Hunters of the Northern Ice

by Richard K. Nelson

"Hunters of the Northern Forest" is a detailed, illustrated account of man and nature in the boreal forest, or taiga, better know as the Great North Woods of Canada and Alaska. Anthropologist Richard K. Nelson describes the full range of hunting, trapping, fishing, travel, and survival techniqes utilized by the Athapaskan-speaking Kutchin, contemporary American Indians who inhabit a remote wilderness in east-central Alaska.

Genres: Nonfiction, Adventure

451 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1972

About the author

Richard K. Nelson (born 1941) was a cultural anthropologist and writer whose work has focused primarily on the indigenous cultures of Alaska and, more generally, the relationships between people and nature. He was the host to a public radio series called Encounters aired nationally.

Richard K. Nelson, known to his many friends in community of environmental writers as “Nels,” died on November 4, 2019, having asked that he spend his final minutes, after being taken off of life support, listening to the recorded sound of ravens. For those familiar with Nels’s life and work, such a request was fully in keeping with his tremendous passion for the natural world, especially for animals, and most especially for ravens and other animals he knew well from many decades of living in Sitka, Alaska. Born in Madison, Wisconsin, on December 1, 1941, Nels earned his B.S. and M.S. in anthropology at the University of Wisconsin and his Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Nels first began to live among the Eskimo hunting communities in Alaska as a master’s student at Wisconsin in 1964, eventually producing the book Hunters of the Northern Ice (1969). He later published such works as Shadow of the Hunter: Stories of Eskimo Life (1980) and Make Prayers to the Raven: A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest (1983). from his memoriam by Scott Slovic.

Reviews

[Michael Krall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating ethnographic study of a disappearing cultural activity and culture. Considerable detail…so much so that I thought I would be inclined to skip large sections, but instead I found myself drawn in to the detail. I I’d end up skimming a few pages, but very few. Having spent a few days in Barrow (aka Utqiagvik) recently, I obtained a new appreciation for what I had encountered there. This book is a classic.

[East To · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another good one from Richard K. Nelson