4 minute read

Derrald Taylor

TELLING INUVIALUIT STORIES TO THE WORLD, ONE CARVING AT A TIME

The Eastern Arctic—they're so far ahead in publicity and all the work that they do. But, there's been hardly any presentation of the Western Arctic carvers. Now, there's so many of us that are into it, growing up here and getting so good at what we do! Now, we're trying to get more into the Southern markets; there's few carvers that are in the Southern market already from the Mackenzie Delta region. For example: Bill Nasogaluak, David and Abraham Ruben… those are the three main carvers I know. And us, we're stuck in the Arctic and the NWT, but one day we'd like to go on—go down South and just represent our work down there.

Over the years, I've been on Facebook, and I let people know about my page (Derrald Taylor Inuvialuit Artist). If they want to see my work, they'll just put my name in—'the Inuvialuit artist’. They go through it, look through it, and make orders. From making that order, they'll show their friends and everything. Promotion really helps us out, even through books or online. With all the online sales we do now, that really helps us out. Like, people from way down South making orders—some from the UK, Germany, South America, Japan, some sales from China… even Russia! Not major pieces, but still, it really helps us out.

On the larger pieces, we have stories, or we hear and listen to some of the stories from Elders or someone. And, those are all about them; we'll try to do a carving that'll fit the story, ah? That's a little more challenging, 'cause you gotta interpret the story out of the carving, so you gotta make the carving like the story. It also depends on the story. Say there's…spirits or animals, or animals with spirits, things like that. It's more challenging so you gotta really focus your piece on the story. There's some of us that carve mythical things like dancing bears, Sedna—but what we do is we tell a story. Say I do northern lights—oh we believe what brought northern lights is our ancestors watching over us.

Through my carvings, I want to let people know: where we're from, where we live, what we do, and what we used to do… I keep planning one day that I wanna go South and find a place to work—carve and work—and really show my work more.

A lot of animals that we do, we live off the land before we start carving. And just few days ago, we just went out caribou hunting, so we see the animals. We see the polar bears; we see the belugas. So that's where we get most of our images from.

Through my carvings, I want to let people know: where we're from, where we live, what we do, what we used to do, and that we're from Tuk, even though me and Inung were recently living in YK. But we really wanna promote our work down South. I keep planning one day that I wanna go South and find a place to work—carve and work—and really show my work more. We got some galleries in Vancouver, Calgary, Quebec, Montreal, and Edmonton

that wanna present us, but we're not putting out enough yet. We got festivals that's hopefully coming up this summer; it's supposed to be a huge gathering this summer. 'Cause before that we've got the Adaka Festival in Whitehorse, then the following two weeks after, the GNAF, where we might be gathering as well.

Over the last 10-15 years, I've been taking students on and off. Like I know lots of them—they wanna carve, and they think that we'll be charging them, ah? They think about the money… The last few years, I just invite them in. I tell them, ‘come sit down’ and we'll give them a piece of stone, then we'll sit them down and teach them to carve and that don't cost, 'cause most of them are students and they can't afford money, so we just give them that chance to show them what tools to use, what stone to use. Then they get to bring home a piece and they're happy.

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