Book review: Lawrence Millman’s latest book, 'The Last Speaker of Bear,' offers a collection of anecdotes from his experiences in the North
“The Last Speaker of Bear: My Encounters in the North”Lawrence Millman, the author of 18 previous books as well as a frequent contributor to magazines, has spent a lifetime exploring and writing about the North. His latest small book consists of short vignettes or anecdotes chronicling his contacts with northern, largely Indigenous people and the places he visited.
Millman traveled widely in the sparsely inhabited — by humans — north, and his vignettes similarly travel across the length of Canada to Iceland and Greenland, Svalbard in northern Norway, Siberia and Russia’s Wrangel Island to Alaska. Much of his travel and inquiry surrounded collecting Indigenous “lore,” while at other times he was engaged in expeditions to historic locations associated with early Western explorers and whaling ships.
The title story, with its suggestion of bear-speak, promises more than it delivers. It’s mostly about Millman’s weather difficulties getting to a northern Labrador village where, he’d heard, an elder “spoke bear.” When he finally arrived, he learned that the elder had died the day before. He inquired of another man if he could speak some bear “words” and was told instead about the respect hunters paid to bears, calling them “Grandfather” and hanging their skulls in trees for protection.
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