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Chasing Tales
Grey Owl
Tales of an Empty Cabin. Key Porter $18.95
Armand Garnet Ruffo
Grey Owl: The Mystery of Archie Belaney. Coteau Books $14.95
At Geronimo's Grave. Coteau Books $14.95
One assumes that Key Porter's decision to reissue Grey Owl's last book, Tales of an Empty Cabin, had something to do with the fact that Richard Attenborough directed a popular, yet poor, movie about Grey Owl in 1998. One might assume so because Key Porter's text is limited by its lack of a preface or afterward. There is a short, introductory "Note on the Author" which gives bare information about the counterfeit guise Archie Belaney adopted and which praises Grey Owl for his "passion for nature" and his "empathy for the land that nurtured him." However, there is neither an explanation why Key Porter picked up the publishing rights to Tales of an Empty Cabin nor any indication why this text was reprinted at a time when contemporary Native literature is thriving and when debates about appropriation of voice have been challenging old publishing practices.
The text is attractive, though. The cover boasts a seductive photo of Grey Owl which was taken by W. J. Oliver and which shows Grey Owl sitting pensively on his canoe in front of one of his famous log cabins. This printing also includes a number of photos which, aside from one snapshot of Archie Belaney as a thirteen-year-old in Hastings, England, all capitalize on the solitary, adult Grey Owl who preferred time alone, or time alone with his beavers, to time with his numerous wives.
Published a year before Key Porter's reissue of Tales of an Empty Cabin, Armand...