Inuksuit: Silent Messengers of the Arctic - Hardcover

Hallendy, Norman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0295979836 ISBN 13: 9780295979830

Publisher: Univ of Washington Pr, 2000

Synopsis

The mysterious stone figures known as inuksuit can be found throughout the circumpolar world. Built from whatever stones are at hand, each one is unique. Inuksuit are among the oldest and most important objects placed by humans upon the vast Arctic landscape and have become a familiar symbol of the Inuit and of their homeland.

In Norman Hallendy's 40 years of travel throughout the Arctic, he has developed lasting friendships with a number of Inuit elders. Through them, he learned that inuksuit are a nuanced, complex, and vital form of communication. Some are navigational or directional aids, while others offer hunting information or indicate caches of food or supplies. Some were practical helpers that assisted in hunting caribou or luring geese. Other similar stone structures were objects of veneration, indicating places of power or the abode of spirits.

Although most inuksuit appear singly, sometimes they are arranged in sequences spanning great distances or are grouped to mark a specific place. Others define the ghostly geography of the spiritual landscape.

Hallendy's 52 dramatic color photographs of many different kinds of inuksuit and objects of veneration capture not only a sense of wonder and power but reveal a hauntingly beautiful landscape that few of us will ever see.

About this title

About the Author:

Norman Hallendy is an Arctic researcher, writer, photographer, designer, artist and chronicler of Inuit life and landscapes. A traveller in the Arctic for over forty years who speaks fluent Inuktitut, he is director of the Tukilik Foundation. He lives outside Carp, Ontario.

From Booklist:

Anyone who has been to Canada lately may have seen them on T-shirts and cap visors: the obviously human-made rock constructions called inuksuit by their creators. In word and picture, Hallendy puts them into their context, the vast open land of the arctic, where they mark places both mundane and sacred, good fishing sites and doors to the otherworld. He introduces the various categories of them, from elementary directional "deconfusers" to windows framing significant places. But he offers more than a taxonomy of arctic stones and a collection of stirring and evocative photographs of them in situ. He furnishes a doorway to the spiritual and cultural realities of the builders of the inuksuit, whose name means simply "the people." These Inuit have been Hallendy's teachers for almost 40 years, and he has been their respectful, curious student. His descriptions of their land and his renderings of their teachings are simply and starkly poetic. In one of the most moving passages, one of Hallendy's teachers, Osuitok, offers some spiritual grist: "Our minds move from thought to thought, hardly stopping to turn one over to see what the underside looks like." To the Inuit, their standing stones are a way of focusing and "deconfusing" the mind, so that the underside of the world may become tangible. Patricia Monaghan
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About this edition

• Publisher: Univ of Washington Pr
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0295979836
• ISBN 13: 9780295979830
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 127