TREASURES GROWN HOME–

I wear my beautiful beaded slippers wherever I go. I wear them at home in winter, relaxing by the woodstove. I wear them out on the land in summer, sitting around the campfire. As a children’s author, I’ve proudly shown them off to kids at book events from Halifax to Vancouver, from Iqaluit to Whitehorse. I’m wearing them now as I type. I’d wear them to bed if my wife let me. My slippers are adorned with two brilliant roses, one purple, one blue, set artistically against a flawless background of tight, white beads. The high cuffs of my slippers are rimmed with the softest, shiniest beaver fur imaginable. After enduring many kilometres underfoot, my slippers still retain the lovely scent of smoked moose hide.

“You have to take pride in what you do,” says Inuvik’s Jessie Colton, the gifted creator of my beaded slippers. “Don’t slap things together just to make a quick buck. Do it to get a beautiful, satisfied smile from your customer.”

I first smiled at my beaded slippers many years ago while up from Yellowknife for a meeting at Aurora College. My host, Alana Mero told me, “While you’re in town, you just have to go to IRC’s gift shop!” I took her advice and ducked out over lunch. I found the shop downtown, on the third floor of the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation’s (IRC) headquarters. There they were, sitting quietly on a shelf, my beaded slippers, virtually calling out my name. It was love at first sight.

Needless to say, I returned late to my meeting, so tantalizing were the treasures I found at the IRC gift shop. Beaded slippers, gloves and jackets, carved hunters, fishermen, drum dancers, jewelry, paintings, mitts, mukluks, traditional games, drums and CD’s of local musicians. It’s all home-grown stuff, and the main reason this place exists is to promote the local artists who create it.

“It started almost ten years ago,” says gift shop manager, Mavis Jacobson, “when IRC’s Chair, Nellie Cournoyea, used to buy things from people who wanted to sell their art in order to help them. Eventually we just started adding and adding. She bought their things for many, many years. Then we’d resell it for her. Finally it got » too big and a gift shop was opened at IRC to cater the artists.”

The artists who fill the store’s shelves with their beautiful creations come from all six of the Inuvialuit communities – Aklavik, Tuktoyaktuk, Sachs Harbour, Paulatuk, Ulukhaktok, and Inuvik. “There are an awful lot of artists out there in our communities,” says Jacobson. “In Tuk, for instance there are fourteen artists in two families alone. Most of them carvers.”

One of Inuvik’s well-known carvers, Patrick Harrison, says that his carving career really took off with the support and attention provided by the gift shop. “A few years back I was looking for a place to sell my carvings and somebody told me about the gift shop. I checked it out and it seemed to be a nice place. The other places take off too much. I like to sell to people I know and a lot have been ordering stuff from me now. I think it’s mainly because of IRC. They tell all the people about my stuff, they give out my number. It seems to work well.”

Artists like Harrison couldn’t ask for a better deal. “We have no markup,” Jacobson stresses. “We keep nothing. We sell art for the same price that we buy it. We are a non-profit organization and all the money goes directly back to the artists. Basically we’re just promoting their art.”

Who buys their stuff? “Mostly tourists,” says Jacobson, “or locals buying a present for somebody in their office or in town or for their children. It gets really busy just before Christmas.”

The gift shop doesn’t advertise much beyond Inuvik’s town bulletin and the local hotels and visitor’s centre. Mavis says, “one of the most effective PR tools is word of mouth. I can tell you it sure worked for me”.

“It’s a really good location,” says Harrison, whose soapstone and alabaster carvings can easily fetch a thousand dollars or more. “And they don’t take off any money from what I want. They advertise for me. All around, it’s pretty good.”

The gift shop and IRC also support Inuvialuit artists by helping them order raw materials such as seal pelts, moose hides, beavers, rabbits, and whatever they need. Nellie Cournoyea likes to keep her hand in the business and will pick up both artwork and orders in her many travels through the region.

“There’s a lot of nice stuff here if people want to come and take a look,” says Jacobson. “I think it helps the local economy. It helps the artists. Basically we’re here to promote the artwork of our people. They get the best price possible; and they seem happy.”∞ we