Fifty years ago the Inuit of Canada's Arctic lived lives whose patterns had changed little for hundreds of years. When the United States' military intruded during the Second World War those patterns changed, immediately and irrevocably.

Kevin MacMahon set out to gauge the nature and extent of that change and found that modern technology--from machine guns to television--were destroying ways of life that had been patiently constructed over centuries: "Theirs was a world without borders and with few expressions of power. This world was instantly and radically transformed by the arrival of the American armed forces and Canadian bureaucracies that blew into the north like a wind of steel."

Arctic Twilight is a sensitive, lyrical portrait of a proud and resourceful people who have been victimized by the forces of technology and by the governments that rule over them.

KEVIN MCMAHON is an award-winning writer, filmmaker and broadcaster who has produced work for the CBC and BBC. He has long been interested in the impact of technology on the North. He lives in Toronto.

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