Recent newsletters have featured several Sedna carvings. The newest addition to this group is pictured above -- a rare Sedna carved by Latcholassie Akesuk (1919-2000), one of the first generation Cape Dorset master carvers. Cape Dorset artists had access to Markham Bay's beautiful serpentine stone, which was relatively easy to carve with fine detail and which could take a high polish. But alone among his contemporaries, Latcholassie produced bulky, almost abstract carvings. He favored birds, but occasionally carved other subjects. This is the only Sedna by Latcholassie that we've seen. It is a compact sculpture, but it exudes authority, and the artist has preserved the essential hallmarks of the Sedna -- the tail and the truncated hands.
Sedna, the woman who lives under the sea, was a powerful spirit in Inuit lore who was known by a different names in different regions. There are many variations on the Sedna myth, but the common elements include the deception of a young woman by an ostensibly desirable suitor and her betrayal by her father when she asked him to rescue her from her undesirable husband. Her father threw her into the ocean from their boat, and when she grasped the gunwales and tried to climb back in, her father hacked off the joints of her fingers, which became whales, walruses and seals. When Sedna was angry, storms would roil the ocean, or the marine mammals would not allow themselves to be caught. She could be placated if a shaman visited her under the sea, and combed and braided her hair. The ocean would then become calm, and the whales and walruses would once again be available to feed the Inuit.
Other names by which Sedna is known include Nuliajuk and Taleelayo.
