labradore's Labrador #nlpoli

For your summer reading enjoyment, here are five books on Labrador, courtesy of the always helpful Wallace McLean at labradore:

Elizabeth Goudie, Woman of Labrador

Originally published in 1973, Woman of Labrador is Elizabeth Goudie's enduring and candid story of her pioneering life as a trapper's wife in the early 1900s. She was left alone much of the year to rear eight children while her husband worked the traplines. Independent and resourceful, Elizabeth fulfilled her multiple roles as homemaker, doctor, cook, hunter, showmaker, and seamstress for her growing family. In the span of her eighty years, she witnessed radical changes to Labrador.

Kaniuekutat and Georg Henriksen, I Dreamed the Animals

This is Kaniuekutat's book. In it, he tells the story of his life and that of Innu culture in the northern parts of Labrador. The pages of this book are filled with the voice of Kaniuekutat giving his account of an Innu hunter's life and the problems and distress that have been caused by sedentarization and village life. Kaniuekutat invites us to see Innu society and culture from the inside, the way he lives it and reflects upon it. He was greatly concerned that young Innu may lose their traditional culture and the skills necessary to make a living as hunters, and wanted to convey a message: the Innu must take care of their language, their culture and their traditions.

Lynn Fitzhugh, The Labradorians: Voices from the Land of Cain

Explorer Jacques Cartier dismissed it as the land God gave to Cain, but generations of people from widely differing cultures living in dense wilde ess conditions have forged the people of Labrador into a thriving, vital culture of their own. Here are their stories in their own voices, written by the expert hand of a person whose heart's home is Labrador.

David C. Natcher et al. (eds.), Settlement, Subsistence, and Change Among the Labrador Inuit

On January 22, 2005, Inuit from communities throughout northern and central Labrador gathered in a school gymnasium to witness the signing of the Labrador Inuit Land Claim Agreement and to celebrate the long-awaited creation of their own regional self-government of Nunatsiavut. This historic agreement defined the Labrador Inuit settlement area, beneficiary enrollment criteria, and Inuit governance and ownership rights. Settlement, Subsistence, and Change Among the Labrador Inuit explores how these boundaries – around land, around people, and around the right to self-govern – reflect the complex history of the region, of Labrador Inuit identity, and the role of migration and settlement patterns in regional politics. Comprised of twelve essays, the book examines the way of life and cultural survival of this unique indigenous population, including: household structure, social economy of wild-food production, forced relocations and land claims, subsistence and settlement patterns, and contemporary issues around climate change, urban planning, and self-government.

Leonard Budgell, Arctic Twilight

Leonard Budgell saw the Canadian North like nobody else. He put his observations into words as few others ever could. 

As a "Servant of the Bay" Budgell ran Hudson's Bay Company trading posts for decades in isolated communities up the Labrador coast and across the Arctic. Living among aboriginal Canadians he witnessed episodes and heard stories that would never again be repeated - except he wrote them down. His pen memorably portrays everything from dancing northern lights and hunting practices of birds to astonishing human adventures and predicaments. 

Northern ways intact for centuries changed with rifles and motorboats, radios and electric generators, new foods and different medicines. Most often, it was Budgell who bridged the aboriginal and southern cultures, building and operating remote radio stations at places like Hebron, taking an RCMP officer into a settlement where a choice had to be made between two different codes of law and behaviour in a murder case. In Arctic Twilight, Budgell chronicles, in an outpouring of letters to a much younger female friend, a traditional way of life that was changing forever. 

Claudia Coutu Radmore, a teacher, writer, and artist, first met Len Budgell in Winnipeg when she was a fine arts student and he had retired from the Company. Their friendship grew stronger when he began writing remarkable letters after she returned to Queen's University. Now edited and organized by her, this unique memoir is available to the public for the first time.

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