Hattersley-Smith, G.

English

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302 • REVIEWSMUSKOX LAND: ELLESMERE ISLAND IN THE AGEOF CONTACT. By LYLE DICK. Calgary: University ofCalgary Press, 2001. 615 p., maps, b&w illus., notes,bib., index. Softbound. Cdn$34.95.Let it be said at once that the broad sweep of this book ismost impressive, and the scholarship is outstanding—theresult of many years of research into published and unpub-lished sources, notably Canadian government reports andmemoranda.The theme of the book relates to the Inuit occupation ofthe Ellesmere Island region, and to the history of the Inuit-European relationship in the 19th and 20th centuries. Thebook is divided into four parts: the natural environment,culture, and human history; a history of events on EllesmereIsland, 1818 – 1940; the interplay of cultures and the envi-ronment, 1818 – 1940; and Inuit on Ellesmere Island, 1951–2000. A brief review cannot do justice to the scope of thebook, and the following comments are thus highly selective.Thanks to the work of the distinguished Danish archae-ologist, the late Count Eigil Knuth, we know that the Inuithad reached northernmost Ellesmere Island by at least4000 years ago, and travelled thence to North Greenland.The author accepts that these early hunters followed themuskoxen along Knuth’s “Muskox Way,” and thus the titleof the book is very apt. He describes in detail the methodsused in hunting the muskox and other mammals and thetechnique of fishing through the ice for another very impor-tant source of food. At the exit of the Ruggles River fromLake Hazen, a current keeps the water open throughout theyear, and this determined the siting nearby of an importantThule Inuit camp. However, it appears that, about 400years ago, climatic change in the Little Ice Age or someother natural disaster overtook these early people. Thecountry was abandoned and even forgotten in Inuit legend.Then came the British and American ships penetratingfarther and farther north via Smith Sound and into NaresStrait, which divides Ellesmere Island from northwesternGreenland. The author has provided the most succinctaccount yet of these early explorations, covering the fineseamanship of Edward Inglefield, Elisha Kent Kane, IsaacIsrael Hayes, Charles Francis Hall, and Sir George Nares.The Americans made limited use of Inughuit guides anddogs to extend their travel, but not Nares, the first to reachthe shore of the Arctic Ocean in his ship Alert, whosegallant sailors deserved better than the brutal drudgery ofman-hauling while discovering a vast extent of new land.There followed the Greely expedition, overtaken by atragedy that overshadowed its important geographical dis-coveries, most notably that of Lake Hazen.In the 1890s there came upon the scene one of the mostundaunted travellers in history—Robert Edwin Peary.Peary’s expeditions, culminating in his three attempts toreach the North Pole, had a profound effect on the Inughuitof the Thule District in northwest Greenland, for he broughtwith him Western tools and equipment, including me-chanical traps and rifles, as rewards for services. Hismasterful exploitation of Native methods of surface travel,with the best dog-drivers of the district and the seamanshipof that great ice-master Robert Bartlett, led to his claim tohave reached the North Pole in April 1909. Lyle Dickwisely neither endorses nor denies this claim, which willforever remain in controversy.American and, at the turn of the century, Norwegianexploration of Canadian territory led to government con-cern about the sovereignty issue. Vilhjalmur Stefansson,among others, recommended the establishment of RCMPand trading posts and further exploration of the North. In1921, the Eastern Arctic Patrol was set up to provide anannual government presence in the North, and was chargedwith establishing RCMP posts. One was established thefollowing year at Craig Harbour on southern EllesmereIsland, and another, a few years later, at Bache Peninsulaon the east coast of the island. Over the years, there wasclose contact between these posts and Inughuit huntersfrom the Thule District.For the inter-war years, the author describes the travelsof three expeditions, two British and one Danish, to theEllesmere Island region. All were based in the ThuleDistrict and employed Inughuit guides. The Oxford Uni-versity Ellesmere Land Expedition (OUELE) of 1934–35,organized by Edward (later Lord) Shackleton, became thefirst to reach the ice cap of northern Ellesmere Island. Theauthor provides interesting and little-known detail fromgovernment papers of Shackleton’s later ambitious plansfor a larger expedition to northern Ellesmere Island. Hisproposal met with as little enthusiasm as had his illustriousfather’s Arctic proposal to the Meighen government in1920–21. However, David Haig-Thomas, a maverick mem-ber of OUELE, did organize a small expedition to EllesmereIsland in 1937–38. Government authorities were justifi-ably concerned that his activities would include illegalhunting of muskoxen—and in fact, they did. The DanishVan Hauen Expedition of 1939 – 40, similarly organized,marked the last bout of true exploration of the region, forwithin a year or two of the end of the war, the whole of theQueen Elizabeth Islands had been photographed from theair and subsequently mapped.Thus, the author has rightly ended a chapter of historyin 1940; he has omitted the voyages of Larsen’s St. Rochin 1940 – 42 and 1944, which did not impinge on EllesmereIsland. Similarly, the scientific parties deployed after thewar by the Defence Research Board and the GeologicalSurvey of Canada had little or no impact on the Nativepeople, and thus lie outside the author’s brief, although heis kind enough to refer to this reviewer’s small book onDefence Research Board field operations.The author describes in detail the government’s projectin the 1950s to relocate Inuit groups from impoverishedplaces such as Port Harrison, Hudson Bay, to sites thatincluded Grise Fiord on southern Ellesmere Island. Theproject may have been ill-timed and ill-administered, butthe resettled groups have probably benefited in the longrun, for the Inuit are indeed a hardy and adaptable race.REVIEWS • 303In conclusion, the author has summarized the advan-tages to the Inuit (Inughuit) of Western technology, par-ticularly rifles in the early 1900s and motorboats andsnowmobiles in the 1960s. On the other hand, early con-tacts with Westerners also brought epidemics, which, fora time, inflicted considerable harm on aboriginal people.In reverse, the White man owes a great debt to the Inuit(Inughuit) for their expertise as travellers, and in manyother ways. In recent times, for example, their empiricalobservations of the habits of muskoxen in the Grise Fiordarea provided a sound basis for decisions on the manage-ment of the species.This book is a treasure trove of information, and it isstrongly recommended that it should be read—and readagain—by all interested in the Canadian Arctic in generaland in its Native people.G. Hattersley-SmithThe CrosswaysCranbrook, KentTN17 2AGEnglandCHANGING TRACKS: PREDATORS AND POLITICSIN MT. McKINLEY NATIONAL PARK. By TIMOTHYRAWSON. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2001.326 p., maps, b&w illus., bib., index. Hardbound,US$39.95; Softbound, US$24.95.I never met Adolph Murie, a central character in TimothyRawson’s book. We corresponded in the late 1960s, in asuccessful effort to stop distribution of a postcard: itdepicted a snarling wolf, with the caption: “These viciousbeasts are among the most bloodthirsty in Alaska.” In theearly 1970s, when I hoped to visit with Murie at his homein Wyoming, I was a few months too late: he had died.Over my extensive career as a wolf research biologist,my copy of Murie’s Wolves of Mt. McKinley has becomedog-eared and worn. His publication was a classic, the firstwolf monograph, still full of insight today. After readingTimothy Rawson’s book, I feel I know Adolph Murie—partial compensation for what I missed.Rawson’s intention was not to write a biography. Al-though Murie’s youth is referred to early in the book, he isnot a focal character until halfway through. Yet in any goodbiography, context is everything, especially when chroni-cling the evolution of ideas. Rawson does a thorough jobdescribing the contribution of earlier thinkers, such as parkbiologist Victor Cahalane, Assistant Parks Director HaroldBryant, and academic Joseph Grinnell. These people, andthose who held opposing views, are brought to life largelythrough reference to archival letters. The interactions amongthe protagonists make for fascinating interplay. But mostimportantly, they describe a dilemma faced by the U.S.Parks Service: whether to leave nature alone in the nationalparks, or to appease public pressure by killing predators.That dilemma forced Murie, champion of expandedsympathy for the wolf based on ecological understanding,to set snares for the very wolves he had studied. While the“catch 22” in which he found himself—having to killwolves in order to save them—is poignant, even disturb-ing, for the reader, Murie is never more than a centralfigure in the Parks Service’s dilemma.This dilemma makes the book much more than an earlyhistory (up until 1953) of predators and politics in Mt.McKinley National Park. It really describes an early clashbetween two worldviews: the utilitarian view of nature, asstock and commodity for us, and the ecological/evolution-ary view that nature has intrinsic self-worth. Few issues inenvironmental management have proven to be such alitmus for the conflict in worldviews as the wolf. Rawson’sdescription of events at McKinley is significant to thehistory of this conflict, one in which much more than thewolf is at stake.Rawson sticks mainly to the swirling conflict overwolves and Dall’s sheep at McKinley, played out byhunters, biologists, and bureaucrats. However, in the lastchapter, “Evaluation and Consequence,” he paints thewolf of today in new clothing—loved and respected to amuch greater degree through the popular writings of scien-tists like Murie and the interest of cinematographers,beginning in the late 1950s with the Crislers’ film andbook Arctic Wild.But much of the intrigue in the book, for me, stems fromthe surprisingly similar modern-day wolf-predator warthat my wife, my students, and I have gone throughourselves, over wolf management in Ontario’s AlgonquinPark. Our research, like Murie’s, was central to the con-flict, and like Murie, we were castigated and praised. Whatthe advocates of wolf killing wrote and said back in the1930s and 1940s about wolves in McKinley is the script fortoday! On one side is an unbelieving incredulity by sports-men’s organizations (in McKinley’s case, the prestigiousCamp Fire Club) that anyone or any agency could cham-pion a competitor for the harvest of big game. Theirs is theutilitarian view. Against that have ranged the argumentsbased on ecological research (used back then by the U.S.Parks Service and the American Society of Mammalogists)for leaving natural processes like predation alone in wil-derness parks, out of respect and the humility of knowingthat we can never understand ecosystems. That is theecological/evolutionary view.Those involved in wolf management in Alaska andDenali today would likely agree that much is still thesame—although, as Rawson points out, a new element inthe equation is the voice of conservation-oriented peopleall over North America. Nonetheless, the state still advo-cates considerable wolf killing, and so do many Alaskans.And at Denali (McKinley) National Park, recent intensivewolf research has shown that, on average, 14% of annualmortality in park wolves is caused by humans.The last chapter leaves plenty of room for thought.Rawson provides evidence that the retirement or death of

Muskox Land: Ellesmere Island in the Age of Contact, by Lyle Dick

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Muskox Land: Ellesmere Island in the Age of Contact, by Lyle Dick

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