Anauta Blackmore

Anauta Blackmore (c.1890–1965), also known as Lizzie Ford Blackmore, was an Arctic author, memoirist and lecturer.[1] She is best known for her 1940 autobiography, Land of the Good Shadows, which may be the first book-length autobiography of an Inuk.[2] Blackmore claimed to have Inuit ancestry, although it's unclear if this was true.[3]

Anauta Blackmore
A flyer showing a woman dressed in Inuit costume
1940s flyer advertising Blackmore's lectures
Born
Sarah Elizabeth Ford

c. 1890
Died(1965-01-13)January 13, 1965
Other namesLizzie Ford Blackmore
Occupation(s)author and lecturer
Years active1929–1965
Notable workLand of the Good Shadows

Early life

She was born Sarah Elizabeth Ford on Baffin Island in about 1890.[3][4] Her father was George (or Yorgke) Ford, who worked for the Hudson's Bay Company as an interpreter.[3][5] In Blackmore's recounting, her mother was an Inuit woman, although company archives suggest her mother was from Newfoundland and died around 1905.[3]

She married her cousin, trading-post manager William R. Ford, with whom she had two daughters, but was widowed in August 1913 when Ford drowned.[1][4] After this she spent some time in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Montreal, Quebec, and Detroit, Michigan, before settling in Indianapolis, Indiana, around 1920.[1] Here she married construction contractor Harry Blackmore.[1][4]

Career in America

In Indianaopolis, she met Indianapolis Star cartoonist Chic Jackson who, around 1929, helped her establish herself on the lecture circuit.[1] She embraced her Inuit name, Anauta, was advertised as "the only Eskimo woman on the American platform", and spoke about her life experience in the eastern Arctic.[4]

In 1940, Blackmore collaborated with American children's writer Heluiz Chandler Washburne to write an autobiography, Land of the Good Shadows: The Life Story of Anauta, an Eskimo Woman, published by John Day Company.[4] The story was certainly embellished for a white audience, with Blackmore claiming to have been adopted and raised by an Inuk woman.[4] She would go on to write two more books, Children of the Blizzard (1952), a collection of stories of Inuit children, and Wild Like the Foxes: The True Story of an Eskimo Girl (1956), a biography of her mother.[5]

Blackmore died of a heart attack on 13 January 1965 in Ashland, Kansas, where she had been engaged to lecture.[1][6]

References

  1. Thompson, Donald Eugene (1974). Indiana authors and their books 1917–1966; A continuation of Indiana Authors and Their Books, 1816–1916, and containing additional names from the earlier period. Wabash College. p. 54.
  2. McGrath, Robin; Jenness, Diamond (1984). Canadian Inuit Literature: The Development of a Tradition. National Museums of Canada. p. 85.
  3. Considine, John (12 October 2010). Adventuring in Dictionaries: New Studies in the History of Lexicography. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 282–284. ISBN 978-1-4438-2626-6.
  4. Crooks, Katherine (October 2020). Cold Comforts: Women Making Inuit and Qallunaat Homes in the Eastern Arctic and North American Cultures of Exploration, 1890-1940 (PDF) (PhD thesis). Dalhousie University. pp. 173–223.
  5. Bataille, Gretchen M.; Lisa, Laurie (16 December 2003). Native American Women: A Biographical Dictionary. Routledge. p. 13. ISBN 978-1-135-95587-8.
  6. "Anauta dies of heart-attack in Kansas town". The Kokomo Tribune. Associated Press. 15 January 1965. p. 7.
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