Julie Cruikshank

The life stories of three remarkable and gifted women of Athapaskan and Tlingit ancestry who were born in the southern Yukon Territory around the turn of the century - when storytelling provides a customary framework for discussing the past.

Focusing on these contrasting views of glaciers between Aboriginal peoples and European visitors in northern Canada and Alaska, Julie Cruikshank demonstrates how local knowledge is produced, rather than discovered, through colonial encounters, and how it often conjoins social and biophysical processes.

In this illuminating study of indigenous oral narratives, Julie Cruikshank moves beyond the text to explore the social power and significance of storytelling.