It’s an unfortunate reality for the Inuvialuk artist from Tuktoyaktuk, NWT, who now resides in Yellowknife, and for many other artists across the country: as it stands, there’s nothing stopping art buyers from reselling Northern art for a big profit . “I’ve got a family of kids … and bills to pay. I just have to get what I can get,” said Taylor, who has been carving since the 1970s and learned the craft from his father. “That’s all I’ve been doing for the last few years.” Whatever price he gets from that initial sale is, currently, all the money he’ll ever get from his art — though that could change if the federal government reforms Canada’s copyright law to give artists a cut of resales. Taylor recalls selling carvings for a pair for less than $2,000, only to discover by accident that the gallery resold them on eBay for $8,000 each. “We’re asking for this price we’re getting,” he said. Derrald Taylor beams as he looks at an intricate carving of a polar bear – one of artist Tuktoyaktuk’s many works. (Juanita Taylor/CBC) “I couldn’t do anything because I already sold it to them; I agreed on the price.” Getting royalties from resales would be like a “Christmas present,” Taylor said. “It’s going to make artists feel a lot better about the work they’re doing. And at least let us know the price of what they’re selling them, because they’re keeping it quiet, they wouldn’t tell us,” he said.
Resale rights on the horizon
In December 2021, federal Minister of Innovation François-Philippe Champagne received a mandate letter from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that included a directive to amend Canada’s copyright law to allow resale rights for artists. Work is now underway to revise the law, although it has not yet reached the House of Commons. In August, Champagne’s office told The Canadian Press that resale rights are “an important step toward improving economic conditions for artists in Canada.” Proponents hope the resale right will mean artists or their estates will receive five percent of resales if their work is sold through an auction or gallery. For Theresie Tungilik, a Rankin Inlet artist who is a member of the Canadian Artists Representation Le Front Des Artistes Canadiens (CARFAC), this would be a vital—and overdue—change. “We’ve been working pretty hard for a number of years to get artist resale rights into law in Canada. We’ve been unsuccessful for a number of years, but when you want something bad enough, you stick with it,” he said. “It is in my heart to ensure that our artists across Nunavut and the nation are treated equally as entrepreneurs.” Theresie Tungilik in a file photo from 2016. “It’s a right we believe we should have as artists,” she says. (Sima Sahar Zerehi/CBC) She pointed to the late Kenojuak Ashevak, an Inuk artist who originally sold the now-famous Enchanted Owl artwork for $50 in the 1960s. In 2018, that artwork resold for a record $216,000, but her fortune didn’t make the cut. “Many of our artists live in borderline poverty and anything that goes back to them is a big help,” Tungilik said. “It’s a right we believe we should have as artists.” A 2016 federal report on the economy of Inuit art highlighted that there are thousands of Inuit artists in Canada creating works of art worth tens of millions of dollars. However, Inuit artists producing visual arts and crafts were earning about $12 an hour after expenses at the time of this report and had an average income of $25,000 a year.
Leveling the playing field
The federal move to introduce resale rights also came after years of advocacy by Senator Patricia Bovey of Manitoba, who has worked in the arts for more than five decades. “Canada has been behind on this for years,” he explained, adding that it’s a measure France has implemented for a century and dozens of other countries have adopted as well. “In the Senate, when we did it [a] cultural diplomacy study a few years ago, this came up as a big issue and meant that Canadian artists, with their work abroad, were not playing on a level playing field.” If Bovey has her way, however, copyright reform won’t end there. He also wants to see some rules introduced to protect the integrity of indigenous artworks, given the growing number of imitations out there. He pointed out examples of mahogany totem poles, supposedly from the rainforests of B.C. – where mahogany trees usually do not grow. “The work is being faked,” he said. “Honestly, the artists … don’t have the means to be able to fight it legally.” Bovey said she wants to see a legal fund set up or legal recourse granted for artists to hunt down counterfeiters.
