Nunaga. Ten years of Eskimo life.

By Duncan Pryde

Book Overview

Duncan Pryde, a tough eighteen- year-old orphan and ex-merchant- seaman, left Glasgow to try his hand at fur-trading in the far north of Canada. His initiation into the realities of Eskimo life - the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802703690
• ISBN13: 9780802703699
• Release Date: January 1972
• Publisher: Walker and Company
• Weight: 1.14 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Terriffic glimpse into Native Culture

This book is a rare glimpse into the culture of northern peoples. A real treasure. If you are intersted in Inuit culture this is a MUST HAVE.

I read the book so often that I had to buy a new one!

Duncan Pryde, an orphan from Scotland was bored with his life as a factory worker and wanted to set out on an adventure. He saw an ad in the "Help Wanted" section that had been placed by the Hudson's Bay Company for a fur trader in Canada. This is the story of a young man who went to work in the Arctic and embraced the native way of life. He gained insights into the Eskimo culture that are rarely revealed to outsiders. I feel a real sense of gratitude that a man who had experienced a lifestyle that was soon to be lost forever was able to share it with the rest of the world. I originally bought a paperback edition but I read it so often that it fell apart. I had to get a hardcover replacement!

Contents:

Pryde, in 1955, read a Hudson's Bay ad in the Glasgow paper. It said, "Single, ambitios, self-reliant young man required. Must be prepared to live in isolation. " Duncan Pryde, then an 18 year old orphan, ex-merchant seaman and disgruntled factory-worker, decided to try his hand at fur trading and immigrated to Canada. He found that he could easily adapt to the remote and primitive life there. One of his first posts was isolated Perry Island where he fought someone all night long and was accepted by the people there because of it. He witnessed the sacred Eskimo shaman ceremonies; he was paid the ultimate compliment...the invitation to share a friend's wife. His story abounds in high adventure, incredible, near fatal sled and canoe journeys; seal, polar bear and caribou hunts; breathtaking encounters with the beauty of Arctic flora and fauna. He speaks of the native life...the Eskimoe's birth, death and marriage rites, their extraordinary tolerant sexual customs, their age-old and amazingly effective hunting skills. With eight pages of illustrations in full color.

Real life Arctic adventures of a Scot turned Eskimo

Duncan Pryde left his native Scotland to try his hand as a fur trader in Canada's Arctic in 1955. His account of life amongst the Eskimos is at once fascinating and entertaining. His matter-of-fact and at times amusing tone belies the enormity of the adventure he was living. Duncan Pryde was a unique individual whose personal experiences in the far North are a delight to read. His full and non-condescending appreciation of a culture now rapidly vanishing make this book an absolute treasure. Through these pages book the reader is transported to another world. I never wanted it to end.

A sensitive account of falling in love with the Arctic

NUNAGA is a poetic account of the Scotsman Duncan Pryde's ten year stay with the Inuit peoples of the Canadian Arctic. He, like John Muir ninety years earlier, grew to understand them and be one with them, having the right to say "Nunaga," my country. Pryde gives us lush descriptions of the Arctic: "Heather, a blanket of fragrant whiteness spread low over the ground and climbing part way up the hills behind the harbour--bright red, brilliant yellow, gay little Arctic poppies nodding in the breeze, a blue blossom of some sort, the masses of white cotton flowers, fine blossoms smaller than a man's little fingernail, but in great profusion. The Arctic in summer bloom is exceedingly colorful." Of nighttime, Pryde writes, "There are a few more beautiful sights in the world than a full moon shining down on a little camp on a small island beset by shimmering ice floes." But the most significant aspect of the book is its concern for contemporary social problems of the Inuit people brought on by contact with the Europeans. He suggests that instead of welfare and alcoholism as inevitables, we must pressure government for enlightened changes. Schools must be brought to Inuit villages and not Inuit children to schools hundreds of miles away. We must encourage the Inuit's re-involvement with the land by herding of caribou as a meat source for the South, by developing fisheries in the North, by utilizing musk oxen fur by shearing in sheep fashion. Inuits must not be forced to exist as technicians, grease monkies, and department store clerks, but as viable hunters, trappers, fishermen and musk oxen shepherds. Their languages and folkways should be emphasized in Arctic schools (Dick Lamm aside) and not just English and Anglo history. Pryde fell in love with the Arctic and so do we when we read this engaging book.