This version of Jennes’s account of the Stefansson Canadian expedition of 1913 to 1916?? mirrors Dawn of Arctic Alaska but told apparently as a young adult tale. There is no need to repeat passages from that book, but relevant passages can be found on these pages of the Chicago edition: 14, 26, 30, 46, 47, 53, 58, and 62. A few are worth noting here:
p. vi, Preface to Nansen: What a sad guilt we white men have toward native races! But these people live in a land which will be of no value to us without them.
Let there be no doubt about it: they, too, are doomed if nothing really effective is done to protect them. The land of the great white silence will never ring with the happy mirth of these lovable children of the twilight.
Surely the Canadian people will not let such a thing to happen, when once their attention is drawn to it. No one can be deaf to the thrilling appeal with which the author ends his book. May he be the harbinger of a brighter dawn in twilight land. The problem must be faced, but at once and with intelligent prudence, unless it should be too late. Fridtjof Nansen . Lysaker, March 4th, 1928.
p. 97, on Jenness’s reliance on two British maps in relation to the native mapmaking.
p. 250, in the Epilogue: The commercial world of the white man has caught the Eskimo in its mesh, destroyed their self-sufficiency and independence, and made them economically its slaves. Only in one respect did it benefit them: it lessened the danger of those unpredictable famines which had overtaken them every ten or fifteen years, bringing suffering and death to young and old without distinction [August 9, 1958].