| Summary: | The earliest European explorers seeking a northwest passage to Asia did not know what to make of the indigenous inhabitants they encountered in what is now Canada. In the 1500s, Martin Frobisher thought they were Asians and took a number as slaves; none survived more than a few weeks in captivity. Later adventurers acquired a profound respect for the knowledge that had enabled Inuit (“the people”) to thrive for centuries in a harsh environment that left so many newcomers starving and frozen. When Norwegian Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole without incident in 1911, he credited his success to what he had learned from Inuit while carrying out a two-year magnetic survey of the eastern Arctic a decade earlier. Above all, he learned how to eat under extreme polar conditions. While Robert Scott tackled the South Pole at exactly
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