The Lumiuk legend is a tale of greed, suffering, rehabilitation and revenge. Pictured here are two very different images based on different parts of the legend.

The basic story:  Mother, daughter and son lived in an igloo.  Son developed snowblindness, and became totally dependent on mother and daughter.  One day, the clear ice window in the igloo melted, leaving an opening.  A polar bear appeared outside the window, and the mother positioned the son and helped him aim an arrow to shoot the polar bear.  Although the son  had   in fact killed the bear, the mother told him that he had shot a dog by mistake.  Mother and daughter then butchered the bear, only giving the son scraps, and telling him that it was dog meat.  Two loons flying overhead heard the son's cries for someone to help restore his sight.  They took him to the shore, and held him underwater until his sight was restored. In some versions of the legend, a loon carries him underwater clinging to the loon's back. The son then returned to the igloo, pretending to  still  be blind.  He saw the polar bear skin, and started plotting revenge on his mother. One day, he asked his mother to come with him to the shore because he was going to try to harpoon a whale, and he would need help pulling it into shore. He tied the harpoon line around his mother's waist, ostensibly for security.  When he harpooned a large whale, his mother was pulled underwater by the whale and drowned.

Ningeokuluk Teevee focused on the optimistic part of the legend -- the restoration of the son's sight. In a contemporary one-of-a-kind pencil drawing, she has the boy clutching the loon's feet and exhaling a trail of delicate bubbles.  We know that the feet belong to a loon because we can just see the exquisite detail of the feathers in the loon's wingtips, one of Ning's signature images.

Kiakshuk, a first-generation artist, chose to depict the son's revenge in this 1961 stonecut.  At first glance, the print shows a pod of whales in a cove.  On closer inspection, however, the real subjects of the print are the small figures on the horizon. There, we see the son holding his harpoon, and we can even see that the harpoon line is tied around the mother's waist. Their ruined igloo appears on the right edge of the horizon line. The narrative economy is breathtaking. 

Persons familiar with European fairy tales frequently assume, wrongly, that Inuit legends will also have a happy ending. They were used to teach Inuit youth about survival in the brutal conditions of the Arctic, and the lessons were often harsh. 

Kiakshuk, Lumiak and the Whales