Muskox Land

Critical forces of culture and nature collide in this comprehensive history of Ellesmere Island in the age of contact. Surveying the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Lyle Dick presents an impressive treatment of European-Inuit contact in the High Arctic (the area of what is now the Quttinirpaaq National Park) while considering the roles of the natural environment and cultures as factors in human history. As he charts the dynamic interplay between change and continuity in this forbidden land, Dick unravels the complexities of cultural exchange and human relationships to the Arctic landscape. Muskox Land provides a meticulously researched and richly illustrated treatment of Canada's High Arctic as it interweaves insights from historiography, Native studies, ecology, anthropology, and polar exploration.