When the Days are Long and the Sun Shines into the Night

Jessie Oonark, When the Days are Long and the Sun Shines into the Night 1966–69. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. © Public Trustee for Nunavut, Estate of Jessie Oonark Photo: NGC

"Born in 1906 in the Back River area, Nunavut (formerly Northwest Territories), Jessie (Una) Oonark spent the first fifty years of her life on the land in Utkusiksalingmiut hunting camps throughout the region with her family, before being relocated to  Qamani'tuaq (Baker Lake), NU, by the Canadian government in the late 1950s. Towards the end of that decade, and during a time of enormous change and transition, Oonark began her career as an artist, innovatively and strategically translating customary life through new vivid forms."

Jessie Oonark’s drawing When the Days are Long and the Sun Shines into the Night is currently on view in the Indigenous and Canadian Galleries at the National Gallery of Canada