Nature’s Bookshelf
Ordinary Wolves by Seth Kantner. (Milkweed Editions, 2004)

A Book Review by Todd Arnold

 The North Slope of Alaska has received considerable media attention due to the controversy surrounding oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But for most Americans, northern Alaska is probably about as tangible as Tolkien's Middle Earth.

Ordinary Wolves could help change that. In Kantner's novel the Arctic comes alive in all its harsh and rugged beauty. Although it's a fictional account, Ordinary Wolves is largely autobiographical. Kantner grew up in northwestern Alaska, where his family lived off the land using traditional knowledge passed down from the Inupiat (Eskimos). Kantner cleverly points out in one passage involving the freezing point of urine that, unlike Jack London's novels, his novel reflects a lived rather than imagined experience.

Ordinary Wolves follows the life of young Cutuk Hawcly, who grows up in a sod igloo with his father and two older siblings. His mother fled one winter on a bush plane, and never came back. The Hawclys are Caucasian immigrants from Chicago, but in many ways their lifestyle is more "native" than that of the Inupiat living in the nearby village. In an ironic twist on the status quo, the Hawcly family is the target of overt racism. It is heartbreaking to watch young Cutuk's struggles to fit into a society where he embraces the traditional culture more thoroughly than the Inupiat, but is nevertheless ostracized because he looks different, and it provides an outstanding opportunity to empathize with what it's like to be part of a visible minority.

Cutuk grows up during a period of rapid change in northern Alaska. The Prudhoe Bay oil boom brings outside influences into the remote Arctic villages, and Kantner doesn't shy away from candid descriptions of how technology, loose money, and alcohol have ravaged the traditional Inupiat culture. But he also shows tremendous tenderness and respect.

Most environmentalists have probably seen the Gandhi quote: "Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed." Ordinary Wolves illustrates this idea more powerfully than anything else that I've read.

It's difficult to add to the accolades that have already been heaped on Ordinary Wolves by the likes of Barbara Kingsolver and Louise Erdrich, but for what it's worth, I loved it too. I included the book as an elective reading assignment for an environmental ethics class I teach at U Minn, and my students found it to be an enjoyable and educational read.
 

Todd

Todd Arnold teaches at the University of Minnesota in the department of Fisheries and Wildlife, with an interest in ecology and management of wetland-dependent wildlife, especially waterfowl.