No man's river

the long version

"In the spring of 1947, putting the death and devastation of the Second World War behind him, Farley Mowat joined a scientific expedition to the Far North. In the remote reaches of Manitoba, he witnessed an Eskimo population ravaged by starvation and disease brought about by the white man. In his efforts to provide the natives with some of the assistance that the government failed to provide, Mowat set out on an arduous journey that collided with one of nature's most arresting phenomena - the millennia-old migration of the Arctic's caribou herds." "Mowat was based at Windy Post with Charles Schweder, a Metis trapper and two Ihalmiut children. A young girl, known as Rita, is painted with special vividness - checking the traplines with the men, riding atop a sled, smoking a tiny pipe. Farley returns to the North decades later and discovers the tragic fate that befell her."--BOOK JACKET.