Tales of Endurance

David Ruben creates works based on stories he heard while growing up in Paulatuk.
This workshop explores how he has turned an old story into a work of art.

"This is a story from my village. In the 1950s, men from Paulatuk found jobs at the
Distant Early Warning station. But they couldn't afford to buy food from the store."

"So they continued to hunt. But famine struck. The Bluenose caribou herd had changed
the path of their migration."

"There were periods when the animals disappeared. Suddenly, there were no animals to
hunt and they were on the verge of starvation."

"They had some fish nets so they went to a place called Fish Lake, outside of Paulatuk.
The fishes come from the ocean into this fish lake, they move in and out."

"These fishes, flounders, are ugly, bony. People didn't like catching them because they
destroyed their nets. They have sharp thorns. People were afraid to touch them."

"The Elders said: 'This is the only food we've got, so we have to learn to cook them.
And that's what they did."

"So a fish they had always spurned saved their lives.
This reminds us how we can handle problems that seem insurmountable."