Muskox Land: Ellesmere Island in the Age of Contact

Kerry Abel is a professor of history at Carleton University. She is the author of Drum Songs: Glimpses of Dene History, co-editor of Aboriginal Resource Use in Canada: Historical and Legal Aspects, and co-editor of Northern Visions: New Perspectives on the North in Canadian History.

Advertising pitches on the dustjackets of books are notoriously
unreliable, but in this case the publisher is not exaggerating with the
claim that this is an “important book.” The author, a professional
historian with Parks Canada, has provided a comprehensive, scholarly,
thoughtful, and thought-provoking study of the history of Ellesmere
Island in Canada’s Far North, with an emphasis on the interaction
between Indigenous peoples and newcomers. It is extensively researched
and carefully documented (with almost 100 pages of footnotes and
bibliography), effectively illustrated (with dozens of maps, charts, and
photographs), and reflects the best of current scholarship in its
interdisciplinarity and use of both archival and oral sources.

The book can be read on two levels. First, it is a comprehensive study
of the history of a place and the people who faced its challenges, from
the Inughuit of Greenland and the Inuit of Canada to European and
American explorers and RCMP officers. Second, it is an experiment in
historical analysis applying the Annales School’s proposal that
historical change can be understood through a conceptualization of time
as short-term, medium-term, and long-term. Using this approach, the
author shows that the history of Ellesmere Island is not just a linear
narrative of events, but “a complex interplay of environmental,
cultural, and circumstantial factors.” Readers should not be
intimidated by the idea of complexity or the impressive bulk of the
book—the organizational scheme makes it easy to follow, and the parade
of amazing characters and extraordinary circumstances makes it
fascinating.

One might read the book sequentially, but individual sections will also
prove useful to a variety of audiences. The section on the controversial
relocation of Inuit to the high Arctic provides one of the most sensible
interpretations of that experience yet published. The discussion of the
famous quest for the North Pole provides an interesting re-evaluation of
some of the standard stories and raises some thoughtful basic questions.
The section on social dimensions of culture contact is a welcome
addition to a discussion that usually emphasizes the economic and
technological.

Muskox Land is an ambitious book that deserves to be widely read.