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Shown below are items associated with Jessie Oonark available without first logging in. This person appears in records from MINPAKU and MOA.

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Oonark was born in a remote area north of Baker Lake, near the Back River. She was married to another Inuit at a young age, but around 1953 she was widowed with two of her eight children still dependent on her. During this period, the annual caribou migration--on which the Caribou Inuit in the Kivalliq Region depended--shifted away from the area where she lived, leaving many Inuit to starve. Unable to support her children through hunting under the harsh conditions, she moved to Baker Lake in 1958. There she started drawing, and her first prints were published in 1960. Despite her late start, she was a very active and prolific artist over the next 19 years, creating a body of work that made her one of Canada's best known Inuit artists. In 1975 she was elected a Member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and in 1984 she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Born: 1906
Died: 1985