In Development
Bloody Falls Of The Coppermine
Synopsis
Two Catholic priests vanish while on a mission to convert the last Eskimos untouched by the white man. Some say the priests perished in the cold for which they weren't prepared. Others hint at a darker, bloodier end. But no one knows for sure...
The Canadian Mounted Police dispatch Lieutenant Denny LaNauze to solve the priests' disappearance. While the Great War rages in Europe and millions of young men find their deaths, LaNauze undertakes a monumental battle of a very different kind - and some would say even more brutal: a journey into the frigid barren lands of Inuit country. As rumor has it, LaNauze is headed into a world from which no one knows if he'll return.
On his journey through the vast arctic plains of Canada, LaNauze discovers another way of life - a life paradoxically in harmony with the harshest, most unforgiving climate on earth. And unlike his missionary predecessors - who looked down upon the Inuits - LaNauze comes to respect the intelligence of his hosts. He gains their trust by engaging in the traditions and rituals of the culture, following clue upon clue, weathering the unforgiving elements, and pursuing the trail of truth deep into a heart of darkness...
"The priests met a savage end," LaNauze writes in his journal. "Without any knowledge of the environment. Unprepared for the approaching winter, they were endangering the survival of the Inuits."
But how did they die? With the help of the local tribespeople, LaNauze learns of two Inuits: Sinnisiak and Uluksuk, and links them to the murder. After weeks of manhunting - dogsledding over hundreds of miles of icy glaciers, and canoeing across uncharted lakes coated with a primal and ominous fog - LaNauze finally captures the "guilty" Eskimos, and brings them back to Western civilization. But their months-long journey back to Edmonton forges a bond between the "culprits" and their captor. LaNauze has come to understand the difficulties of the Inuit way of life, and understands that the priests may have been more responsible for their own demise than the authorities back in Edmonton would want to accept.
And so begins the "Trial of the Century," as the presumed Inuit murderers - Sinnisiak and Uluksuk - face a white jury in Her Majesty's court of law. But the legal proceedings take a back seat to the daily local spectacle of these "savages" amongst us. The Inuits take in the civilized world, seeing it with innocent eyes, as amazed and overwhelmed as the Canadians were by the Inuits. And as the trial proceeds, the Inuits' fate seems locked in certain death-by-hanging...
Until LaNauze delivers a testimony under oath that shocks the whole world over.
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