Commentary

Beaverland by Leila Philip is packed with carefully researched information about the “weird rodent” that “made America.” Beavers are “weird” because we do not understand them well. When they started making dams is unknown, and how animals with such little brain power can create such elaborate structures remains a mystery. They “made America” because native American tribes worshipped them and the fur trade which defined Colonial America was based on beaver pelts creating the wealth of magnates like Johann Jacob Astor. In the book we learn about the Beaver Lady, Dorothy Richards, who kept beavers in her house, held them in her lap, and created the first reserve dedicated to beavers. We spend time with a contemporary fur trapper, Herb Sobanski, who puts the body of a dead beaver in Philip’s hands implicating her in a process of trapping and killing beavers about which she remains ambivalent. We see the ways in which beavers offer solutions to some of our most pressing environmental problems, and read a reverential retelling of the “Algonquian deep time story of Ktsi Amiskw, The Great Beaver.” All this information, though, is secondary to Philip’s love of the animals. A genuine emotional connection informs every paragraph—including our paragraph of the week. She understands that she, like Dorothy Richards and many others, at times anthropomorphizes the animals, justifying the personal bond she feels by pointing to the research of animal behaviorists such as Frans de Waal and others whose work suggests a neurological basis for our shared empathy with animals. This undeniable emotional connection, rendered without sentimentality, is the driving force behind Beaverland.

​

—THE