Jessie 

2001
Brazilian Soapstone, Wood
27.6 x 24.5 x 41.2

Collection of Alex De Figueiredo

Jessie Hologak Green was an Inuit woman who grew up in the Point Hope area of Alaska and came across to the Mackenzie Delta and the Paulatuk region around the turn of the century. Jessie was very elderly when she passed away, and was a liberated woman before her time. When she first came to the Paulatuk area, she had a husband and several children, but her husband passed away when he was still young. Rather than remarrying, she took on the responsibility of doing the hunting, trapping, and rearing of the children herself.

From the time I was old enough to know who she was, I always saw her as being able to do things on her own. As she grew older, Jessie became more and more hunched over. The sculpture shows her on her haunches with her elbows to the ground. She would roll her own cigarettes and sit like this when she came to visit and talk.