In the 1930's, Farley Mowat, the author of this book, spent two years living with the Ihalmiut--the Eskimos of Canada's Great Barrens. This group of people onced numberer two thousand but had been reduced to about 40 people by the 1930's. This book is a tribute to these valiant people and their way of life.

People of the Deer bookray:
neriman (Honolulu, Hawaii)
ebonystar (Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK)<--en route 2/06

RELEASE NOTES:

mailing to neriman of Honolulu, Hawaii to start off a bookrelay.

Enjoy!

Received the book today, along with a beautiful Arizona postcard. I've been curious about Farley Mowat's work for a long time. I can't wait to start reading. Thanks tabby-cat-owner!

WARNING: The following contains major spoilers.

This book is both entertaining and thought-provoking. My enjoyment was somewhat damped, however, when my SO discovered in a web search that Mowat "never let[s] the facts get in the way of the truth." Even before hearing this, I had noted four or five instances in the book where events seemed to happen a little too fortuitously to be plausible. After finishing the book, I found a Salon piece, which quotes the following from a 1996 Saturday Night article by John Goddard:

Documents recently made public at the National Archives of Canada, and papers that the author himself sold years ago to McMaster University, show that Mowat did not spend two years in the Keewatin District in 1947 and 1948 as the books say. He spent two summer field seasons in the district -- totaling less than six months -- and mostly in a more southern part of the district than he describes. He did not casually drop in alone but traveled on both occasions as a junior member of well-planned scientific expeditions. He did not once -- contrary to the impression he leaves -- see a starving Inuit person. He did not once set foot in an Inuit camp.

It's one thing to fill in gaps in the story or omit certain tedious details; but falsely claiming that one lived with the Inuit in their tents and participated in their hunts, feasts and rituals is too much. Mowat never provided any facts to refute these claims.

Assuming that the information about the Ihalmiut is correct despite the problems in the details, the book paints a depressing and shameful picture of humanity. Mowat argues that native populations have been decimated more by starvation than by disease. While the value of fox fur was high, white traders, interested only in making a profit for themselves, encouraged the Ihalmiut to hunt foxes rather than caribou, which the Ihalmiut depended on for food and shelter. As soon as the market value of fox fur started going down, however, the white traders packed up shop and left the Ihalmiut to starve. Comparing this to the goings-on in the world today, I'm afraid that selfishness and expolitation are an inevitable part of humanity.

I appreciate that tabby-cat-owner has provided such a rare and important book as a bookray. Despite the problems with it, the book makes the reader see the Inuit as human beings with a rich culture and not just a bunch of statistics or a group of "primitive" people destined to disappear. I respect Mowat's efforts to draw attention to the suffering of the Inuit and to other important issues. I wish, though, that he had written the boring facts instead of warping them to get a larger audience. Alternatively, he could have presented the book as a work of historical fiction based on his travels in the Arctic.

Mailed to ebonystar.

received this morning, thanks neriman! have started reading this already, and will probably be on it's way again by wednesday :)