Shortly after the traders came, when Peter Pitseolak was still a young boy, his father died, and for a time he knew what it was to feel like a poor relation. Once he showed me his collection of guns. It covered a wall in his house. He became a rich and powerful hunter. Nowadays the camps are still loved and visited, but no one lives full time on the land.
Children have to go to school, and for most people hunting is a part-time occupation.
Peter Pitseolak belonged, of course, to the first generation of his people with the means to leave a permanent record. He himself used every means of communication that came to hand. His photographs captured the last days of Eskimo camp life, and were developed with the help of his remarkable wife, Aggeok, in igloo, tent and hut. And as the pictures in this book indicate, he also used other powerful means of communication - painting and drawing. I was sitting in the post one winter's day, trying to paint a picture of the other side of the harbor and the pale glow of winter sunlight, when Pitseolak came along and asked me what I was doing.