Caribou Rising: Defending the Porcupine Herd, Gwich-’in Culture, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
By Rick Bass Sierra Club Books (Hardcover, $19.95, ISBN: 1578051142, 10/2004) In this poetic cri de coeur, Bass (The Book of Yaak) turns his focus to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He visited there to join the Gwich-’in tribe in its annual hunt for the life-sustaining caribou—as the Bush admin...
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eGrove
2004
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| Online Access: | https://egrove.olemiss.edu/mwp_books/58 https://egrove.olemiss.edu/context/mwp_books/article/1057/type/native/viewcontent |
| Summary: | By Rick Bass Sierra Club Books (Hardcover, $19.95, ISBN: 1578051142, 10/2004) In this poetic cri de coeur, Bass (The Book of Yaak) turns his focus to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He visited there to join the Gwich-’in tribe in its annual hunt for the life-sustaining caribou—as the Bush administration pressured Congress to open the herd’s traditional calving grounds to oil drilling. This bittersweet account of his stay conveys a profound appreciation for the immense, unblemished majesty of one of the few almost untouched landscapes on Earth; an eye-opening understanding of the intimate spiritual and physical connection, stretching back as much as 10,000 years, between the scattered Gwich-’in tribes and the migrant caribou; and an unexpected respect for how tribal elders and a young generation of activists in Arctic Village (pop. 150) have developed a media-savvy offense against “predatory” Alaskan politicians desperate to drill for a few months’ worth of petroleum. Bass is no starry-eyed optimist arguing abstractly for the environment; he concludes his emotional defense of the Gwich-’in uncertain that the preservation of a precious, ancient way of life is possible. But this eloquent narrative holds out hope. —Publishers Weekly. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/mwp_books/1057/thumbnail.jpg |
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