Aboriginal Co-operatives in Canada - Centre for the Study of Co ...

A P P E N D I X I ~1960s, public servants in Ottawa sorted, stored, and sold the northern art brought south eachyear by the supply ships.The Art BusinessFrom the beginning, the northern co-operatives were engaged in two kinds of businesses. One,the more glamorous and better known, was the encouragement of the production of northernart and its sale outside the region, primarily in the Canadian South. In its earliest days, it toowas a business that owed much to the energies and expertise of southern experts and supporters.It was always a business, however, that was based on Arctic Aboriginal views of reality,traditional forms of representation, and stories derived from the Arctic cultures.The art business was organized according to a classic co-operative marketing model, emphasizingcontrol over the quantity and quality of the “product” as well as the careful developmentof the marketing process. In its earliest days, the business was regulated by the Canadian Guildof Crafts in Montréal which ensured that the quality was high—at least as that was understoodby southerners interested in Aboriginal art. The art was distributed through southern stores andencouraged by southern government officers and federal politicians; it was promoted through agrowing network of art stores in Canada and, gradually, in some other countries as well. It wasin many ways a controlled market, one that could guarantee a reasonable return to northern cooperatives(and their artist/members), particularly in the time when southern sojourners werefew in number and when individual northern artists had few opportunities to sell outside theregion.The kind of art produced in the Arctic co-operatives has changed dramatically over the years.The first kinds of art, naturally enough, were extensions of the art traditionally created by theArctic peoples; much of it was made from soapstone, animal bones, and hides. As southerntechnology for printmaking became commonplace and southern materials were introduced, theArctic artistic flare, forms, and perspectives were transferred to other media and new markets.By 1999, more than a thousand northern artists in Nunavut and the two territories were sellingtheir work through the co-operatives. It had become one of the most important sources ofincome for the region’s Aboriginal peoples. It was a good example of the instinctiveentrepreneurial capacity of northern peoples.The Other BusinessesThe other kind of business, in reality more important in the long run, grew out of the developmentof retail stores in the Arctic communities. Because of the isolation of the Arcticsettlements and the domination of two chain stores in the region, the cost of consumer goodswas always a major issue among northern peoples. Co-operative stores, through their transparentaccounting systems, could be held accountable for the charges they levied on the goods274 ~