Armand Tagoona

Armand Tagoona was a graphic artist from Qamani’tuaq (Baker Lake), NU. He was born in 1926 in Naujaat (Repulse Bay), NWT to Hanna, an Inuit woman, and Captain George Cleveland, a German man, although Tagoona considered Anglican lay minister and his mother’s boyfriend, Louis Tapatai, his father figure. As a child, Tagoona and his family moved from Naujaat to Igluligaarjuk before settling in Qamani’tuaq. At the age of 15, Tagoona worked for the RCMP in Qamani’tuaq until he lost his job shortly after the death of his mother in 1944. He lived for a period on his own, hunting and fishing to survive. In 1945, Armand Tagoona married Mary Tagoona.

Born as a Roman Catholic, much of Tagoona’s adult life focused on religious beliefs and in 1958, Tagoona converted to Anglicanism and worked for a number of years to spread that religion throughout the Arctic. In 1960, Tagoona was the only Inuk minister in the Arctic, and the first Inuk ordained in the Anglican Church of Canada. By the late 1960s, he founded a new religious group affiliated to the Anglican Church in Qamani’tuaq known as the Arctic Christian Fellowship (ACF).

Tagoona was not a prolific artist, only creating a handful of works over his lifetime. Despite his strong Christian beliefs, Tagoona’s sole print, “Qiviuq, His Wives and Children,” depicts an oral story passed down in many Inuit families. It is said through his church and his art book Shadows, Tagoona overcame the divisions between both Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism, and the gap between traditional Inuit beliefs and Christian perspectives.

Tagoona’s few works have been featured internationally and were included in the 1973 Baker Lake annual print collection.