Give Me My Father's Body
Written: Jan 05 '04 (Updated Jan 05 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Well researched and written. Absolutely Horrifying
Cons: Did I mention it was absolutely horrifying?
The Bottom Line: Read it. You need to know. Nothing is more creepy than the truth.
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| nollequeen's Full Review: Kenn Harper - Give Me My Father's Body: The Life o... |
I have not read anything as tragic or compelling as the life story of Minik the “New York Eskimo” in a long time. I was introduced to his story more than ten years ago in a used book store in Massachusetts and haven’t been able to get it out of my mind since then.
Kenn Harper originally wrote “Give Me My Father’s Body” in 1986 and published it in what I remember to be somewhat of a pamphlet/book form. Attracted by the turn of the century photos of Eskimos, I picked it up and was absolutely spell bound and horrified by what I read. Much younger (and poorer) then, I didn’t have the money to buy the book so I sat on the floor among the stacks and read the entire thing cover to cover without stopping. When I came up for air, I realized that early afternoon had turned to darkness and the bookstore was about to close. Haunted by the tale ever since, I recently did a Google Search on Eskimos and Admiral Peary to see what I could find and discovered that “Give Me My Father’s Body” had been reprinted in 2000 and that the actor Kevin Spacey had bought the rights to book with hopes to make a film of Minik’s story.
Minik, a six year old Eskimo boy from Greenland, who had recently lost his mother, embarks on what he believes to be a great adventure with his father. He and his father and five other adults from his village have the unlucky distinction of being brought back from Greenland by Admiral Robert Peary as “live specimens” for the American Museum of Natural History in the year 1897. The group is “stored” in the museum’s basement, where scores of the curious come to observe and poke at them. The Eskimos themselves, are uncertain which is more oppressive the heat of New York in the summer or the crowds who came to gawk at them. One by one, they begin to sicken and die. Minik and his father are hospitalized at Bellevue.
One of the most moving passages in the book is written by Minik himself and is an account of his father’s death: “He was dearer to me than anything else in the world – especially when we were brought to New York, strangers in a strange land. You can imagine how closely that brought us together; how our disease and suffering and lack of understanding of all the strange things around us…made us sit tremblingly waiting our turn to go…How he would smile if I was a little better, and how he would sob, with big tears in his eyes, when I was suffering…They tried to take me from him and my father saw them and called to me and I ran into his arms. He knew that he must leave me, and his grief was terrible. “Father’s spirit will stay with Minik always,” he said in Eskimo choking hard, Father was dying then I know, but I think he poor heart broke and that is what killed him.”
With all of the Eskimos dead but a single small boy, Admiral Peary’s triumph was in tatters. He wanted nothing further to do with Minik and he was placed at the home of William Wallace, a director of the museum. The Wallace family loved him and adopted him, but the relationship was doomed by Mr. Wallace’s soon to be discovered embezzlement from the museum.
Minik was brought to what he was told was his father’s grave site by the museum staff and an Eskimo burial rite was performed. It wasn’t until several years later that the great horror of this story (you thought you’d heard the worst already, didn’t you?) comes to pass, when Minik discovers his father’s body in a glass case on display in the museum, complete with the requisite brass plaque with his father’s name and the words, “Body of An Adult Male Eskimo.”
The museum hadn’t buried his father. They had buried a log wrapped up in a burial shroud and lied to his son. The story only gets worse from there, but you really need to read the rest for yourself. It’s all true and all completely horrifying.
Ken Harper has written an excellent and dreadful book. He learned of the tale first hand from Minik’s people in Greenland solely because of his ability to speak Inuktitut, the Eskimo language and completed numerous interviews with the elders of the tribe who were he said, flattered and interested that someone wanted to hear their stories. The Museum of Natural History was reluctant to share a lot of their information (as was the Explorer’s Club) which frankly in today’s light makes them appear quite unfeeling and imperialistic. Minik’s tale might have ended quietly after Harper’s self-published book in 1986, had a friend not given a copy to Steerforth Press who republished it in 2000.
I don’t want to give away the ending, but I will tell you Minik returns both to Greenland and the United States once again, in his search for a family and a place to call home. He is buried in Pittsfield, New Hampshire.
Recommended:
Yes
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nollequeen
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Location: Deepest Darkest New England
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