The ethnologist and editor Jean Malaurie, a tireless defender of the first peoples, particularly of the North Pole, died in Dieppe (France) at the age of 101, as announced this Monday by his son Guillaume.
Explorer, scientist and adventurer, he spent ten years of his life between Greenland and Siberia; and he is the first European to reach the North Pole.
He became famous thanks to a book in defense of the Inuit, The last kings of Thule (Plon, 1953), where he denounced the destruction of their territory by the American army for the creation of an air base, and described the way of life of a little known town.
The book was the first title in a successful collection that still exists, Human Earth. Jean Malaurie led it until 2016 and was its honorary president until 2021.
"All his life, Jean Malaurie will have been a pioneer. A pioneer in the exploration of the North Pole, in respect for cultures, in the awareness of the respect that man owes to the Earth", reacted the Minister of Research, Sylvie Retailleau. .
"He was a giant. Jean Malaurie has just left for the other side of the horizon. He leaves behind a work of masterful depth," wrote anthropologist Philippe Charlier, who has directed the Terre humaine collection since 2021, in X.
The new CEO of Plon Editions, Jean-Luc Barré, paid tribute in a press release to “one of our greatest intellectuals,” who “led a determined fight in favor of minorities and respect for and listening to differences.” ”.
Jean Malaurie was the center of attention at UNESCO at the end of January with an exhibition of his paintings depicting the polar regions. In 2001 he edited the work L'Art du Grand Nord.
A rigorous scientist and editor, recognized for his crucial contributions to Arctic ethnology and the force of nature, he published his memoirs, De la pierre à l'âme: Mémoires, in 2022, again with Terre humaine.
This title was an evocation of his scientific conception according to which the culture and belief system of the individual (the soul) could not be understood without taking into account its relationships with its natural environment (the stone).
