Give Me Winter, Give Me Dogs

Kenn Harper is a historian, writer, and linguist, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, and a former member of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada. He is the author of the In Those Days series, Minik: The New York Eskimo, and Thou Shalt Do No Murder: Inuit, Injustice, and the Canadian Arctic. “Taissumani,” his column on Arctic history, appears in Nunatsiaq News.

PART ONE – BEGINNINGS


Knud Rasmussen and the Inuit


Thule


An Inauspicious Start


Inughuit on the Expedition







PART TWO – DANISH ISLAND


Akilinirmiut: Meeting New People


Tagurnaaq and Palluq


The Caribou Inuit and the Origins of Inuit Culture


Igjugaarjuk the Shaman


Umik’s New Religion


The Shaman Aua


The Wisdom of a Shaman


“To Think I Had Been So Happy”: Urulu’s Story


Mathiassen’s Brush with Death


Jacob Olsen: “No Taboo Performances are Necessary”


The Misadventures of Peter Freuchen


Mathiassen and the Thule Culture


The Departure of Freuchen and the Inughuit







PART THREE – ACROSS ARCTIC AMERICA


Urpingalik: Poet of the Nattilingmiut


Igsivalitaq the Outlaw


Summer at Malirualik


The Deep Footprints of Tired Men


Among the Inuinnait


The Hanging of Alikammiq and Tatamirana


Among the Mackenzie Inuit


Alaskan Interlude


Siberia: The Promised Land


Najagnir: “I Have Searched in the Darkness”


The Inughuit: “We Do Not Even Have a Memorial


of Them”


“His Importance Cannot be Weighed in Words Alone”


PHOTOGRAPHS


MAPS


GLOSSARY OF INUKTITUT WORDS


REFERENCES