Additional Images

Provenance:

Waddington’s Auctioneers, Toronto, November 1999, Lot 160
Waddington’s Auctioneers, Toronto, November 2001, Lot 296

Note:

According to Inuit legend, during one of the seasons, much starvation spread across the Arctic land, so much so that there was nothing to eat. A group of hungry foxes spying a big fat muskox turned to the wolf and said, "Please go kill the muskox so that all of us can eat and we will survive." The wolf responded, "I am too weak and cannot kill such a big animal." 

Suddenly a small voice piped up, it was the weasel who said, "If you wish, I will kill the muskox and there will be food for all." All the animals laughed at him for how could such a small insignificant animal, such as a weasel, harvest a muskox when the mighty wolf could not. 

The little weasel went off, sneaking and creeping around the muskox, then swifty, the weasel attacked the musk ox digging into the muskox's anus causing the muskox to bleed to death. The weasel became a hero to the other starving animals for with his cunning he had saved all the animals from starvation.

For a similar work by Makpaaq, see Bernadette Driscoll, Uumajut: Animal Imagery in Inuit Art (WAG 1985), cat, 88.

Also, Inuit Art in the 1970’s, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 1979, page 49, plate 24