. “It’s called “Worn out mukluks”, he said. “It’s been a fun weekend for everyone, I am working in this tent with my son, my brother and my cousin.” He has attended most of the Arts Festivals ever since it began, and is in Inuvik mainly to work on a large scale sculpture commission. He also wanted to show Marnie Hilash, the show’s organizer, his family’s support as they have known her for many years from her work in Tuktoyaktuk. Joe and Eli took first prize at Canada’s Snow Sculpture Competition in 2002, with a spectacular carving called “After Ragnarok: A New Beginning,” and enjoy international fame, creating works that evolve continually in artistic expression and integrity.

Joe shared his rise to recognition with us. “I’ve been carving full time since 1985, and now I only do two or three sculptures a month. It used to be a lot of backpacking, taking my sculptures into galleries, getting turned down, then one day I met a gallery that took on my work, and I kept going to span out from there. I had to move down south to get world recognition; I used to live in Calgary and made 30 to 50 sculptures a month. Now that I’ve built a clientele of collectors, I can send out emails of my work and get the word out about them.” He also recently began his own outfitters business, performed at GNAF with the Tuktoyaktuk drummer and dancers and enjoyed getting gigs for the Beaufort Sea Boys, a band that plays at old time dances and square dances.

He recommends the arts festival as a place to share skills. “You see more people working together sharing tools, lending a hand, sharing ideas; with some of the younger guys, we give them a hand. We’re not here just to make money but also to help give the younger people confidence so they can keep going.” He gives them “shortcuts” because “when I first began, I had no one to watch, so I had to learn the hard way. Often, as a carver, you create habits that are hard to change, so we try to help them develop other ways to move forward.”

Joe also recommended carving as a good job to “bring to school”, if you are going for further education. “A lot of people who move down south for school need a job, and you can carve anywhere,” said Joe.

Did you win a GNAFee this year? Not sure what that is? Then read the following interview with Dennis Allen, founder of the Top of the World Film Festival!

T: Congratulations Dennis! This first film festival in Inuvik was an absolute success. Did you expect it to turn out so well?

D: I didn’t know what to expect. I knew there’ll be a lot of people on the opening night - the cast and families supporting the first three student films, and people at the GNAF, but at around 6:30pm, I was actually getting nervous, because there were only 3 people hanging around the venue. When we opened the door at seven, people just started pouring in, there were 60 chairs in the room, and we had to add more chairs so more people could sit in the hallway. That really blew me away! There were also a larger audience than we had expected for the rest of the films, especially for the last few films from the North, like Being Caribou, it was full house again.

T: It was a good chance to expose people to films they normally wouldn’t get to rent at the video store. How did you and Jennifer Bowen come up with the concept?

D: It was Jennifer’s idea really. When we went to the film festival in Norway, Jennifer was inspired because it was such a good festival, strongly centered on their Sammi culture. She said we could do a film festival in Inuvik, and run it with the arts festival. She knew there were people I could call to get some films.

The other part was the workshop. I’ve been to lots of film festivals and I’ve always thought, wouldn’t it be cool to if all the filmmakers there could make a film together? Because we couldn’t invite any filmmakers to Inuvik, we thought we could give a workshop and make our own filmmakers. We could incorporate the community as actors, directors, and crew. It would really fire up the community, because it was something new!

T: We had expected to see really amateur films, but the films came out pretty polished, and even had some good acting in it! Was it hard to put together the Shooting from the Hip workshop?

D: Not really. I knew everyone was excited about doing the workshop, and when they showed up everyday and on time. I knew everything would be good. For me, wherever I hold a workshop, if people show up and sacrifice four evenings of their lives, then we’re more than halfway there. 95% is attitude.

I met Will Belcourt from NFB (National Film Board) at a similar workshop at Fort Good Hope. He offered to help me out. It’s in the best interests of the NFB, because they want to have more filmmakers, especially from the North.

First off, I gave participants a workshop on drama, how conflict is the inciting incident for drama, and talked about tools like characterization and the three-act structure. They came up with many ideas, and we kept pulling them back to how you need a good guy and a bad guy, even if it’s the same person, and how to have an inciting incident that keeps the audience on the edge of their seats.

T: These films seem to encapsulate a lot of local flavor, dealing with issues of humanity with humor. Do you see a lot of hope for future filmmakers from this region?

D: I think so, because each community…in fact everybody, has their own stories. And they are all interesting, whether they know it or not. It’s just a matter of giving people the tools to tell the stories.

T: We loved the GNAFEE Awards. Why did you decide to give out these awards? Was there a particularly moving acceptance speech?

D: We gave an award for the best soundtrack, and Dave thanked all the artists he ripped off (filmmakers brought their favorite CDs from home), for me that was the funniest thing. Everybody who came up to accept awards said they didn’t realize how much fun they’ll have, how much they were going to learn, how much they will get so drawn into the process…

I have been to a lot of festivals and have gotten some awards, it’s really good for your self-esteem. The awards also encourage you to do more work. I wanted to give participants the whole experience of a film festival. We got the participants to make posters and invite all their friends, to make a big thing out of it. An artist (Gilad Katz) carved the awards out and put them on little pedestals. We called them the GNAFEEs, we just wanted to have fun with it. A lot of people voted, the awards were split up pretty evenly among the three films…some got more creative awards, and others the technical awards.

T: We also enjoyed the variety of films chosen. What were your guiding principles for choosing the final line-up of films?

D: The theme was 'Our Home and Native Land', so I wanted films that reflected the North, and our relationships to the North. We had a really good variety of films, dramas, short documentaries…My favourite film is Inuk Women City Blues. An Inuit woman from Greenland made the film. It’s about women from there who end up on the streets of Copenhagen, because they cannot escape their alcoholism.

It’s very similar to issues in the North, about people who leave the north to go south and cannot escape the lifestyle. It’s a sad story but those films motivate people emotionally to do something, about their own lives or others. It starts dialogue and dialogue is really what makes change. People might start talking about the film, or their family, or they might begin a path towards acceptance, so it doesn’t eat away at them.

T: Would you do this again next year? Is there anything you would do differently?

D: Absolutely. We’re going to do it again next year. We’d probably start a little earlier, ask for more help, do a little more work on the website and raise some money, maybe even get a bigger venue. It was a good first year collaboration with the GNAF but we might get a big tent and do it outside next year. We’ll also throw a wider net out for more films. People who made films, even home movies they want to submit can show it to us, we’ll take a look at them.