In 1969, a weaving program was established in the small community of Pangnirtung, Baffin Island, with the support of the federal government. Local artists designed tapestries which were then woven on looms by a different set of artists. Malaya Akulukjuk was born in 1915 (1912?) at Qikiqtat camp in Nunavut and settled in Pangnirtung in the early 1960s. As a respected community elder (and reputed to have been a shaman), she was the first local women to be approached for her drawing designs. Throughout the 1970s, her designs were selected almost exclusively to be translated into woven tapestries. She drew until the 1990s when illness prohibited further artistic output.

Dating to the 1970s, these two tapestries demonstrate the typical designs of the first generation of artists/weavers out of Pangnirtung in which subjects reflect traditional life, legends and shamanism. Single, bold figures float in two-dimensional space, in this case a bird or spirit bird, and a caribou. The simplicity of design reflects the developing and tentative skills of the weavers in the early period, with limited details or texture. While the subject of Untitled (Caribou) is perhaps more straightforward, the enigmatic bird-like figure from Untitled (Bird) suggests a creature not of this earth. When asked about these kinds of figures, Akulukjuk responded that they came to her in a dream, or had been described to her by someone who had seen them.