OOYAHTOAN and Me

One heart, two lungs, and sealskin...

[author's note: This post was first published Sept. 18th of 2007]

Ken Lisbourne is an Inupiaq Eskimo from Point Hope, Alaska, with stories and a background that are different enough from my own that it makes his colorful paintings that much more interesting to me.

I used to cling to the notion that people were more alike than different (one heart, two lungs, a nose…). When looking at art, listening to music, or reading a blog post, this has its place -- human experience wants to recognize similar human experience -- but if art were only about common human emotion and experience, it would probably all look like the colorful splotches of Jackson Pollack.

Degas’ absinthe drinkers interest me not only in their loneliness and pain, but also in their locale.

Where are they? Paris? Fantastic! I want to go there. There are people living there, in this other place I am not sure is even real. I mean, come on, they don’t even speak English. How can we be the same?

Ken Lisbourne & His Locale

The bright colors with which he paints are attractive, eye-catching.

They are what first drew me across the floor to the table, where he sat selling his artwork at the World Eskimo & Indian Olympics this past summer in Anchorage.

I stood at the table, and once I was able to bring the colors and shapes into focus, the subject matter of Lisbourne’s watercolors kept me mesmerized:

A whaling party hunting a whale at sea…The struggle of the hunt, a harpoon jutting from the whale, a hunter drowned, tangled in a line, another hunter (presumably dead) ascending towards heaven. A small wooden cross (which I later learn the hunter has had since being baptized into the Episcopal Church) held out before him…

Lisbourne grew up in a community that actually hunts and butchers whales.

Though I first moved to Alaska as a child in 1975, hunting whales is something I have never participated in. It certainly holds a fascination for me.

And what of the wooden cross in the dead hunter’s hand? Was Christianity a part of every Eskimo’s life, or just this particular artist’s?

Lisbourne, himself, was given a small wooden cross when he entered the church. He tells me that Christianity is how many of the carvers in his community became painters.

“In Point Hope, the Episcopal Church has been prevalent for over 100 years.”

It was Missionaries who introduced new art materials like paper, pencil, and colored pencils.

Before the Missionaries arrival, carving was the most popular art form because of the materials available. Stone, bone, ivory, wood. The carvers now began to paint and draw as well.

Lisbourne himself works as both a carver and a painter. He says he does not do both at the same time, however. He is either in painting mode, or carving mode.

When he paints it is with watercolors on paper, or blanched, weathered sealskin.

One painting that captures my attention in particular is of a blanket-toss painted on stretched sealskin.

Another, on paper, portrays a Bowhead whale being butchered by the community. Every member performing some task, whether it is cutting, carrying, or cooking part of the whale.

Something else captures my attention -- each painting is signed and titled in both Inupiaq and English:

Butchering the Bowhead Whale! – AYATAAYUNiK iNGOOTUK!
Ken Lisbourne – OOYAHTOAN!
Pt. Hope, Alaska – Tigiqaq

Tigiqaq, the Inupiaq name for Point Hope, translates to ‘index finger’.

Point Hope is an index finger of land along the Northwestern Coast of Alaska. It is home to Northern Eskimos (Inupiaq).

Lisbourne says his people believe that the Northern and Southern Eskimos (Yupik) are not related. Many believe the Yupik are descendents of Asia via the Bering Land Bridge, but Lisbourne tells me the Inupiaq are not. They have been in the Point Hope area through three ice ages.

Lisbourne also mentions that he is pure Eskimo, that he has Eskimo roots. My ‘roots’ are what he was asking about when he asked me what my culture was.

My culture would seem to be Polish, German, Czech, and English, because that is where the history of my roots lies. However, my culture is really anything but. A native of those countries would not recognize me as a Pole, German, Czech, or Englishman. I would be recognized as an American.

Lisbourne would be recognized as an American as well, but as a Native American.

We are still so close to that period in time when Missionaries, fur-traders, gold-seekers, and commercial whalers introduced their lifestyles to the Eskimos of Alaska, that a complete assimilation has not been made.

When I talk with someone from an outlying Alaskan native community I see a mix of two cultures in their lives: theirs and mine. When they talk to me I’m guessing they only see mine. They are still outsiders to a large percentage of this country.


Lisbourne says that when an Alaskan Native artist from an outlying area travels to the city there are strong barriers to his success.

One barrier, a huge and infamous generalization that has been both championed and disputed in many eloquent editorials, is that of Alcohol. Lisbourne has struggled with alcohol himself (though not for over 27 years now).

The other major barrier he mentions is the artist having to sell his work at craft shows and on the street, versus in the galleries (which are usually non-native owned and take a large commission).

The craft shows are beginning to bring some success for the artists, however. (This is largely due, Lisbourne says, to the efforts of Mabel Pike. A Tlinget woman who organized getting native arts off the streets and out of gift shops.)

“Native artists selling their own art.” It is this point that Lisbourne wants me to understand the most.

He is seeing more native youth taking up art and artwork, and his dream is to see young native artists sitting behind the table selling their work at craft shows.

The artist gets the profit, and the buyer gets to meet the artist.

I tell him that is a sentiment that exists among many artists, writers, and musicians. Whether they are Inupiaq, Polish, or White American.

It is one of those common waypoints along the paths of different cultures that, along with our shared physical attributes (one heart, two lungs, a nose), convinces me people are more alike than different. That what we do to others, we do to ourselves.

That art is universal.