Author | William T. Vollmann |
---|---|
Cover artist | Jacket design by Daniel Rembert Cover photograph by Ulli Stelttzer |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Series | Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes |
Genre | Literary fiction |
Publisher | Viking Penguin |
Publication date | February 24, 1994 |
Media type | Print (Paperback and Hardcover) |
Pages | 411 pp (first edition, hardback) |
ISBN | 0-670-84856-5 (first edition, hardback) |
OCLC | 28722824 |
813/.54 20 | |
LC Class | PS3572.O395 R54 1994 |
Preceded by | Fathers and Crows |
Followed by | Argall: The True Story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith |
The Rifles is a 1994 novel by American writer William T. Vollmann. It is intended to be the sixth book in a planned seven-book cycle entitled Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes. As of 2015 five of the seven have been published, The Rifles being the third to reach print.
Unlike the other books in this series so far, The Rifles is not wholly a historical novel, as it primarily takes place in the early 1990s, although the storyline depicting the trials and challenges of modern Inuit life is tied to the ill-fated exploration of the Arctic region by Sir John Franklin in the mid-19th century. The novel also discusses the 1955 forced migration of Inuit from Inukjuak, Quebec to Resolute, Nunavut.
Eskimo is an exonym that refers to two closely related Indigenous peoples: Inuit and the Yupik of eastern Siberia and Alaska. A related third group, the Aleut, who inhabit the Aleutian Islands, are generally excluded from the definition of Eskimo. The three groups share a relatively recent common ancestor, and speak related languages belonging to the family of Eskaleut languages.
Knud Johan Victor Rasmussen was a Greenlandic-Danish polar explorer and anthropologist. He has been called the "father of Eskimology" and was the first European to cross the Northwest Passage via dog sled. He remains well known in Greenland, Denmark and among Canadian Inuit.
Robert Joseph Flaherty, was an American filmmaker who directed and produced the first commercially successful feature-length documentary film, Nanook of the North (1922). The film made his reputation and nothing in his later life fully equaled its success, although he continued the development of this new genre of narrative documentary with Moana (1926), set in the South Seas, and Man of Aran (1934), filmed in Ireland's Aran Islands. Flaherty is considered the father of both the documentary and the ethnographic film.
Bernard Cornwell is an English-American author of historical novels and a history of the Waterloo Campaign. He is best known for his novels about Napoleonic Wars rifleman Richard Sharpe. He has also written The Saxon Stories, a series of 13 novels about the making of England.
Sharpe is a series of historical fiction stories by Bernard Cornwell centred on the character of British soldier Richard Sharpe. The stories formed the basis for an ITV television series featuring Sean Bean in the title role.
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Matthew Alexander Henson was an African American explorer who accompanied Robert Peary on seven voyages to the Arctic over a period of nearly 23 years. They spent a total of 18 years on expeditions together. He is best known for his participation in the 1908–1909 expedition that claimed to have reached the geographic North Pole on April 6, 1909. Henson said he was the first of their party to reach the North Pole.
Inuktitut, also known as Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, is one of the principal Inuit languages of Canada. It is spoken in all areas north of the North American tree line, including parts of the provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, to some extent in northeastern Manitoba as well as the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. It is one of the aboriginal languages written with Canadian Aboriginal syllabics.
James Archibald Houston was a Canadian artist, designer, children's author and filmmaker who played an important role in the recognition of Inuit art and introduced printmaking to the Inuit. The Inuit named him Saumik, which means "the left-handed one".
The Thelon River stretches 900 kilometres (560 mi) across northern Canada. Its source is Whitefish Lake in the Northwest Territories, and it flows east to Baker Lake in Nunavut. The Thelon ultimately drains into Hudson Bay at Chesterfield Inlet.
Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes is a series of historical novels by American writer William T. Vollmann about the conflicts between the natives of North America and settlers, governments, and others. Each volume focuses on a different episode in North American history, with most also including digressions and chronological departures. The narrator is credited throughout as William the Blind. The series will comprise seven novels; five books have been published as of 2022.
Lorenz Peter Elfred Freuchen was a Danish explorer, author, journalist and anthropologist. He is notable for his role in Arctic exploration, namely the Thule Expeditions.
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Inuit art, also known as Eskimo art, refers to artwork produced by Inuit, that is, the people of the Arctic previously known as Eskimos, a term that is now often considered offensive. Historically, their preferred medium was walrus ivory, but since the establishment of southern markets for Inuit art in 1945, prints and figurative works carved in relatively soft stone such as soapstone, serpentinite, or argillite have also become popular.
Inuit are a group of culturally and historically similar Indigenous peoples traditionally inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of North America, including Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, Yukon (traditionally), Alaska, and Chukotsky District of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia. Inuit languages are part of the Eskimo–Aleut languages, also known as Inuit-Yupik-Unangan, and also as Eskaleut. Inuit Sign Language is a critically endangered language isolate used in Nunavut.
The following is an alphabetical list of topics related to Indigenous peoples in Canada, comprising the First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.
The Fort is a 2010 historical novel written by Bernard Cornwell which relates to the events of the Penobscot Expedition of 1779 during the American Revolutionary War. The novel centers on the efforts of the British to establish and hold the fort against superior numbers of American patriots, and it contrasts the actions of John Moore and Paul Revere. Moore later laid the foundations of the light infantry doctrine used by the 95th Rifles and others against the French in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. The novel also discusses the major loss and misjudgement by the Americans and how the British took advantage of it.
Mitiarjuk Attasie Nappaaluk was an Inuk author, educator, and sculptor from Kangiqsujuaq in Nunavik, in northern Quebec, Canada. She was noted for writing Sanaaq, one of the first Inuktitut language novels. Nappaaluk translated books into Inuktitut and contributed to an early Inuktitut dictionary. She went on to teach Inuit culture and language in the Nunavik region, authoring a total of 22 books for use in schools. Her soapstone sculptures are held in collections at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, the Musée de la Civilisation, and the British Museum.
Split Tooth is a 2018 novel by Canadian musician Tanya Tagaq. Based in part on her own personal journals, the book tells the story of a young Inuk woman growing up in the Canadian Arctic in the 1970s.
In Inuit mythology, the Qallupilluit are creatures that live along Arctic shorelines near ice floes. They are said to steal children that wander too close to the water. This myth is believed to serve the purpose of protecting children from a dangerous environment, keeping them from wandering too close to the ice.