Reflections on This Country

Whit Fraser opens True North Rising with the 1970 trial of an Inuk man. Adam Tootalik, the accused, listened — confused, maybe terrified — as lawyers debated in a foreign language whether he had broken a law he never knew existed. The seasoned hunter had been party to the killing of three polar bears, including a large female. Under a recently passed Northwest Territories game ordinance, he was charged, in effect, “with practising the ancient skill that had allowed Inuit to survive for thousands of years.” He was one of many Arctic residents, living in relatively new communities like Spence Bay (now Taloyoak), who found themselves “in a kind of legal twilight zone, where the white man’s rules had to be obeyed.”

While on his way to cover the proceedings for CBC Northern Service, Fraser watched from the cabin of a Douglas DC‑3 as the trees below gave way to a vast...