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Chesterfield recorded the effects of post life upon the Cree and Inuit, and showed how the white agents of the church and fur trade made us of native implements, clothing, and transportation. Recognizing the threat to native ways of life posed by the white man's advancing civilization, he photographed the native people's dress, their everyday activities, the details that define a culture. Much of what he recorded is now lost forever. The text by William C. James provides a detailed framework in which to understand the photographs. James describes Chesterfield's life, the region, the people he photographed, the role of the Hudson's Bay Company, the documentary significance of the activities depicted in the photographs, and the relationship between these and other extant photos of that region and era. The three-year period Chesterfield spent in the District of Ungava emerges as crucial in his own development and as a decisive turning point in the history of the region. Together with James's text, these pictures constitute an arresting chronicle of a place, its people, and their ways of life, now all irrevocably changed.

"[...]Innuit. North of Hebron to Cape Chidley there are but few families, some seven in all, embracing a population of less than 40 souls. On the west side of Cape Chidley, as far as the mouth of George's river, only about eight families live. These with the George's river Innuit comprise less than 50 individuals. There is a stretch of coast bordering Ungava bay, from George's river to the Koksoak river, which is uninhabited. The Koksoak river people include only four or five families and number less than 30 souls. The next people are those dwelling at the mouth of Leaf river, but they are more properly to be considered under the next[...]".

The Siberian Yupik people have endured centuries of change and repression, starting with the Russian Cossacks in 1648 and extending into recent years. The twentieth century brought especially formidable challenges, including forced relocation by Russian authorities and a Cold War “ice curtain” that cut off the Yupik people on the mainland region of Chukotka from those on St. Lawrence Island. Yet throughout all this, the Yupik have managed to maintain their culture and identity. Igor Krupnik and Michael Chlenov spent more than thirty years studying this resilience through original fieldwork. In Yupik Transitions, they present a compelling portrait of a tenacious people and place in transition—an essential portrait as the fast pace of the newest century threatens to erase their way of life forever.