| Lancette Arts Journal Founded in 2000 |
NON-Fiction Book Reviews From our Archives |
April 2004 |
Discover Canada with Three Books
Discovering Eden by Alex M. Hale, Key Porter Books, 224 pages, paperback, $27.95, illustrated with photographs
The Reindeer Herders of the Mackenzie Delta by Gerald T. Conaty with Lloyd binder, Key Porter Books, 80 pages, paperback, $21.95, illustrated with photographs
Nitsitapiisinni, The Story of the Blackfoot People, Key Porter Books, paperback, $19.95
By Alidė Kohlhaas
Canada is a big place with many "largest" this and that in the world. Among those is the largest wilderness left in North America, namely the Barren Lands. This is a place with a half million roadless square miles at the top of our country, where wildlife abounds, and in the right season flora delights, and rivers run wild in an unspoiled world that we somehow must protect from ourselves.
Discovering Eden is the story of Alex M. Hall, who is probably one of the most experienced wilderness guides in not just in Canada, but in North America. He has spent more than 30 years canoeing the wilderness of the Barren Lands, and guiding all kinds of people through this huge territory that includes much of the North West Territories, Nunavut and small parts of Northern Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
His book, which carries the imprimatur of the World Wildlife Fund, is not just meant to tell us a wonderful story about his experiences in this vast area above the treeline that can easily swallow France, Germany and another half dozen smaller European countries. Its purpose is also to awake . . .
Another book from the same publisher is The Reindeer Herders of the Mackenzie Delta by Gerald T. Conaty with Lloyd Binder. It tells the strange tale of the Sami, or Lapplanders as they are more commonly called in Scandinavia.
Like the Inuit, the Sami do not like the name Europeans have given them. They are the people who live in the far northern Regions of Sweden, Norway and Finland. Many of them have cultivated the reindeer, a cousin of North America=s caribou. But, unlike the reindeer, the caribou cannot be domesticated.
When the Inuit of the western Arctic faced desperate times at the beginning of the 20th Century, because the caribou herds they had depended on no longer behaved in a predictable way. A change in climate forced the inland Inuit hunters to travel far further than in the past in the search for the . . .
This review is dated September 2003
By Alidė Kohlhaas
A book of interest to anyone who cares about Native history, is Nitsitapiisinni, The Story of the Blackfoot People. Written in simple language and well illustrated, it gives a very good, detailed background of a proud Native nation as it once was and as it is now.
Produced by the Blackfoot Gallery Committee under the auspices of the Glenbow Museum, Calgary, it is an excellent piece of information that informs us of an aspect of our history in which we all must take a much greater interest.
It is not just the text, which is easy to understand, but also the photographs, the illustrations, and paintings of the Blackfoot that will enrich our knowledge of the past, and of the present. Also included in the book is a glossary of Blackfoot words to help us understand what is being said.
We have not always been kind to our Native population. Righting the wrongs will take time but as the book shows, we are on the right path.
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