Two more shades of orange

 Midwinter afternoon in Pangnirtung
watercolour and crayon
©2023 Charlene Brown

 Situated in the shadows of a steep-walled fjord just south of the Arctic Circle, Pangnirtung doesn’t get a lot of sun during the winter months. The street lights are on most of the day. (I’ve relied on several internet photos to help me guess at the patterns and shades of orange for this painting, as I have only seen Pangnirtung in the late summer when it was still light most of the night).

The site is said to have been occupied regularly by nomadic hunter-gatherers for almost 4000 years. But life in the Arctic changed significantly in the early 1960s when Inuit were placed, often forcibly, in permanent settlements by the Canadian government.

Even though they then had access to schools, hospitals and social services, the move was controversial. In an attempt to ameliorate the negative effects of relocations and to create an economic base, the government funded arts and crafts initiatives across the Arctic. One of these was the hand-weaving cooperative where ‘Pangnirtung tapestries’ are now produced.  The Tapestry Studio of the Uqqurmiut Centre for Arts and Crafts was just getting underway at the time of my painting trip to Pangnirtung (then still part of the Northwest Territories) in August-September of 1990.