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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Jeff Drum, post: 2634654, member: 6444&quot;]Yeah, we&#039;re all agreed it is not a polar bear, but still clueless about who made it.</p><p><br /></p><p>So I searched for an Inuit carved grizzly bear, and did find a few examples. Not a lot, and clearly *many* more polar bears than not. Similar, in my mind, to how oak secondary wood almost always points to English furniture and not American; but there are the exceptions that prove the rule. And the fact that grizzlies overlap with polar bears in a large part of their habitat means they are at least around (maps here: <a href="http://geology.com/stories/13/bear-areas/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://geology.com/stories/13/bear-areas/" rel="nofollow">http://geology.com/stories/13/bear-areas/</a> and <a href="https://image.slidesharecdn.com/peoples-of-the-arctic-1222652876122147-8/95/peoples-of-the-arctic-4-728.jpg?cb=1222627676" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://image.slidesharecdn.com/peoples-of-the-arctic-1222652876122147-8/95/peoples-of-the-arctic-4-728.jpg?cb=1222627676" rel="nofollow">https://image.slidesharecdn.com/peoples-of-the-arctic-1222652876122147-8/95/peoples-of-the-arctic-4-728.jpg?cb=1222627676</a>. One area is Baker Lake, which being inland seems to have a fair number of grizzlies. That said, I also found more example of grizzlies by native Dene artists, so that may be more likely than Inuit <a href="https://ammsa.com/publications/windspeaker/northern-art-mix-dene-and-inuit" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://ammsa.com/publications/windspeaker/northern-art-mix-dene-and-inuit" rel="nofollow">https://ammsa.com/publications/windspeaker/northern-art-mix-dene-and-inuit</a>. Or of course, this may not be native or Canadian at all.</p><p><br /></p><p>Thank you for the symbolics. Unfortunately I can&#039;t find any way to read the marks as symbolics, so I guess the marks will remain unexplained for now.</p><p><br /></p><p>Here&#039;s one of the marked examples I found, by Mathew Aqiggaaq, 1981, <a href="https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/3328657_7028-hand-carved-inuit-grizzly-bear" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/3328657_7028-hand-carved-inuit-grizzly-bear" rel="nofollow">https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/3328657_7028-hand-carved-inuit-grizzly-bear</a></p><p><br /></p><p>Thanks for all the help, I learned a lot (still clearly have a lot to learn...)[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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