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Unknown artist

1917 or earlier

wood, copper, seal blood glue, mammal sinew, bird feather

Canadian Museum of History

Four wooden arrows with fletching and dark arrowheads are arranged diagonally against a white background. A color calibration strip is visible at the bottom right. The Inuinnaq (Copper Inuit) were so named because of their use of nearly pure raw copper to make a variety of edged tools. During the brief arctic summer, the people dispersed in small groups of two or three families, wandering over the interior tundra plains to hunt caribou and fish. As camps were moved every few days, possessions were kept to an absolute minimum. Diamond Jenness spent the summer of 1915 living such a life with his hosts Ipakhuak and Higilak, on the rolling tundra of southwestern Victoria Island. Inuinnaq…