Rating: 
Summary: File it in the Dewey Decimal System under "True Crime"
Review: A crime perpetrated by an immoral, ethnocentric, Caucasian "Christian" society against Polar "Eskimos." This book was very difficult to read. The author, himself an Inuit, does an excellent job of telling this true tale in a straight- forward manner. It's just that the tale itself is horrifying. As Minik himself rhetorically posed to a New York news reporter: "How would Peary like to have his daughter carried off to the Arctic and abandoned to the charity of some kindly Eskimos? And what would the explorer do if he were walking through the museum and came across his own father staring at him blankly from a glass case?"
Rating:
Summary: File it in the Dewey Decimal System under "True Crime"
Review: A crime perpetrated by an immoral, ethnocentric, Caucasian "Christian" society against Polar "Eskimos." This book was very difficult to read. The author, himself an Inuit, does an excellent job of telling this true tale in a straight- forward manner. It's just that the tale itself is horrifying. As Minik himself rhetorically posed to a New York news reporter: "How would Peary like to have his daughter carried off to the Arctic and abandoned to the charity of some kindly Eskimos? And what would the explorer do if he were walking through the museum and came across his own father staring at him blankly from a glass case?"
Rating:
Summary: An impressive achievement, and a really good read
Review: As Kevin Spacey says in his foreword, "there is not a page in this book without its horrors and wonders." When I read a description of this book in a newspaper article - a six-year-old Eskimo boy who is brought to New York in 1897 by Robert Peary, then abandoned by Peary when the adults in the group become ill, and in effect set adrift when he is orphaned - I thought this tale in itself sounded interesting. But I was pleasantly surprised to discover the book to be far richer, with more interestng characters and unexpected twists and turns than I ever could have imagined. Though the book has many new and revealing things to say about famous figures from the goldn age of polar exploration and is the first major book I know to tell its story from the perspective of the indigenous Inuit, it is largely a fascinating period piece from turn-of-the-century New York City. The characters reveal themseles slowly, as in the best fiction; Mr. Harper has done a world class job of fleshing out the details, and his unadorned writing style allows the focus to remain on his characters and story, where it belongs. I couldn't put this book down, and still can't stop talking about it to friends.
Rating:
Summary: An impressive achievement, and a really good read
Review: As Kevin Spacey says in his foreword, "there is not a page in this book without its horrors and wonders." When I read a description of this book in a newspaper article - a six-year-old Eskimo boy who is brought to New York in 1897 by Robert Peary, then abandoned by Peary when the adults in the group become ill, and in effect set adrift when he is orphaned - I thought this tale in itself sounded interesting. But I was pleasantly surprised to discover the book to be far richer, with more interestng characters and unexpected twists and turns than I ever could have imagined. Though the book has many new and revealing things to say about famous figures from the goldn age of polar exploration and is the first major book I know to tell its story from the perspective of the indigenous Inuit, it is largely a fascinating period piece from turn-of-the-century New York City. The characters reveal themseles slowly, as in the best fiction; Mr. Harper has done a world class job of fleshing out the details, and his unadorned writing style allows the focus to remain on his characters and story, where it belongs. I couldn't put this book down, and still can't stop talking about it to friends.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating tale of a man caught between two worlds
Review: I first bought the self-published edition of Kenn Harper's "Give Me My Father's Body" after meeting him at an upstate New York museum. Later I was able to bring him to an international conference at the Byrd Polar Research Center where he discussed the inter-relationship between the Polar Eskimo and Cook, Peary and other white explorers of the late 19th and early 20th century.His well-deserved mainline publishing of the second edition gains the recognition his work did not receive a decade or more ago. It is a tragic yet revealing story of our turn-of-the-century imperial culture expressed by Americanb treatment of all "native" peoples, and extended in this case to the northernmost inhabitants. The real story here besides the individual dimension of Minik and his extended true and adopted family is the chauvinistic arrogance of the museum community and its agents "in the field" during this period. One of these was Robert E. Peary, who brought Minik and his fellow tribesmen to New York, all of who except Minik were abandoned in a damp basement room at the American Museum of Natural History, succumbing of tuberculosis. The title refers to Minik's plea to obtain his father's skeleton, which had been "mounted and preserved at the Museum" following its dissection at Bellevue Hospital. The contemptable action of the Miseum in staging a fake burial is something that the Nazis and Soviets woulkd perfect later in the century. The issue of treating aboriginal tribes as but chattel to the particular expedition that comes into contact with them was prominent with Peary, who saw the Polar Eskimo as but exploration inventory along with the dogs and sledges. This extended to his contempt for their welfare, having removed the three Cape York meteorites in 1894 and 1897 despte the fact that they constituted the Eskimo's only source of weapons and implements. While this undertaking might have been to shift public attention from Peary's expedition failures--most of his biographere speculate upon this--another might have been sheer greed. Peary took the meteorites from Greenland, a country with a loose sovereignty to Denmark, without even asking the tribe which depended upon them as a source for metal. He "presented": them to his wife, who in turn "sold" them to the wife of Morris K. Jessup, the president of the Am,erican Museum and also of the Peary Arctic Club, who in turn "donated" them to the Museum. The Peary's realized $50,000, a nice sum in the 1890s, and the procedure was classic period textbook for wills and trusts. Harper also relates that Minik contributed something of value about the controversy bertween Peary and his onetime exploration surgeon Frederick A. Cook, over their respective claims of having reached the North Pole. Minik knew both of their expedition companions from the Polar Eskimo tribe, saying that Peary's account was held in doubt while "Cook made a great trip north." More telling was the tribe's assessment of both men: "Peary is hated for his cruelty...(while) Cook is loved by all." Yet like the native American, their opinions counted little when it came to "the white man's business."
Rating: 
Summary: Revisiting Our Culture Toward 'the Natives'
Review: I first bought the self-published edition of Kenn Harper's "Give Me My Father's Body" after meeting him at an upstate New York museum. Later I was able to bring him to an international conference at the Byrd Polar Research Center where he discussed the inter-relationship between the Polar Eskimo and Cook, Peary and other white explorers of the late 19th and early 20th century. His well-deserved mainline publishing of the second edition gains the recognition his work did not receive a decade or more ago. It is a tragic yet revealing story of our turn-of-the-century imperial culture expressed by Americanb treatment of all "native" peoples, and extended in this case to the northernmost inhabitants. The real story here besides the individual dimension of Minik and his extended true and adopted family is the chauvinistic arrogance of the museum community and its agents "in the field" during this period. One of these was Robert E. Peary, who brought Minik and his fellow tribesmen to New York, all of who except Minik were abandoned in a damp basement room at the American Museum of Natural History, succumbing of tuberculosis. The title refers to Minik's plea to obtain his father's skeleton, which had been "mounted and preserved at the Museum" following its dissection at Bellevue Hospital. The contemptable action of the Miseum in staging a fake burial is something that the Nazis and Soviets woulkd perfect later in the century. The issue of treating aboriginal tribes as but chattel to the particular expedition that comes into contact with them was prominent with Peary, who saw the Polar Eskimo as but exploration inventory along with the dogs and sledges. This extended to his contempt for their welfare, having removed the three Cape York meteorites in 1894 and 1897 despte the fact that they constituted the Eskimo's only source of weapons and implements. While this undertaking might have been to shift public attention from Peary's expedition failures--most of his biographere speculate upon this--another might have been sheer greed. Peary took the meteorites from Greenland, a country with a loose sovereignty to Denmark, without even asking the tribe which depended upon them as a source for metal. He "presented": them to his wife, who in turn "sold" them to the wife of Morris K. Jessup, the president of the Am,erican Museum and also of the Peary Arctic Club, who in turn "donated" them to the Museum. The Peary's realized $50,000, a nice sum in the 1890s, and the procedure was classic period textbook for wills and trusts. Harper also relates that Minik contributed something of value about the controversy bertween Peary and his onetime exploration surgeon Frederick A. Cook, over their respective claims of having reached the North Pole. Minik knew both of their expedition companions from the Polar Eskimo tribe, saying that Peary's account was held in doubt while "Cook made a great trip north." More telling was the tribe's assessment of both men: "Peary is hated for his cruelty...(while) Cook is loved by all." Yet like the native American, their opinions counted little when it came to "the white man's business."
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: I might not have discovered this book if Kevin Spacey hadn't decided to buy the film rights and write a forword to the new edition. This well-written, meticulously researched history has left me almost breathless. If you are at all disposed to history, biography, anthropology, or any other study of human nature and experience, do read this book. As Harper recounts the events of Minik's life, the age of Polar discovery draws nearer to the present day. I stopped at times to wonder how far we've come in understanding people different from ourselves, in respecting not just the "idea" of diversity, but diversity itself. As we embrace the fashions, foods, even religions of other cultures, I hope we are not losing sight of what lies beneath our differences: an undeniable similarity, a shared distinction that I can only describe as the fundamental nobility of humanity.
Rating: 
Summary: I've read much better
Review: I purchased this book for an Anthropology course in the Spring of 2001 and was just appalled at what I read. The singlemindedness of Robert Peary was reprehensible. The arrogance with which he treated the Inuit he came into contact with and the devasting effect on one little boy! There was no thought of the consequences to the actions of one (person) and many suffered from it. I recommend this book to anyone who doubts just how far we have come in terms of tolerance, compassion, and understanding of other cultures. It was an amazing tale!
Rating:
Summary: If we only knew then what we know now.
Review: I purchased this book for an Anthropology course in the Spring of 2001 and was just appalled at what I read. The singlemindedness of Robert Peary was reprehensible. The arrogance with which he treated the Inuit he came into contact with and the devasting effect on one little boy! There was no thought of the consequences to the actions of one (person) and many suffered from it. I recommend this book to anyone who doubts just how far we have come in terms of tolerance, compassion, and understanding of other cultures. It was an amazing tale!
Rating:
Summary: Minik....could have been more
Review: I recently finished reading Kenn Harper's book, "Give me My Father's Body", a book with a fascinating story that was not particularly told well. Perhaps it is Mr. Harper's rather basic writing style that allowed me to put this book down every now and again or the fact that he did not relate his subject's life in a terribly empathetic way. Minik, in the author's eyes, ranged from being an poor eskimo who was taken advantage of, to one being an astute manipulator. I was never quite certain which Minik he was talking about and in the end, I had no feelings for Minik one way or another. I had a hard time believing that Minik's presence in America was as important as the author tried to relate. Curiously, the man who comes to life most in Mr. Harper's book is Admiral Robert Peary and the author adds to history's further debunking of Peary's claims that the admiral was the first to reach the North Pole. But to tie Minik as closely and as importantly to Peary as Mr. Harper tries to do is a bit of a stretch. The title, too, is somewhat misleading. "Give me my father's body", Minik's attempt to retrieve his father's remains from the Museum of Natural History, plays a fairly small role in the book. It is shown as a sidelight in the saga of Minik's life....a story I hope will be better told in Kevin Spacey's movie.
|
