Product Description

The compelling and tragic story of the life of Minik, the New York Eskimo Minik, the lone survivor of six Inuit taken from their Greenland home to New York in 1897, lived a short, unhappy life. To famed Robert Peary, the Arctic explorer he was but a 'live specimen'. In New York the Eskimos were displayed to a paying public like freaks. Four of them, including Minik's father, soon died and Minik was set adrift. He found out his father's bones on display in the Natural History Museum. This makes morbidly fascinating reading. Much of the story is seen through Eskimo eyes. It's a gut-wrenching account of cultural imperialism and survival. Despite being cut off from his people, his language, and his sense of belonging, Minik never surrendered his hope of going home.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1560570 in Books
• Published on: 2001-06-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 296 pages

From Amazon.com
At last returning to print, Give Me My Father's Body is the thought-provoking tale of Minik, a young Inuit boy brought to New York by Robert Peary around the turn of the 20th century. Told simply and interspersed with personal letters and newspaper clippings, the book examines Minik's life both as a cross-cultural meeting place and a deeply personal search for a place to call "home." Photographs throughout of Minik give a glimpse into the incredible differences between the multiple worlds he inhabited, and how impossible it must have been to live in these worlds successfully. The title derives from one of Minik's more harrowing experiences--finding his father's bones displayed in a natural-history museum as a "curiosity"--and his attempts to retrieve the bones for a more respectful burial. Author Kenn Harper, while including many facts and articles about Arctic exploration, refrains from sharing opinions about the various explorers or their methods, choosing to share this story--and his years of research--plainly. From the death of Minik's birth father to the financial ruin of his American foster family, the events of Minik's childhood seem like one disaster after another, and his adulthood--the successful return to Greenland, followed by disappointment and a subsequent return to New York--is an unhappy struggle to find some kind of personal fulfillment. Questions of racial and cultural differences make an inescapable larger framework for Minik's life, and the emotions brought forward in answering those questions make reading this book a powerful experience. --Jill Lightner

From Publishers Weekly
When six-year-old Minik was chosen as one of six Eskimos from Qaanaaq, Greenland, to accompany explorer Robert Peary to New York City in 1897, he expected a brief adventure. Instead, he became an orphan and an exile. Treated as scientific curiosities, Minik's father and three others quickly succumbed to pneumonia, leaving the boy alone after the only other survivor returned to Greenland. Adopted by a middle-class family, Minik enjoyed a few relatively happy years until the family suffered financial disgrace. Peary refused to help support the boy or finance his return to Greenland, and Minik languished in poverty for several years. The horrific climax to his ordeal came when Minik learned that his father's body had been put on display at the American Museum of Natural History. Though his efforts to claim the body launched a media frenzy, they ultimately failed. Minik eventually returned to Greenland, where he had to relearn his native language and customs. Feeling marginalized among his people, he returned to the U.S. in 1916 only to die here two years later. Harper, who has lived for more than 30 years in the Arctic and is fluent in the Canadian Eskimo language, tells Minik's story straightforwardly and with sympathy. Yet he adheres so scrupulously to Minik's letters and other written accounts that his narrative is sometimes dry. As a tale of scientific arrogance, however, the book is chilling; as a portrait of an exploited, charming, intelligent, needy, sometimes vengeful and culturally ambivalent individual, it is truly unforgettable. B&w photographs. (Apr.) BOMC selection; rights sold in England, France, Germany and Spain; film rights optioned by Kevin Spacey.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Originally self-published in Greenland in 1986, this affecting work details the short, sad life of Minik, an orphaned Eskimo raised in America at the turn of the 20th century. On the surface, it is a tragic tale of a boy caught between two cultures, but more than that it is an expos? of the intellectual arrogance that permeated the race to explore the Arctic region during this period. In 1897, explorer Robert Peary brought Minik and five other Greenland Eskimos to New York to be studied as live "specimens" by the American Museum of Natural History. When four of them died, including Minik's father, Qisuk, their bodies were used for scientific research and kept for exhibit at the museum. Minik's accidental discovery of his father's remains, his unsuccessful attempts to have them returned to him, and the museum's refusal to acknowledge the truth or relinquish the bones reveal the inherent racism and pettiness of the scientific community. (Pressure created by the publication of this book finally caused the museum to release the remains in 1993.) Told in unembellished prose with heartbreaking excerpts from Minik's own writings, this powerful book is recommended for all public and academic libraries. [A foreword by Kevin Spacey is included.--Ed.]--Rose M. Cichy, Osterhout Free Lib., Wilkes-Barre, P.
---Rose M. Cichy, Osterhout Free Lib., Wilkes-Barre, PA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Slight annoyances didn't ruin the book
Kenn Harper's Give Me My Father's Body is undeniably and superbly researched; easily the book's crowning achievement. Occasionally though, I was annoyed with the "what if" scenarios. At least twice in the book Harper says what would have happened if things had gone another way. In one instance, the book describes Minik's plan to return to the Greenland and to lead a group of Inuit to the North Pole. He hoped to attain international honour for his people. Harper made the declaration that even had Minik tried, there was no way that he would have been successful. He further added that Minik's desire to prove the superiority of his race was an ethnocentric idea no doubt learned from the white people of New York, that the Greenland Inuit would balk at such ideas and that, with nothing to gain but glory for their people, they would surely refuse to help Minik. Even if Harper's learned ethnocentrism theory is correct, Harper has no way of ever knowing what Minik could have accomplished had he tried. If Minik had learned such ideas from white people, who's to say the Greenland Inuit wouldn't in turn learn such ideas from Minik? The point is, no one knows what would have happened and it is futile to guess (even for the well-informed). Also, the edition of the book that I have, has included discussion questions at the end for readers groups. These are very laughable. To paraphrase a typical question, "Kenn Harper lives among the people that he writes about and is therefore the greatest historian and writer to ever write about Northern peoples. Discuss how his portrayal of Eskimos is the most accurate description ever to be put on paper." But despite the embarrassing readers club guide at the end and the occasional subjective statement from Harper, the book is eye-opening about the victims of science and was a pleasurable read.

Intriguing...... sad
Kenn Harper has managed to bring together an amazing story through detailed research. Minik, the Polar Eskimo child, was brought to the US by Robert Peary and essentially placed on display. The story of his disconnected life is full of pathos and sorrow. Yet Harper weaves the story with life.

Peary's behaviors were simply egotistic and reprehensible. He treated the Eskimos as his property. He placed their lives in harms' way by bringing them to a culture and location that assaulted their senses and immune systems. Minik was the price paid for that deed.

I did get bogged down in names from time to time, especially as Harper recounted the financial misdealings of Wallace, who had taken responsibility for Minik. But overall, the story is entertaining and enlightening. It speaks to the ethnocentrism of Peary's generation and to the isolation of the Polar Eskimos. It took me a long time to read and absorb this book but it was rewarding in the end... to see and feel a culture so far away.

I've read much better
Storyline is very intriguing, but the writing is a bit droll. It is also longer than necessary.