AllMovie

Filmmaker Staffan Julén explores how the most famous explorer of the 19th century set Inuit culture on a crash course with the American Dream in this documentary detailing one of the most deplorable chapters in the history of American expansionism. The year was 1897, and upon docking in New York City Robert E. Peary announced that he had a most unusual gift for his financiers at the American Museum of Natural History. His cargo -- six living, breathing Inuit people from Northern Greenland. Of course the tabloid press went into a feeding frenzy, and curious New Yorkers flooded into the museum by the thousands in order to get a good look at these "savages." One of the Inuits was a six-year-old boy named Minik. While the older Inuits quickly perished in their strange and unfamiliar new environment, over the course of two decades Minik would somehow manage to adapt to his new culture. Nevertheless, Minik and Peary's fates would remain forever intertwined. Now, over a century after the fact, Peary's great grandson (the product of a clandestine marriage between the explorer and a native Inuit woman) travels back in time to offer greater insight than ever before into Minik's remarkable story.