In Those Days: Inuit Lives

by Kenn Harper

Arctic historian Kenn Harper gathers the best of his columns about Inuit history, which appear weekly in Nunatsiaq News, in this exciting new series of books.

Each installment of In Those Collected Columns on Arctic History will cover a particularly fascinating aspect of traditional Inuit life. In volume one, Inuit Biographies, Harper shares the unique challenges and life histories of several Inuit living in pre-contact times.

The result of extensive interviews, research, and travel across the Arctic, these amazing short life histories provide readers with a detailed understanding of their specific time and place.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography

200 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2013

About the author

Kenn Harper is a Canadian historian, teacher, development officer, linguist, and businessman. He is an author of books on life in the high Arctic and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. His book, Give Me My Father's Body, tells the tragic yet compelling story of Minik Wallace, a member of the Inughuit or "Polar Eskimo" tribe who was taken by Robert Peary from his home in northwest Greenland to New York.
In 2005, Harper was appointed Danish Honorary Consul, a posting located in Iqaluit, Nunavut.
Harper is fluent in English, Inuktitut and conversational Danish. Harper currently lives with his wife in Iqaluit.

Reviews

[Noah · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories were interesting, but Harper's writing style is very dry.

[Ayicia Naomi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Always a fan of historical pictures being included in books. Sweet intro to some pretty cool people doing human things (good and bad)

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harper is an Arctic historian and not Inuit. This book is a collection of his newspaper articles. He makes good use of sources, but mostly all sources come to us from a colonizer perspective. Worth the read if only as a jumping off point for more indepth personal research.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review originally published in Looking For a Good Book. Rated 4.5 of 5

I've really come to appreciate Inhabit Media publishing for the variety of books on Inuit themes. I can't say that I've ever been particularly knowledgeable, or even, perhaps, interested in, the Inuit history. But I realize now that it's likely because it's just never been in front of me. Since sampling a few books, I've become very interested in these hearty people. Kenn Harper's book, In Those Days, is a collection of newspaper articles he's written which are generally brief biographies of a variety of Inuit people. Now the Inuit as a 'people' become individuals.

Harper's writing is very clean and quite readable, without being dumbed-down. I've chosen to follow Harper's blog, and the on-line newspaper that he writes for, based on my enjoyment of this book.

In Those Days features a number of interesting articles, my favorite of which was "Inuit at the World's Fair" in which an Inuit girl, Nancy Columbia was voted prettiest girl at the fair with 8,000 more votes than the runner-up.

But articles such as "Who Was Albert One-Eye?" and "An Inuit Boy in Scotland" and "Simon Gibbon: First Inuit Minister" and "In Memory of John Shiwak, Inuit Sniper" are also extremely interesting. In fact, there's not a bad story in the book and each mini-biography is well researched and presented.

This is a wonderful book that opens windows to let the world look in on the early days and lives of the Inuit people. Even if you've never heard of the Inuit or never thought you'd be interested in learning more about them, Kenn Harper will change your mind.

Looking for a good book? In Those Days is a collection of mini-biographies of some early Inuit people and is a book you want to read, even if you don't realize it yet.

[Nicole Overmoyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kenn Harper's IN THOSE DAYS is an interesting look at the way in Europeans and Americans in the 1700 and 1800s viewed the Inuit people of North America and Europe. The Inuit were taken to Europe not as equals but as things to be studied by science and gawked at by the general public. Harper's descriptions and summaries of what little historical record there is make it clear that the Inuit people worked hard not only in their village lives above the Arctic Circle but also when they found themselves in England being taught to read and write in the hope that they would become missionaries or in America for the winter as a guest of some whaling captain who wanted to help as much as he wanted to be the talk of the town.

The Inuit of Arctic history were treated by the Europeans and Americans as curiosities and sort of lesser human beings who needed to be guided and taught. Harper's stories are forced to focus on that but they make it equally clear that the Inuit were and are very much more than that.

(I received a copy of IN THOSE DAYS through NetGalley and Inhabit Media in exchange for an honest & original review.)