prendrelemick
01-07-2011, 04:18 AM
Nunaga. Ten years of Eskimo life.
by Duncan Pryde
In 1955, at the age of eighteen Duncan Pryde saw an advertisement for a job with the Hudson Bay Company promising hardship and isolation. The book tells the story of the next ten years he spent in Northern Canada, living and working among the Eskimos. I call them Eskimos because that is the name he uses, rather than “Inuit,” probably for the benefit of his 1970 readers.
The book is full of the kind of stories you would expect; hunting trips, snow houses, thousand mile journeys by dog sled or canoe, standing motionless for 12 hours by a seal's breathing hole, being chased by a bear, being chased by a musk ox, a caribou herd so vast it takes 9 days to pass his camp . All good stuff and written in a straight- forward narrative style. The hunting stories are frank and visceral. He comes across a polar bear, he shoots it, skins it, butchers it and feeds it to his dogs. If the bear has cubs, all the better as he can shoot them too. There follows no pages of explanation or justification, just the facts. That attitude is what makes this book stand out from others of its kind.
He takes the same attitude towards the native people of that land. He is neither an anthropologist nor a missionary, he is not on a scientific expedition or a voyage of self discovery. He is just a bloke making a living – the same as the Eskimos. He fights with them, works with them, makes love and laughs with them. This is so refreshing , earlier writers had the Eskimo as childlike savages, later ones foist a revered status on them. Pryde treats them as people, good and bad and flawed like everyone else .
I give this book a rare eight and a half out of ten, an excellent read..
by Duncan Pryde
In 1955, at the age of eighteen Duncan Pryde saw an advertisement for a job with the Hudson Bay Company promising hardship and isolation. The book tells the story of the next ten years he spent in Northern Canada, living and working among the Eskimos. I call them Eskimos because that is the name he uses, rather than “Inuit,” probably for the benefit of his 1970 readers.
The book is full of the kind of stories you would expect; hunting trips, snow houses, thousand mile journeys by dog sled or canoe, standing motionless for 12 hours by a seal's breathing hole, being chased by a bear, being chased by a musk ox, a caribou herd so vast it takes 9 days to pass his camp . All good stuff and written in a straight- forward narrative style. The hunting stories are frank and visceral. He comes across a polar bear, he shoots it, skins it, butchers it and feeds it to his dogs. If the bear has cubs, all the better as he can shoot them too. There follows no pages of explanation or justification, just the facts. That attitude is what makes this book stand out from others of its kind.
He takes the same attitude towards the native people of that land. He is neither an anthropologist nor a missionary, he is not on a scientific expedition or a voyage of self discovery. He is just a bloke making a living – the same as the Eskimos. He fights with them, works with them, makes love and laughs with them. This is so refreshing , earlier writers had the Eskimo as childlike savages, later ones foist a revered status on them. Pryde treats them as people, good and bad and flawed like everyone else .
I give this book a rare eight and a half out of ten, an excellent read..