Ancestors Are Happy

Inuit elders say that the ancestors are happy when stories are told, retold, and preserved.

In this "landscape of stories" about Canada's Arctic - rooted in oral history - ethnographer and historian David F. Pelly continues his exploration of Inuit cultural tradition. Drawing on his more than forty years of experiences and encounters in the North, he takes the reader on a journey through the region - from a dog sled trek across Boothia to a spring sealhunt on the sea ice of Pelly Bay and into the lives of several memorable northern characters - from Iquginnaq, whose life was saved by a shaman, to Mannik, who was Pelly's first teacher in the ways of Arctic life. The ancestors are pleased.