Schledermann, Peter

English

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238 • REVIEWSIn 1952, circumstances finally allowed Alice to join her husband on one of his assignments in the Arctic: a two-year sojourn to northern Greenland. It was now the height of the Cold War, and the U.S. Weather Bureau had decided to set up a weather station in cooperation with the Danes at North Star Bay, near the ancient settlement of Umanak and the Thule trading station established by Peter Freuchen and Knud Rasmussen in 1910. When the Crowells arrived, they were astonished to see an armada of 40 ships in the bay—landing 10 000 men and supplies in one massive, round-the-clock exercise during the brief Arctic summer. The U.S. Strategic Air Command was in the process of establish-ing an enormous base and fuel-storage facility at Thule. In Appendix A of the autobiography, readers will find Alice Crowell’s excellent description of her time at Thule.Crowell’s remarkable post–Thule period career undoubt-edly could have filled an additional volume; however, even the very condensed version in the final part of this book is filled with amazing stories about constructing landing strips on ice islands in the Arctic, visiting Peary Land, and supervising the building of the research vessel Hero for work in the Antarctic. Spencer Apollonio has done an excellent job in compil-ing this book, and readers will enjoy both the book and the accompanying DVD: I certainly did. Peter Schledermann#312, 9919 Fourth StreetSidney, British Columbia, Canada V8L 2Z6schleder@ucalgary.caRUN UNTIL DEAD: A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE POLAR EXPEDITION DOG. By MARGET FLORIO. Mercersburg, Pennsylvania: The Polar Press, 2010. ISBN 978-1-4507-3550-6. 138 p., maps, b&w illus., sources, index. No price indicated.The reluctance of British explorers to use their sled dogs as food for other dogs and expedition members was the excep-tion in the early days of polar exploration. When Danish explorer Einar Mikkelsen visited England in 1905 to seek funding for an expedition to the Beaufort Sea ice fields, Queen Alexandra was initially receptive. But her enthusi-asm for the project cooled considerably when she was told that, if necessary, the dogs would be on the menu. In Run Until Dead, the author presents an ode to the expedition dog as a crucial component of the success-ful or unsuccessful completion of numerous polar expedi-tions. The book is divided into three main sections. In the first, entitled “Dogs of the Arctic,” after a very abbreviated description of the use of dog-drawn sleds for exploration transport, the author provides the reader with a condensed version of 19th-century polar travels. It should be noted that most of these attempts to get to the North Pole or voy-age through the Northwest Passage were led by the British, who were steadfastly determined not to take advantage of the dog-drawn transportation used so proficiently by the indigenous people they encountered. Manhauling was the way of the British to the bitter end of Captain Scott’s journey to the South Pole early in the 20th century. Nor-wegian Fridtjof Nansen and American Robert Peary, on the other hand, were quick to incorporate dogs into their expe-dition planning, both as a means of transportation and as food. The author, for some reason, neglects to mention the extraordinary exploration of Otto Sverdrup and his men, who traveled widely by dog-drawn sleds in the High Arctic between 1898 and 1902. The section ends with two more detailed accounts of the use of dogs by explorers Nansen and Peary. “Nansen’s Dogs” were used during his drift expedition across the Polar Basin in Fram and his unsuccessful attempt to reach the North Pole with his companion Hjalmar Johansen and a team of dogs. The most interesting part of this discussion is the story of how Samoyed dogs were procured in Sibe-ria and transported to Khabarova on the shores of the Kara Sea, where Nansen brought them onboard Fram. In the sec-ond account, readers learn about “Peary’s Dogs,” used dur-ing his six attempts to reach the North Pole between 1886 and 1908.   In the book’s second section, “Dogs of the Antarctic,” the reader is introduced to the Norwegian-born Carsten Borchgrevink, leader of the first Antarctic expedition to use sledge dogs and to overwinter on the continent. During the expedition, Borchgrevink and two companions, using dogs and skis, reached 78˚50ʹ south. His achievements received little attention in England—he was, after all, not British. As a further illustration of the British reluctance to use dogs on polar expeditions, the author presents us with “Scott’s Dogs,” hardly the conveyance championed by Robert Fal-con Scott. The dogs used during the British National Ant-arctic Expedition should more appropriately be known as Meares’ Dogs, for the amazing character Cecil Meares, who was instructed by Scott to head to Eastern Siberia and purchase dogs and ponies for the expedition. The story of Meares’ trials and tribulations getting the animals to New Zealand for embarkation to Antarctica and his further involvement with the march south is a worthy account on its own. In remarkable contrast follows the story of “Amundsen’s Dogs,” used during Roald Amundsen’s successful quest to reach the South Pole, beating Scott to the illusive point in the white wilderness by one month. Always the metic-ulous expedition planner, Amundsen relied on the dogs to haul sleds and to be served up as food for other dogs and the men along the way. The sole survivor among the dogs was “The Colonel” who was brought back to Norway by Oskar Wisting, one of the Pole party members. The second section concludes with descriptions of the dogs attached to Antarc-tic expeditions led by Douglas Mawson, Ernest Shackle-ton, Ernest Joyce, Richard Byrd, Robert Dover, and Vivian Fuchs.REVIEWS • 239During the Richard Byrd expeditions, dogs may not have been eaten, but their fate was far from secure. At the end of Byrd’s first expedition, insufficient space on board the expedition vessel necessitated the shooting of 17 dogs. A far worse fate awaited dogs used during Byrd’s 1939–41 United States Antarctic Service Expedition, when a hasty retreat by air from the base left no room for dogs. A tim-ing device linking three 50-pound cases of dynamite set in a triangle with the dogs staked down in the centre was set to detonate following lift-off of the expedition members. However, according to the author of this book, something apparently went wrong, because a visit to the site five years later revealed dogs scattered about, some hastily shot and some that had apparently escaped and subsequently starved to death. The third section is a very brief afterword by the author, entitled “A Salute to the Superdogs.” In light of the treat-ment of dogs during Admiral Byrd’s expeditions, it seems paradoxical that this final section is accompanied by the photo of a memorial plaque dedicated by Admiral Byrd on October 8, 1938 to “All Noble Dogs whose lives were given on dog treks during the two expeditions to Little America, Antarctica to further science and discovery.”A more encompassing work about the use of dogs during polar explorations could have been wished for. However, as the author remarks, this is a brief introduction to the sub-ject and as such is a good addition to any polar exploration library. Peter Schledermann# 312, 9919 Fourth StreetSidney, British Columbia, Canada V8L 2Z6schleder@ucalgary.caQALUYAARMIUNI NUNAMTENEK QANEMCIPUT OUR NELSON ISLAND STORIES: MEANINGS OF PLACE ON THE BERING SEA COAST. Transcribed and translated by ALICE REARDEN; edited by ANN FIENUP-RIORDAN. Seattle: Calista Elders Council in association with the University of Washington Press, 2011. ISBN 978-0-295-99135-1. liv + 441 p., maps, b&w and colour illus. Softbound. US$50.00.This edited collection of Nelson Island place names and stories is a contribution to the literature that is beautiful in both content and form. The authors, editors, and storytell-ers present an important addition to the growing collection of recorded Alaska Native wisdom, history, and geography presented through place names and the stories associated with them. Moving through the landscape, the text offers readers Yupik place names, each followed by descriptions of important events that transpired in that place, why the place received a particular name, and the significance of that place for subsistence practices and traditions, as told by Yupik elders and other Nelson Island residents.The book consists almost exclusively of transcrip-tions and translations of oral histories and stories told by a select group of Nelson Island people (listed on p. liii and liv), without standard academic analysis. The original Yupik stories are transcribed on the lefthand pages of the book and the English translations on the right. These sto-ries were collected during a three-week circumnavigation of Qaluyaat (Nelson Island), in sessions featuring hands-on experiential learning and oral history lessons. As Fie-nup-Riordan writes, “We did not set out to document place names. Rather, the places, their names, and their stories were what elders thought we needed to know” (p. xxx). Through these transcriptions, place names and associ-ated stories emerge as an embedded and embodied collec-tion of wisdom that includes metaphysical descriptions of Raven; haunting stories of the non-human people, ircenr-raat; and insights into the changing patterns of subsist-ence practices over time. From a non-Yupik perspective, to read through these histories is to be immersed in a complex and mysterious philosophy. Unlike many anthropological or linguistic texts on Alaska Native place names, Rearden and Fienup-Riordan do not present a linguistic analysis or categorical taxonomy of the names. There is no summary of what Yupik place names can tell us or analytic descrip-tion of Yupik ways of knowing. Rather, the nuances of sto-ries and the wisdom therein accumulate for readers as they become accustomed to the pace, linguistic structure, and subject matter of the stories themselves. For a Yupik reader, these stories will no doubt present further nuances of mean-ing, depth, and detail. This book likewise represents an operational para-digm of anthropological research that is new, though it has often received lip service: that is, a serious effort at the co- creation of knowledge by academic researchers and Alaska Native research participants and communities. The research methods, presentation of content, and authorship, and pub-lication itself (by the Calista Elders Council), all speak to this partnership. In this way, this book provides an impor-tant example of how Alaska Native communities can take the lead in research projects and how academic researchers can act as important facilitators for these projects. A great compliment to Fienup-Riordan, throughout this book, is her ability to do what must have been significant amounts of work and then get out of the way.The audience for Our Nelson Island Stories, therefore, is likely to be Nelson Island residents themselves, social scientists interested in place naming, subsistence use, and mythology, and to a lesser extent, a general audience inter-ested in Native Alaskan and Yupik history and worldview, as told by Yupik people. Geographers and natural scientists will appreciate the detailed maps of place names and asso-ciated descriptions of landscape and subsistence practices. Through some inference, a researcher could piece together changes that have taken place over time in the landscape and in species availability. With some additional analy-sis, this collection could be valuable as a contribution to 

Run Until Dead: A Brief History of the Polar Expedition Dog, by Marget Florio

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Run Until Dead: A Brief History of the Polar Expedition Dog, by Marget Florio

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