At the End of the World Read online

  Was Mina one of the nineteen (a new record!) passengers seated in a row on the train, their thumbs working like automatons on their iGods?

  Was it Mina whom I recently saw taking a selfie next to a statue of Paul Revere while holding the hand of a toddler who kept repeating over and over again, “Password, password, password…?”

  Was it Mina who told me that she felt much worse when her computer crashed than when she had some sort of medical problem?

  Did Mina exchange her vacuum cleaner for a computer, sit down, and never get up again?

  A week or so after describing this putative Mina’s dance into Cyberia, I received an email from Taliriktuk’s daughter telling me of her father’s death.

  All of the other Qiqiqtarmiut who’d talked to me about the 1941 murders had died. Now Taliriktuk, too. His daughter told me that he’d had a massive stroke not long after watching a DVD of Nanook of the North.

  Taliriktuk’s daughter added: “When my dad wanted to learn about our culture, he watched this movie.”

  Not only had I lost a friend, but I’d lost a friend who’d mistaken the screened world for the real one.

  “How shall the heart be reconciled / to its feast of losses?” asked poet Stanley Kunitz.

  I decided to reconcile my heart to Taliriktuk’s death by doing what I usually do when confronted by a loss—I went for a walk.

  I walked until I reached the end of the world, where I heard a white-throated sparrow singing not “Poor Sam Peabody, Poor Sam Peabody,” its usual song, but “Bye Bye Nature, Bye Bye Nature,” a very different song.

  Ajurnamaat. That’s the way it is.

  GLOSSARY OF INUIT WORDS

  angakok (pl. angakut)—shaman

  atiq—soul

  ayee!—wow! or great!

  ee—yes

  ijuruq—a ghost or phantom

  ijurnarunaq—funny, laughable

  Inuktitut—the Inuit language

  kalopaling—a man-eating eider duck

  kamik—a sealskin or bearskin boot

  Naakalauk—Big Belly; euphemism for a white person

  nanook—polar bear; also the name of the hero in Nanook of the North

  qallunaak (pl. qallunaat)—white person

  Qiqiqtarmiut—Inuit of the Belcher Islands (lit., “People of the Islands”)

  qivitoq—A Greenlandic hermit with a cannibalistic bent

  siuk (pl. siut)—ear

  tupilak—a Greenlandic monster that eats human entrails

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Robert Pearson—for his diligent research into the Belcher murder trials and his scholarly essay on the subject

  William Closson James—for his discussion of the Belcher murders in Locations of the Sacred

  Ray Price—for his account of the Belcher murders in The Howling Arctic

  The Stefansson Library at Dartmouth—for providing me with a typescript of the murder trials

  Kim Cheechoo—for connecting me with elders in Moose Factory

  Bill Fraser—for helping me with logistics in Sanikiluaq

  Gary Moore—for offering a critique of this manuscript

  Suzy Hunt—for both her splendid line drawings and her proofreading skills

  Gretchen Wade—for her archival expertise

  Russell Potter—for his photographs of Robert Flaherty

  Rex Passion—for the map of Hudson Bay

  Sylvie Cote Chew at the Avataq Cultural Institute—for providing me with photographs

  Kenn Harper—for his expertise in Inuktitut

  Marcia Markland and David Stanford Burr—for being a savvy editor and savvy copyeditor respectively

  and

  the Qiqiqtarmiut

  Author seated on komatik (dogsled) (courtesy of the author)

  Typical East Greenland village scene (courtesy of the author)

  Female and male eider duck (courtesy of the author)

  Belcher women processing eider down in the traditional way (courtesy of the author)

  Nanook of the North listens to the voices inside a record player (courtesy of the author)

  Nanook of the North throwing a spear (courtesy of unknown 1920s magazine)

  Filmmaker Robert Flaherty (courtesy of unknown 1920s magazine)

  Ninety-three-year-old Johnny Inukpuk, cousin of “Nanook” (courtesy of the author)

  Peter Sala (on left), with two unidentified Inuit (courtesy of the Avataq Cultural Institute)

  Peter Sala with an unknown woman (courtesy of the Avataq Cultural Institute)

  The grave of Peter Sala (courtesy of the author)

  Mina in Port Harrison, 1948 (courtesy of the Avataq Cultural Institute)

  Grave marker in Moose Factory cemetery (courtesy of the author)

  ATVs, not Suburus, roam the Belcher Islands (courtesy of the author)

  Idling walrus (courtesy of the author)

  The view from the author’s tent, with walrus bones in the foreground. (courtesy of the author)

  Burial cairn above the author’s tent (courtesy of the author)

  The author listening to an Umbilicaria lichen (courtesy of Tom Murray)

  ALSO BY LAWRENCE MILLMAN

  Our Like Will Not Be There Again

  Hero Jesse

  A Kayak Full of Ghosts

  Last Places

  The Wrong-Handed Man

  Wolverine Creates the World

  An Evening Among Headhunters

  Lost in the Arctic

  Northern Latitudes

  Paris Was My Paramour

  Fascinating Fungi of New England

  Hiking to Siberia

  I’ll Dream You Alive

  Giant Polypores & Stoned Reindeer

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  LAWRENCE MILLMAN is the author of fifteen books, including such titles as Last Places, Our Like Will Not Be There Again, Lost in the Arctic, Hero Jesse, A Kayak Full of Ghosts, Northern Latitudes, Hiking to Siberia, and Fascinating Fungi of New England. His articles have appeared in National Geographic, Outside, Smithsonian, Atlantic Monthly, and Sports Illustrated. When not hanging out in some northern place or looking for mushrooms, he lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraphs

  Author’s Note

  A Sort of Introduction

  Map

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45


  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Glossary of Inuit Words

  Acknowledgments

  Photographs

  Also by Lawrence Millman

  About the Author

  Copyright

  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

  An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

  AT THE END OF THE WORLD. Copyright © 2016 by Lawrence Millman. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.thomasdunnebooks.com

  www.stmartins.com

  Cover design by Young Jin Lim

  Cover photographs: man © Roberta Olenick/Getty Images; sky © Tsuguliev/Shutterstock; ducks © RGB Ventures/Alamy

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Names: Millman, Lawrence, author.

  Title: At the end of the world: a true story of murder in the Arctic / Lawrence Millman.

  Description: New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016037251 | ISBN 9781250111401 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781250111418 (e-book)

  Subjects: LCSH: Murder—Arctic regions. | Violence—Arctic regions. | Inuit. | BISAC: NATURE / Ecosystems & Habitats / Polar Regions.

  Classification: LCC HV6535.A68 .M55 2017 | DDC 364.152/30971952—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016037251

  e-ISBN 9781250111418

  Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].

  First Edition: January 2017