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Cover Design by Sandra Gray |
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DESIGNER'S
NOTE Eskimos have as many words for snow as we have for weather. To them, the
world is always white; they don't have our variety. It never rains, for
instance; why should they have words like drizzle, downpour, gullywasher?
Instead, they note varieties of snow. Such is our human need to
distinguish and categorize. By the same token, our one word for Eskimo
fails to recognize the distinctions of the many tribes and cultures it
defines. We picture Nanuk living in an igloo; while in fact, the
"snow-house" was used only by certain peoples of the central
arctic, and only as a temporary shelter. All language derives from cultural
experience. We know much more, for example, about Native American
tribes, because our colonial history, and Hollywood westerns have
familiarized us with the Plains Indians. At the same time, we know very
little about the many diverse tribes of the great northwest. When Anatou
is banished from her tribe, she leaves the tundra for the forest and a
culture far unlike any she has known. For that reason, I chose to set The
Ice Wolf among the
Eskimos of Alaska rather than the more familiar cultures of the Hudson
Bay. Alaskan Eskimos dwell, not in igloos made of snow, but in
snow-covered sod huts, and their forest neighbors are hostile Chinook,
Tlingit, and Haida Indians of Western Canada. To reinforce her plight, I
have randomly borrowed art motifs from these coastal tribes and expanded
on them to suit the story Forest animals, for instance, appear as
Northwest Coast Indian ceremonial dancers in animal masks, while the
Wood God is represented by spirits of the trees and the most popularly
known artifact of these peoples, the totem pole. |
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