Modern Parallels To Romeo And Juliet

     After deciding to not write about the most obvious parallels (Avatar, Twilight, West Side Story) I was going through my bookshelf looking for something that I might be able to relate to Romeo And Juliet, not matter how stretched that comparison is. What I came up with is one of my favorite books, People Of The Deer, by one of my favorite authors, Farley Mowat. The book, which takes place in the 1940's is about the remaining few people from a group of people indigenous to one of the harshest and most remote parts of the Canadian interior. Known as the Ihalmiut, first came into contact with settlers in the last years of the 19th century. In many ways, it was love at first sight for these two profoundly different cultures. The trappers realized that they could convince the Ihalmiut to hunt small game for their pelts, instead of their traditional food source, caribou. The Ihalmiut traded furs for guns, ammunition and western food staples, like flour and sugar. For several decades, both sides benefited from this arrangement, but inevitably, a problem arose: the fur market crashed. By this time, the art of making traditional weapons had been lost, and the Ihalmiut were left without ammunition, no way to hunt the animals they needed to survive, and were plagued with smallpox. By the 1950's the tragic story was practically over. A combination of disease and starvation reduced what had once been several thousand people to less than a dozen survivors. People Of The Deer is a fascinating insight into the dark side western-indigenous relations, and holds several (very, very faint) parallels to Romeo And Juliet.