Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Inuit woman

Inuit woman

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes. Voting period ends on 16 Mar 2012 at 05:43:22 (UTC)

Reason: I was drawn to restore this image by the subject's eyes, which I felt piercing into my soul. Luckily the original TIF wasn't too badly damaged (not like Virginia Rappe's portrait which I gave up on), so the results were in my opinion spectacular. High resolution, good lighting... all around I think this is a good image.
Articles in which this image appears: Inuit women, Inuit culture, Inuit, and 5 more
FP category for this image: Wikipedia:Featured pictures/People/Traditional
Creator: Created by Lomen Bros., restored by Crisco 1492

Support as nominator --Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:43, 7 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
~~Conditional support edit 1~~ Creases/scratches should be cleaned and perhaps contrast adjusted a bit. Brandmeister t 16:39, 7 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Added another alt. Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:35, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There's still a large web of scratches/creases, particularly on her face. I'm currently neutral. Brandmeister t 15:16, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

~~Oppose, at least for now~~ I love the photo (it has long been one of the rotating photos on my userpage!), but I don't know if her ethnicity can be positively identified based on the location of the photographer and her dress. (She is only described as "Eskimo" in the original caption.) I'd guess she is Inuit, but Nome at least today has a significant number of Yupik people and I think is close to the traditional location of Yupik populations as well. (See language map, page describing Nome Eskimo Community, Nome probation services page noting several Eskimo groups in the area.) I'd want someone with more knowledge to take a look at this so that we can be confident it is accurate. Calliopejen1 (talk) 04:20, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That's a very good point, especially since the tribal differences may not have been important to the photographer. Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:28, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

She is Nowadluk (Nora) Ootenna, a popular subject for Alaskan photographers around the time - [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]. I don't think there is anything to say that the subject was from Nome (this was just the location of the Lomen Brothers' studio) - Nora was related to James Keok and was married to George Ootenna who were natives of Prince of Wales Island and worked as reindeer herders (a business in which Lomen Bros was the main investor in Alaska), and the Glenbow archive places most of the photos of her there, so she would probably have been Haida, though I don't see a problem with "Eskimo woman" as that was the original caption. According to the Glenbow Museum [8] the brothers didn't invest in the studio until 1908, so a studio shot from 1907 is unlikely (but we can blame the LoC for that attribution). Nora was born in 1885 so would have been 22 in 1907, so that doesn't help much for a more accurate dating. Yomangani ^talk 13:59, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Impressive. As such, should we remove the image from Inuit-related articles or...? Crisco 1492 (talk) 15:02, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That's a can of worms I wish I hadn't opened. No reliable source I've found says she's Haida - it's just that Prince of Wales Island is the homeland of the Kaigani Haida - and every other source that we might consider reliable says Inuit (or in the case of the LoC, Eskimo). Yomangani ^talk 17:34, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I guess keeping it in the articles is okay. It would be a shame to just use this portrait in List of mammals in Alaska Crisco 1492 (talk) 22:59, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm still deciding if I want to throw my support into the ring, but all of those archive links from the University of Alaska saying Inuit/Inupiat/Inupiaq (Inupiat/Inupiaq are spelling variants, and they are a subgroup of Inuit people) I think are enough to indicate her ethnicity, especially given that most Native people around Nome are Inupiat. I think the chance that she is Haida is basically zero, given her clothing which is definitely not Haida (do a google image search for Haida clothing to see what I'm talking about). Those other linked photos were also not taken on Prince of Wales Island (Alaska) - they were taken in Cape Prince of Wales (far from where Haida people traditionally live). As of the 1910 Census she lived in Port Clarence (near Cape Prince of Wales)[9] where the reindeer herds referenced in those links are based (see article). The men referenced above were also from Cape Prince of Wales, not Prince of Wales Island.[10] Calliopejen1 (talk) 04:37, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

With all these sources we could have an article on her. If she is Inuit, then wouldn't the accuracy of the portrait's use be acceptable? Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:35, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Calliopejen1 is right; I went off down a blind alley somewhere and substituted Prince of Wales Island for Cape Prince of Wales. There's not enough info on her for an article, though you might scrape one for her husband who was involved in introducing reindeer to Alaska, an artist and a community leader and has a community centre named after him. Yomangani ^talk 10:47, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Not Promoted --Makeemlighter (talk) 21:49, 16 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]