The Last Kings of Thule: With the Polar Eskimos, As They Face Their Destiny (Paperback)

by Jean Malaurie (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
An expanded third edition, the first in English, of Malaurie's widely-translated report (in the famed Terre Humaine series) on his year with Greenland's Polar Eskimos in 195051. In a small village beyond Thule, Malaurie found hunters living much as their ancestors had - in stone and peat igloos, wearing bearskin clothing, eating whale and seal - and sharing a deeply ingrained way of life. (Eskimos, who think better in a group, never say "I think," but only "The Inuit think" or "The group thinks.") Because he was sensitive to their customs, because he hunted with the men and shared their raw (sometimes rotten) meat, and, not least, because he owned his own team of dogs, Malaurie came to be accepted by these harsh, unpredictable, reserved, and sometimes vengeful people. For Malaurie and four Eskimos, two men and two women, the year included an expedition to chart uninhabited regions to the north and west. Here Malaurie recalls the fate of previous Polar expeditions, much as he has filled out his account of village life with the Eskimos' myths and folk tales. His own dogsled journey was as demanding as any: we hear of crawling blindly through storm and fog; of scaling crevasse-ridden glaciers; and, during one week Malaurie spent alone in a snow igloo, of fumbling to repair a failed stove as the temperature drops and the peeling skin of his fingers sticks to the pliers. The group returns to Thule to find the transformation of the culture begun: a huge American air base is in progress and "Inuk, the man with the harpoon, was doomed." On a 1967 return trip, Malaurie finds the hunting and the hunting economy destroyed, a welfare system in its place, sharing discouraged by the system of exchange and capitalization, old friends complaining, teeth and spirits destroyed by the white man's diet, and a once-proud hunter from his old village now a street cleaner - the self-styled "Big Shit." Yet the determined Eskimo delegates at an al-Arctic conference Malaurie chaired in 1973 give him hope for the emergence of an "Eskimo Gaullism," his term for a rational economic system characterized by group effort, autonomy, and "sustaining one's historical dignity." Insightful intimacy with a mysterious, heroic people; a telling demonstration of capitalist "dispossession. . . of a marginal people"; compelling adventure that only the Arctic can offer: plus pictures - a significant document with immense appeal. (Kirkus Reviews) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Language Notes
Text: English, French (translation)

Product Details

• Paperback: 489 pages
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr (T) (October 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226502848
• ISBN-13: 978-0226502847
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #928,012 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, but Qaanaaq inhabitants not so impressed., January 25, 1998

By A Customer

Fantastic background to the area both from the antropological and geographical points of veiw. However, when I visited Qaanaaq in 1990 and mentioned this book I found that the local inhabitants were not impressed by their protrayal. Particularly concerning the more private aspects of their society.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Worth the effort to find it., December 31, 1997

By A Customer

Insightful and introspective account of the author's extended study of the Polar Innuit of the Thule district in Greenland. The most recent edition includes the author's bittersweet reflections many years later on modern incursions that threaten the survival of this indigenous culture.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Accidental ethnographer, April 11, 2002

By	Tammy Hilburn "nrublih" (Memphis, TN, Sometimes Egypt, Fairbanks, Alaska Summer 2002) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Last Kings of Thule (Hardcover)

Although the primary objectives of Malaurie's work were cartographic and geological in nature, he became, by default, a primary voice in describing the Thule culture by recounting his personal experiences and lifestyle during the expedition. Surely, ethnography can never be a truly objective effort, but Malaurie seems to appreciate this and relates cultural information through an admitted cultural filter. Rather than stifle his own reactions in his writing, Malaurie has adequately described, with sensitivity, his personal paradigm shift as well as that of the culture he is inevitably impacting by his very presence. It is inevitable that in any ethnographic description it will be found that something is amiss, lacking, due to the inevitable loss of information that occurs whenever information is transferred across cultural and linguistic lines. This work is one of the few that I have read that treats cultural interaction and exchange with dignity on behalf of the observed and the one observing. And, after all, these lines of distinction regarding observer and the observed shift and change radically during such a period of cultural interaction. Malaurie wonderfully describes this process.