Book Reviews
Give Me My Father's Body: The Life of Minik the New York Eskimo, by Kenn Harper, Steerforth Press, South Royalton, VT, 2000
Author:
Melody Herr
Johns Hopkins University Press, US
Abstract
When Arctic explorer Robert Peary came home in September 1897, he brought with him a thirty-ton meteorite, an ethnological collection, and a group of Polar Eskimos for the American Museum of Natural History, which were immediately put on display. No matter that four of the six Eskimos died: the Museum just removed them from temporary exhibits and catalogued in them permanent collections. Of the two surviving, one returned to Greenland the following summer, the other remained in the household of a Museum administrator, William Wallace. This little orphan named Minik became the "New York Eskimo" of the title, and the phrase aptly summarizes his oxymoronic life.
How to Cite:
Herr, M., 2001. Give Me My Father's Body: The Life of Minik the New York Eskimo, by Kenn Harper, Steerforth Press, South Royalton, VT, 2000. Bulletin of the History of Archaeology, 11(1), pp.16–17. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/bha.11104
Published on
29 May 2001.
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