The Native Greenlander
Illustrated by Aron of Kangeq

Translated from Danish by Susan Stanley
192 pages
11 illustrations and 2 maps

5 1/2 x 6 7/8"
December 2019

ISBN 9780996748087
$20, paperback

This volume of tales, collected from native Greenlanders by Heinrich Rink, is the translation of the first book printed in Greenland. Over a five year span, Rink collected these tales from throughout Greenland, although mainly in the southern area.

The remarkable oral tradition of the Inuit, affected by few outside influences, is traced through their history on the land. Many of the stories describe the clashes between the Norse and the Inuit. Rink recognized that some of the tales existed in the realm of pure myth, but that others represented recollections, passed from one generation to the next, of events many centuries earlier.

Translated from Danish, this is the first English translation of these stories. Illustrations are by Aron of Kangeq, a sealer and walrus hunter who lived at the Moravian mission at the small trading station of Kangeq. His illustrations of the oral storytelling tradition have gained status as a symbol of the new artistic tradition developed in Greenland in the mid-19th century.

The Man Who Became a Caribou
by Craig Mishler and Kenneth Frank

480 pages
16 pages color photographs
Illustrations throughout

6 5/8 x 9 1/2"
October 2019

ISBN 9780996748070
$37.50, paperback





Dinjii Vadzaih Dhidlit: The Man Who Became a Caribou is a new bilingual volume based on a series of oral interviews with Gwich'in elders living in rural northeast Alaska and the Yukon Territory. Richly illustrated, the book covers a wide range of topics based on traditional harvesting and use of caribou from ancient to contemporary times. It also reveals traditional beliefs and taboos about caribou and includes a detailed naming system for caribou anatomy.

Recording the traditional ethnoscientific knowledge Gwich’in elders have about caribou in their oral narratives and in their hunting lexicon has far-reaching implications for zooarchaeology, for applied linguistics, for wildlife co-management, and for folklore and cultural anthropology. It is an empirical approach which essentially weds natural science with the humanities, osteology with verbal art. The topics included herein form a nucleus of many specialized study areas such as linguistic anthropology, zoosemiotics, ethnoscience, ethnozoology, osteology, and cultural ecology. And the Gwich’in ways of hunting, butchering and processing, preserving, storing, cooking, serving, tasting, and sharing food from the caribou, are all key elements in an ecological knowledge system. 
--from the Introduction

While there has been attention to caribou, I do not know of any work that looks at caribou in this way, drawing on the knowledge of the Gwich’in (or any other northern group) in such a deep and first-hand way. The book spans many important areas, including what in western science would be identified as natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. It makes outstanding contributions in these areas. It also still stands out in the overt recognition of the importance of the unfiltered voices of those who live with the caribou.
--Keren Rice, University of Toronto

This manuscript is an extensive collection of narratives. It presents an abundance of new data on an endangered language with extraordinary detail, grammatical and discursive. It also makes a critical contribution to the resources indigenous communities have for developing curriculum materials and institutionalizing indigenous studies in schools and elsewhere. Finally, it provides an amazing compendium of knowledge for resource management in the subarctic. 
--Barbra Meek, University of Michigan

Between Sea and Glacier:
Greenland in a Changing World
By Wilfred E. Richard

228 pages, 8 x 12"
April 2019

ISBN 978-0-9967480-5-6
$45, hardcover




The story of finding a people in possession of a spirit which reminds all of us that the world we inhabit is both larger and more fragile than we could have imagined.

"The people of Greenland possess a robust spirit, born of the land, which speaks to
me. At this time of the Age of Man, the Anthropocene, of human-induced climate
change, I recognize that a tradition of respect for the land prevails in Greenland. With
all the community dependent on the land, a spirit of cooperation has evolved through a
melding of Inuit communal culture with Scandinavian social democracy. I write of
Greenland, of its culture and people in possession of an existence, which is based on
hunter-gatherer knowledge of the land." From the introduction.

Wilfred Richard's spiritual journey to his new found second home culminates in a passionate recounting of his adventures through spectacular photographs and compassionate text.

A co-publication with with the Arctic Studies Center-Smithsonian Institution.