Ron Senungetuk is This Year's Rasmuson Foundation Distinguished Artist

Longtime Alaska Native Arts pioneer and visionary, Inupiat Eskimo Ronald Senungetuk, was honored Monday at the Elvira Voth room of the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts as the Rasmuson Foundation's 2008 Distinguished Artist.

Julie Decker, in Icebreakers, her wonderful book about Alaska visual artists, describes Ron's work as being "inspired by Scandinavian design of the 1960s and Alaska Native art before Western contact." The vibrant motion of his stick figures, has always reminded me more than a bit of Paul Klee.

Back in the 1969 Fairbanks ANCSA hearings in Fairbanks, Senungetuk submitted a statement that fully showed the deep processes he underwent in his formative years as an artist. Although his statement was about the interaction of Alaska's First Peoples with the new immigrant populations here, and observations he had made from his extensive travels in the Arctic north - both within and outside of Alaska - rather than about his art, it shows the depths of his thinking on how people have to adjust with each other to interact:

"As a person who has experienced two cultures, I am not very different from others. I am somewhat bicultural, that is, I do know and appreciate Eskimo way of life. At the same time, I am able to live in an urban community. If there were no choice and if there were no opportunities, I would probably feel very much at home in a village. Yet, I am not practicing the Eskimo way of life. To do so, I think would be an attempt to stop time. Even though hunting rights are valid, the Eskimo way of life, I feel, must not be preserved for the sake of tourists and the industry that relates to tourists. On the other hand, one can’t really divorce or remove oneself from his identity. There are certain values that happen to be valid and they are valid even for non-natives.

"Some of these values are successfully demonstrated in Greenland. When I went to Greenland in the summer of 1967, I was able to compare educational developments of Natives in Greenland and Alaska. The first language in Greenland is Greenlandic which is an Eskimo dialect written and taught in schools. The second language is Danish. Some great delicacies in Denmark are from Greenland that were once part of Greenlandic diet. Some Greenlandic heroes or legendary figures are just as important in Copenhagen as in Godhaab. Even though Danish way of life is apparently a good way of life, the Greenlanders are not trying to do everything Danish and the Danish government is not trying to shove every thing Danish to the 40,000 Greenlandic individuals either. Instead, the Danes are assisting the intensely proud Greenland Eskimos to retain some of the best of the Eskimo culture and they are trying to introduce best of the western culture. Even thought the effort can be criticized, it must be acknowledged for self-pride and generous justice and equality of men it allows."

Nineteen other Alaska artists were also honored, either with project grants or fellowships. I was honored with a fellowship that will help me in my work on six ongoing or projected compositions.

image by the University of Alaska Museum of the North