Encounters on the Passage
Encounters on the Passage: Inuit Meet the Explorers Dorothy Harley Eber University of Toronto Press, 2008 ISBN (cloth): 978-0-8020-9275-5 Reviewed by David C. Woodman I have always envied Dorothy Harley Eber. Two decades ago my soon-to-be editor kindly invited me to lunch to discuss my unpublished manuscript. A charming lady named Dorothy who had a similar interest in Inuit oral history accompanied her. At that time Dorothy, unknown to me, was already famous for her groundbreaking Pitseolak: Pictures Out of My Life. That book was an illustrated oral biography of the Inuit artist Pitseolak Ashoona created from recorded interviews Dorothy had undertaken in 1970. She had recently completed another biography based on interviews with Peter Pitseolak eventually published as the excellent People from Our Side. Whereas I mined dusty and obscure sources for Inuit testimony collected during the nineteenth century, Dorothy actually met with living Inuit and over the years had patiently developed