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Death of a People-The Ihalmiut, Vol. 2: The Desperate People:
They could survive anything in the arctic wilderness - except the white man.
They were rich, the caribou were abundant. Their dogs were many and strong. The children in the tents were happy, and there was never any fear of going hungry. Then came the ruthless white man's civilization. And with it came slaughter of the herds, starvation of the flesh, and torture of the spirit.
The Desperate People
Courageous, proud in their age-old way of life, and now fighting to save themselves from extinction.
They were rich, the caribou were abundant. Their dogs were many and strong. The children in the tents were happy, and there was never any fear of going hungry. Then came the ruthless white man's civilization. And with it came slaughter of the herds, starvation of the flesh, and torture of the spirit.
The Desperate People
Courageous, proud in their age-old way of life, and now fighting to save themselves from extinction.
271 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1957
5 people are currently reading
242 people want to read
About the author
Farley Mowat
116 books646 followersFarley McGill Mowat was a conservationist and one of Canada's most widely-read authors.
Many of his most popular works have been memoirs of his childhood, his war service, and his work as a naturalist. His works have been translated into 52 languages and he has sold more than 14 million books.
Mowat studied biology at the University of Toronto. During a field trip to the Arctic, Mowat became outraged at the plight of the Ihalmiut, a Caribou Inuit band, which he attributed to misunderstanding by whites. His outrage led him to publish his first novel, People of the Deer (1952). This book made Mowat into a literary celebrity and was largely responsible for the shift in the Canadian government's Inuit policy: the government began shipping meat and dry goods to a people they previously denied existed.
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ship RV Farley Mowat was named in honour of him, and he frequently visited it to assist its mission.
Many of his most popular works have been memoirs of his childhood, his war service, and his work as a naturalist. His works have been translated into 52 languages and he has sold more than 14 million books.
Mowat studied biology at the University of Toronto. During a field trip to the Arctic, Mowat became outraged at the plight of the Ihalmiut, a Caribou Inuit band, which he attributed to misunderstanding by whites. His outrage led him to publish his first novel, People of the Deer (1952). This book made Mowat into a literary celebrity and was largely responsible for the shift in the Canadian government's Inuit policy: the government began shipping meat and dry goods to a people they previously denied existed.
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ship RV Farley Mowat was named in honour of him, and he frequently visited it to assist its mission.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
March 16, 2021
A real classic on Canada's abuses of it's far northern Native people.
August 2, 2012
"The Desperate People" is a very different book from its sister volume, "People of the Deer." Although it tells a continuing story, it was written many years later and, unlike the previous volume, Farley Mowat himself does not play a direct role in the narrative. Although one feels that he is never more than a heartbeat away from the action, he does not intrude upon it. It is the People's story; he is just the teller. As for the story he tells, it is not a pretty one.
In the book, he evokes a scene in a coastal town of the Arctic, in which a supply ship is making a stopover. Excitement runs through the townspeople as the ship's crew and passengers are brought to shore. It is a very bright moment in an otherwise dull, monotonous routine. One of the passengers detaches himself from the crowds leaving the vessel and makes his way through the town to an encampment on its edge. Tents are struck there and as he approaches, it happens that one of the occupants is outside and sees him approaching. It is an Eskimo dressed in rags and wearing an unmistakable air of dejection. Suddenly the visitor recognizes the man and hails him, but is not answered.
The visitor is Mowat and the Eskimo is Ohoto, a member of the Ihalmiut, one of the People. The two have not set eyes on each other for more than ten years. From that last meeting, looking backwards, Farley Mowat reconstructs the life of this little-known inland tribe as they prepare, unknowingly, to meet their doom. The story has grandeur as well as the appalling odour of decay. It has the sensitivity to show us that the fragility of the Ihalmiut may well turn out to be our own. It is also a finely written work, which had me yearning for some of the places described within and it may affect you that way too. At any rate, this second and perhaps final book about the People is so plainly filled with human understanding that one has to be very indifferent indeed, to take nothing from it.
In the book, he evokes a scene in a coastal town of the Arctic, in which a supply ship is making a stopover. Excitement runs through the townspeople as the ship's crew and passengers are brought to shore. It is a very bright moment in an otherwise dull, monotonous routine. One of the passengers detaches himself from the crowds leaving the vessel and makes his way through the town to an encampment on its edge. Tents are struck there and as he approaches, it happens that one of the occupants is outside and sees him approaching. It is an Eskimo dressed in rags and wearing an unmistakable air of dejection. Suddenly the visitor recognizes the man and hails him, but is not answered.
The visitor is Mowat and the Eskimo is Ohoto, a member of the Ihalmiut, one of the People. The two have not set eyes on each other for more than ten years. From that last meeting, looking backwards, Farley Mowat reconstructs the life of this little-known inland tribe as they prepare, unknowingly, to meet their doom. The story has grandeur as well as the appalling odour of decay. It has the sensitivity to show us that the fragility of the Ihalmiut may well turn out to be our own. It is also a finely written work, which had me yearning for some of the places described within and it may affect you that way too. At any rate, this second and perhaps final book about the People is so plainly filled with human understanding that one has to be very indifferent indeed, to take nothing from it.
April 3, 2023
"Canada's voice was often heard championing the cause of the world's underprivileged peoples. We Canadians looked askance at the South African exponents of apartheid, at the segregationists in the southern United States; and we gazed with holy horror upon the inhumanities which we were told were being perpetrated on primitive peoples under the rule of Communism. Indeed we looked virtuously in all directions; except northward into our own land."
This book was a difficult read, and it had some dated language because it was so old. However, it was written with consideration for the Ihalmiut people and their genocide. It touched on the othering done by settlers, the attempts to control and 'help' them, and how the blame for the damage done was repeatedly pushed onto someone else by the Canadian government. This book names and follows certain members, interviewing them and the people that knew them, as they go from a prosperous self-sustaining people to ones forced into starvation.
I am also including the quote that the author added at the end of the book, reminding the readers that he was just an observer and could not do justice to the whole of their story:
"I read that book you wrote-- The Desperate People. When you stuck to the story of what happened you wrote close to the truth of us. But when you got to talking about what we needed and wanted you talked bullshit! You and pretty near every other white men I ever heard. I'll tell you what we want! We want you whites to leave us make our own decisions! We'll decide how much of your phony world we have to have to stay alive."
This book was a difficult read, and it had some dated language because it was so old. However, it was written with consideration for the Ihalmiut people and their genocide. It touched on the othering done by settlers, the attempts to control and 'help' them, and how the blame for the damage done was repeatedly pushed onto someone else by the Canadian government. This book names and follows certain members, interviewing them and the people that knew them, as they go from a prosperous self-sustaining people to ones forced into starvation.
I am also including the quote that the author added at the end of the book, reminding the readers that he was just an observer and could not do justice to the whole of their story:
"I read that book you wrote-- The Desperate People. When you stuck to the story of what happened you wrote close to the truth of us. But when you got to talking about what we needed and wanted you talked bullshit! You and pretty near every other white men I ever heard. I'll tell you what we want! We want you whites to leave us make our own decisions! We'll decide how much of your phony world we have to have to stay alive."
February 12, 2021
I really liked this book, difficult though it may have been to read. I was pleased to rejoin the People of the Deer from Farley Mowat's previous book of this name. However, in this continuation, everything goes downhill. Don't expect triumph or a happy ending. There is none. The People who survive to the final pages of the book suffer from the worst case of apathy I have ever read about. Worse still is the fact that we are now far removed from these events in time. There is nothing we can do anymore to save the Ihalmiut.
Still, an important read. I think this book , or at the very least its predecessor, People of the Deer, should be read by everyone. While that first book offered a solution that would help the People not only feed themselves, but also earn a living, this second book presents the shining example of how to treat the Inuit fairly: Greenland. It is one of the few positive things the author wrote about.
I am happy that, today, the Inuit have achieved some level of self-governance in Nunavut. I hope thing progress well for them in the future, and that they eventually achieve financial independence from Ottawa.
Still, an important read. I think this book , or at the very least its predecessor, People of the Deer, should be read by everyone. While that first book offered a solution that would help the People not only feed themselves, but also earn a living, this second book presents the shining example of how to treat the Inuit fairly: Greenland. It is one of the few positive things the author wrote about.
I am happy that, today, the Inuit have achieved some level of self-governance in Nunavut. I hope thing progress well for them in the future, and that they eventually achieve financial independence from Ottawa.
May 3, 2020
A well written book about tragic events. The decline from a vibrant, proud and self-sufficient people to a marginalized one was told in a fair and balanced way. The description of how the Inuit lived their lives when they were isolated was amazing. Their ability to thrive in harsh conditions and the culture they had were things we could have learned from. Reading the details of how initially trading pelts for pots and guns led to the total destruction of their old way of life, assisted by contagious diseases that were poorly understood at the time, was painful but not sensationalized by portraying every white person as having the goal of wiping the People out. There were enough of them that were criminally selfish (along with one Inuit man who purposely starved children in his own tribe) and our government was plainly too ill-informed to even remotely understand or even seem to care about what should and could have been done to provide help while enabling the Inuit to maintain their independence but there were also stories of some RCMP and Hudson Bay trading post operators who genuinely cared and did try to help.
January 31, 2019
A really hard book to read, because it is so sad. Mowat hints that the caribou were wiped out as a result of hunting and environment destruction. I would like to know how drilling for oil in the Canadian north has affected caribou population and what inferences regarding ANWR we might draw.
February 23, 2021
Skip this one. The romance of the people of the north disappears into a boring and useless narrative of misery.
May 22, 2023
This book is a reminder that our Canadian friends to the North have unfortunately shared our legacy of mistreatment of native people.
February 9, 2021
I'm split, with this one. I don't regret reading this book but, after reading People of the Deer and about People of the Deer and getting to know about Mowat in general, I find myself unamused by the undoubtedly fictional melodrama he concocts about the indigenous protagonists of the book, like a child playing with dolls or action figures. I also don't appreciate the constant cynicism and victimhood. The author clearly feels himself as much a victim as the Ihalmiut. People who want to help other people do just that - they help other people. They don't complain endlessly about what others do and don't do.
What he's talking about is real though, and that's what makes the book valuable. This book is informative and important in understanding both the experiences of the Inuit in the mid-twentieth century and the mindset / practices of the Canadian government in their arctic territories. There are not many books that accomplish that, so that notches this book and Mowat's output up a rank or two. He is a good writer, sometimes. I like his poetic turns of phrase.
I especially like his concept of the "Empires of the North" - the triumvirate formed by the Hudson's Bay Company, the Catholic Oblate Missionaries, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and how the three of them both created and filled a power vacuum in the Canadian territories in order to limit their and the government's responsibilities and ensure their dominance. The book is an account of the consequences of the decisions these institutions made about the lives of the Ihalmiut, and it is gruesome. It's an important lesson about colonial governments, one that makes the underlying concepts very easy to see due to the relatively small number of actors involved.
So there is a valuable history lesson in this, and in the catastrophes experienced by the Ihalmiut people. I give the book an extra star for that, and the fact that you really can't find this story anywhere else - at least not as accessibly. I just wish Mowat had accepted his own limitations as an anthropologist, journalist, and interpreter of the people and somehow found a way to get their own actual voices into print. Instead, in addition to the facts, we get these little made-up stories about the internal lives of a people he did not have as intimate a knowledge as he clearly thought he did.
What he's talking about is real though, and that's what makes the book valuable. This book is informative and important in understanding both the experiences of the Inuit in the mid-twentieth century and the mindset / practices of the Canadian government in their arctic territories. There are not many books that accomplish that, so that notches this book and Mowat's output up a rank or two. He is a good writer, sometimes. I like his poetic turns of phrase.
I especially like his concept of the "Empires of the North" - the triumvirate formed by the Hudson's Bay Company, the Catholic Oblate Missionaries, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and how the three of them both created and filled a power vacuum in the Canadian territories in order to limit their and the government's responsibilities and ensure their dominance. The book is an account of the consequences of the decisions these institutions made about the lives of the Ihalmiut, and it is gruesome. It's an important lesson about colonial governments, one that makes the underlying concepts very easy to see due to the relatively small number of actors involved.
So there is a valuable history lesson in this, and in the catastrophes experienced by the Ihalmiut people. I give the book an extra star for that, and the fact that you really can't find this story anywhere else - at least not as accessibly. I just wish Mowat had accepted his own limitations as an anthropologist, journalist, and interpreter of the people and somehow found a way to get their own actual voices into print. Instead, in addition to the facts, we get these little made-up stories about the internal lives of a people he did not have as intimate a knowledge as he clearly thought he did.
December 23, 2010
The Desperate People is not exactly what you would call a feel good experience. Mowat’s sequel to People Of The Deer is, unlike that volume, bereft of the lighthearted, bantering moments that served to balance the ugly truths. Rather than let the information lie to be interpreted as the reader will, one can’t help but get the message that white settlement of Canada destroyed a people and their way of life.
Of this, there can be no doubt. History proves the point and provides the details. Mowat serves up those details in a well researched, well written account of the slow decline. Like a creeping, inexorable slide across the ice and over a precipice, the Ihalmiut ended up nowhere and with nothing.
Haunting, chilling, frustrating and sad, The Desperate People is a study in decay. This is not a lighthearted read but is an excellent book nonetheless.
Of this, there can be no doubt. History proves the point and provides the details. Mowat serves up those details in a well researched, well written account of the slow decline. Like a creeping, inexorable slide across the ice and over a precipice, the Ihalmiut ended up nowhere and with nothing.
Haunting, chilling, frustrating and sad, The Desperate People is a study in decay. This is not a lighthearted read but is an excellent book nonetheless.
September 7, 2012
An unbelievable account of how the white people destroyed a culture, and an entire bloodline of true Canadians. I am horrified, embarrassed, and disappointed of the color of my skin today.
This book is primarily an account of what the judiciary system, the RCMP, the missionaries, the white gamesman did/did not do in regards to basic humanity.
I have always wanted to work in the north as a Registered Nurse, to work with the people in regards to their health and well-being. At this point, this very moment in closing the cover - I am too embarrassed to set my foot into the tundra floor.
An excellent account as to what we did wrong, and hopefully give each of us an appreciation / insight in what we can do better for basic decency in regards to humanity.
This book is primarily an account of what the judiciary system, the RCMP, the missionaries, the white gamesman did/did not do in regards to basic humanity.
I have always wanted to work in the north as a Registered Nurse, to work with the people in regards to their health and well-being. At this point, this very moment in closing the cover - I am too embarrassed to set my foot into the tundra floor.
An excellent account as to what we did wrong, and hopefully give each of us an appreciation / insight in what we can do better for basic decency in regards to humanity.
August 19, 2013
What a long struggle to complete this book. I did not find it the most exciting book on the shelf, although I persevered and have come away with a better understanding of the treatment by the whites to the Eskimos and, essentially, all of our native peoples in Canada. It is a shame that these things occurred during the expansion of Northern Canada. It was also a nice refresher of the geography of that region. One little tidbit I did pick up on was names like Nanuk and Ootek - I have known many husky-type dogs bearing these names and I wonder if the dog owners even know where the names they chose for their canine companions originated.
July 12, 2016
I heard that there is controversy whether Farley Mowat was making up his story. I have a degree in Native Studies and one of my hobbies is researching First Nations history and culture, so I think that Mowat was very truthful with revealing the devastation of how Inuit peoples were abused and mistreated by our Canadian government. This is an important book to read for anyone who wants to learn more about Canadian history.
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July 25, 2011It was hard in a way to think that people in Gov positions could be so ignorant just 50 or so years age in Canada and today those people are trying to create a government in Afg ... when those people are not or never will be civilixed in the same manner that we are , if indeed we are at all . Farlet has a way with worsd there is no doubt about that .
July 29, 2011
I read this book in a single day. Admittedly, it made that particular day rather depressing. Mowat's language is descriptive, almost lyrical in sections, as he depicts the geographic desolation of the inland Arctic and the people who lived there until a series of events & decisions conspired to nearly wipe them out in the 1950s.
December 31, 2010
Very well written, and in a fairly traditional style. Grim as all hell: another story of civilized white people thoroughly destroying the ability of native folks to live traditionally, or even survive.
July 2, 2011
A really sobering tale of the die-out of an eskimo tribe and the callousness of the Canadian bureaucracy in the face of Mowat and other observers trying to bring it to attention of govt. this occurred in late 40s and 50s - a sad tale of incredible privation and misunderstanding.
March 22, 2015
Very depressing as the title suggests but what an informative book on the delicate balance of survival and the need ultimately for assistance. It's easy to cast a group aside as welfare bums but take the initiative to look beyond the rags to see how they got there.
January 4, 2008
Insightful and sensitive with out being sycophantic. Not so much "noble savage"
December 19, 2010
It's sad to see "survival of the fittest" at work.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews