John started filming his own stories in 1998, co-writing and directing Songs in Stone, a documentary about the collaboration between his parents, James and Alma Houston, and the Inuit of Cape Dorset, that launched Inuit art onto the world stage. His Arctic trilogy continued with a quest for the ancient Inuit deity, Nuliajuk: Mother of the Sea Beasts, and was capped by Diet of Souls, a look inside the mind of the Inuit hunter.