The People's Land is an expression of a particular moment in norhtern history -- the darkness, even, that preceded the light.

For some years, Hugh Brody lived and studied among the Inuit, the people fo the Arctic. His book, The People's Land, describes their recent past with sympathy and indignation. He tells how the Whites came as fur traders and missionaries -- and stayed on as administrators, transferring their suburban world incongruously to the north.

The predicament of the contemporary Inuit is deeply troubling, embodying as it does -- within a very short history -- the destructive processes and social deformations that colonialism everywhere entails. As the author writes in the Foreword, this book "is a way of expressing my solidarity with the people who have so tirelessly tried to help me understand what is happening to them now and what they fear might happen to them in the future."

Hugh Brody is a writer and filmmaker. He is the author of Indians on Skid Row, Inishkillane: Change and Decline in the West of Ireland, The People's Land, Living Arctic and, with Michael Ignatieff, of 1919.

Hugh Brody's profile page

"An important, controversial, shrewd analysis of White-Inuit relations in Canada's Eastern Arctic. It puts White culture under a microscope and our residual colonialism stands out with embarrassing clarity. The People's Land is still the best analysis of southern imperialism in our northern world."

Tom Berger