Far off Metal River

In 1771, Samuel Hearne, an employee of the Hudson's Bay Company, set off with a group of Dene guides to explore part of the Central Arctic. Twenty-four years later, Hearne's gruesome account of what has become known as the Bloody Falls massacre, an alleged attack by his guides on a camp of sleeping Inuit, was published. In Far Off Metal River, author Emilie Cameron does not concern herself with whether the murders actually took place (as has been debated since 1795) but instead explores how Hearne's account of the massacre has shaped ongoing colonization and economic exploitation of the North. As Cameron demonstrates, the Arctic has for centuries been treated like a blank page onto which a long line of explorers, missionaries, anthropologists, resource companies, and politicians have inscribed stories that serve their own interests. These stories have played a central role in shaping how the region's people have been, and continue to be, treated. They have also been used to justify opening the North to industrial resource extraction. Consequently, Qablunaat (non-Inuit, non-Indigenous people) have a responsibility to question their myths about the North, first by placing them within their proper historical, geographical, and social context and then by developing new understandings and new relationships that reflect the actual political, cultural, economic, environmental, and social landscapes of the contemporary Arctic.--Provided by publisher.