People of Twilight

Diamond Jenness was a New Zealand-born Canadian ethnologist who was assigned to a scientific expedition to Canada's arctic just prior to the First World War. The Inuit (of the Coronation Gulf region) that he encountered had yet to come into direct contact with the white man, and so for Jenness this was an opportunity to study truly "primitive" Inuits. So for nearly two years he lived as the adopted son of Ikpuck and "Icehouse". This memoir of his time with them is a fascinating glimpse into the lives of people whose lives were about to be drastically and tragically altered. Simply a great book.

Pulled from a used book store shelf, this book certainly was worth exponentially more than the 75 cents I spent.Written in the 1920's, the book is an account of two years the author spent living with Eskimos from 1915 to 1917 in the far reaches of Canada. In a direct but never dry style the author describes his time spent travelling, hunting, and living with an Eskimo tribe. At the time the author encountered them, the "people of the twilight" were living much as they had for hundreds of years before the "white invasion."The book is remarkable for the absolute objectivity of the author, the unpretentious writing, and, given the time it was written - amazingly lacking any tone of cultural superiority. (For example, an account of infanticide by Eskimos is a particular frank, thoughtful, although disturbing discussion). The life he describes is a neverending search for food and shelter, one that in many ways, echoes from times primeval. Jennes sensed that he was viewing a culture about to undergo massive change. He recounts in a epilogue written in the 1950's, what the future brought was near annihilation of many Eskimo peoples through disease, and catastrophic cultural pressures. Despite his premonition, like the Eskimos who kept him alive, Jennes is able to focuses on the present clearly and without nostalgia.A book worth reading to understand a people who were indeed in the twilight.