Bessie Scottie Iquginnaaq

Bessie Scottie Iquginnaaq was born in 1912 near Ennadai Lake in the southern section of what used to be called the Keewatin (now Kivalliq). A member of the Ihalmiut, a group of inland dwelling Inuit, Iquginnaaq spent the first decades of her life on the land, learning and developing the semi-nomadic traditions and practices of her people. In the 1960s she relocated to the settlement of Qamanittuaq (Baker Lake), where she remained for the rest of her life. While many newly displaced residents in the community started making drawings for the local coop in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Iquginnaaq didn’t begin drawing until the early 1980s, when she was already in her seventies. Her late arrival on the community’s artistic scene may have had something to do with the fact that most of Qamanittuaq’s first drawers were members of groups who had originally came from more northerly regions, people with whom she would have had little or no prior connection with. In 1985, the community’s printshop published one of her images as a print for its annual collection. Iquninnaaq continued to make drawings throughout the 1980s.