Inuit

Inuit
Inuit grandmother and grandchild
Total population
150,000
Regions with significant populations
Greenland, Canada, United States, Russia
Languages
Inuit language, Eskimo-Aleut languages
Religions
Christianity, Shamanism
Related ethnic groups
Aleuts, Yupiks

Inuit (plural: the singular, Inuk, means "man" or "person") is a general term for a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Alaska, Greenland, and Canada, and Siberia. There has been a remarkable homogeneity in the culture throughout these areas, which have traditionally relied on fish, marine mammals, and land animals for food, pets, transport, heat, light, clothing, tools, and shelter. The Inuit language is grouped under Eskimo-Aleut languages. Inuit and Aleut are considered separate from other Native Americans.

Prior to the arrival of Europeans, and even after their arrival since their homeland was so inhospitable, Inuit lived a traditional semi-nomadic lifestyle of subsistence hunting and fishing, with the extended family as the unit of society, their own form of laws passed on through oral tradition, and a spiritual belief system of rituals that were integrated into the daily life of the people. In the twentieth century, particularly in Canada, Christianity was imposed upon them together with a system of law that they did not understand, in an effort to assimilate them into the dominant Western culture. While their shamans are now gone, and they live in modern houses, much of what defines the Inuit has been preserved. The establishment of Nunavut as a separate territory in Canada, in 1999, provided both land and autonomy for a large segment of the Inuit population.

Today, Inuit work in all sectors of the economy, including mining, oil, and gas, construction, government, and administrative services. Tourism is a growing industry in the Inuit economy. Many Inuit derive part-time income from their sculpture, carving, and other crafts as well as hunting. Inuit culture is alive and vibrant despite the negative impact of their twentieth century history. Just as explorers and others have benefited from Inuit skills in the past, for example their kayaks and use of dog sleds, Inuit people continue to have much to contribute to the world wide human society.

Nomenclature

The Inuit people live throughout most of the Canadian Arctic and subarctic: in the territory of Nunavut ("our land"); the northern third of Quebec, in an area called Nunavik ("place to live"); the coastal region of Labrador, in an area called Nunatsiavut ("Our Beautiful Land"); in various parts of the Northwest Territories, mainly on the coast of the Arctic Ocean and the Yukon territory. Alaskan Inupiat (from Inuit- people - and piaq/t real, so "real people") live on the North Slope of Alaska and the Seward Peninsula. Inuit also live in Greenland, where they are known as Kalaallit, and are citizens of Denmark. Siberian Inuit are Russian citizens.

In Canada and Greenland the term "Eskimo" has fallen out of favor, is considered pejorative, and has been replaced by the term "Inuit." However, while "Inuit" describes the Eskimo peoples in Canada and Greenland, that is not true in Alaska and Siberia. In Alaska the term "Eskimo" is commonly used, because it includes both Yupik and Inupiat, while "Inuit" is not accepted as a collective term or even specifically used for Inupiat. No universal replacement term for "Eskimo," inclusive of all Inuit and Yupik peoples, is accepted across the geographical area which they inhabit.

The Inuit Circumpolar Conference, a United Nations-recognized non-governmental organization (NGO), defines its constituency to include Canada's Inuit and Inuvialuit (Inuit who live in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region in the Northwest Territories), Greenland's Kalaallit Inuit, Alaska's Inupiat and Yup'ik people, and the Siberian Yupik people of Russia. However, the Yupik of Alaska and Siberia are not Inuit, and the Yupik languages are linguistically distinct from the Inuit languages. Yupik people are not considered to be Inuit either by themselves or by ethnographers, and prefer to be called Yupik or Eskimo.

Canadian Inuit do not consider themselves, and are not usually considered by others, to be one of the First Nations, a term which normally applies to other indigenous peoples in Canada. Generally, Aleut and Inuit are considered separate from other Native Americans. They are more Asian in appearance, shorter and broader, and with rounder faces and lighter skin. However, Canadian Inuit (and the Métis) are collectively recognized by the Constitution Act, 1982 as Aboriginal peoples in Canada. The Inuit should not be confused with the Innu, a distinct First Nations people who live in northeastern Quebec and Labrador.

Language

Inuit place names using Inuktitut syllabics and Latin alphabet

The Inuit mainly speak their traditional language, Inuktitut, but they also speak English, and French. Inuktitut is mainly spoken in the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and in some parts of Greenland. The language of the Inupiat in Alaska is Iñupiaq (which is the singular form of Inupiat).

Did you know?

Inuit is a term that encompasses the Indigenous peoples who live in the Arctic regions of Alaska, Greenland, Canada, and Siberia although some prefer to be called by their own name, such as Kalaallit in Greenland and Inupiat in Alaska

Inuktitut is written in several different ways, depending on the dialect and region, but also on historical and political factors. Some of the Inuit dialects were recorded in the eighteenth century, but until the latter half of the twentieth century, most were not able to read and write in their own language. In the 1760s, Moravian missionaries arrived in Greenland, where they contributed to the development of a written system of language called Qaliujaaqpait, based on the Latin alphabet. The missionaries later brought this system to Labrador, from which it eventually spread as far as Alaska. The Alaskan Yupik and Inupiat (who, in addition, developed their own system of hieroglyphics) and the Siberian Yupik also adopted the system of Roman orthography.

The Inuktitut syllabary used in Canada is based on the Cree syllabary devised by the missionary James Evans. The present form of the syllabary for Canadian Inuktitut was adopted by the Inuit Cultural Institute in Canada in the 1970s.

History

Early history

The Inuit are the descendants of what anthropologists call the Thule culture, who emerged from western Alaska around 1000 C.E. and spread eastwards across the Arctic, displacing the related Dorset culture (in Inuktitut, the Tuniit). Inuit legends speak of the Tuniit as "giants," people who were taller and stronger than the Inuit.

In Canada and Greenland the Inuit circulated almost exclusively north of the tree line, the de facto southern border of Inuit society. To the south, Native American Indian cultures were well established, and the culture and technology of Inuit society that served them so well in the Arctic was not suited to the subarctic, so they did not displace their southern neighbors. They had trade relations with more southern cultures, but boundary disputes were common. Warfare, in general, was not uncommon among Inuit groups with sufficient population density.

After roughly 1350, the climate grew colder during the Little Ice Age and the Inuit were forced to abandon hunting and whaling sites in the high Arctic. Bowhead whaling disappeared in Canada and Greenland (but continued in Alaska) and the Inuit had to subsist on a much poorer diet. Without whales, they lost access to essential raw materials for tools and architecture that were derived from whaling.

The changing climate forced the Inuit to look south, pressuring them into the marginal niches along the edges of the tree line that Native American Indians had not occupied, or where they were weak enough to coexist with. There is evidence that they were still moving into new territory in southern Labrador in the seventeenth century, when they first began to interact with colonial North American civilization.

Since the arrival of Europeans

The first contact with Europeans came from the Vikings, who settled Greenland and explored the eastern Canadian coast. Norse literature speaks of skrælingar, most likely an undifferentiated label for all the native peoples of the Americas the Norse contacted, Tuniit, Inuit, and Beothuks alike. The lives of the Inuit were largely unaffected by the arrival of visiting Norsemen except for mutual trade. After the disappearance of the Norse colonies in Greenland, the Inuit had no contact with Europeans for at least a century.

Martin Frobisher's 1576 search for the Northwest Passage was the first well-documented post-Columbian contact between Europeans and Inuit. Frobisher's expedition landed on Baffin Island, not far from the town now called Iqaluit, but long known as Frobisher Bay. This first contact went poorly. Martin Frobisher, attempting to find the Northwest Passage, encountered Inuit on Resolution Island. Several homesick sailors, tired of their adventure, attempted to leave in a small vessel and vanished. Frobisher brought an unwilling Inuk to England, doubtless the first Inuk ever to visit Europe. The Inuit oral tradition, in contrast, recounts the natives helping Frobisher's crewmen, whom they believed had been abandoned.

By the mid-sixteenth century, Basque fishermen were already working the Labrador coast and had established whaling stations on land, such as has been excavated at Red Bay. The Inuit appear not to have interfered with their operations, but they raided the stations in winter for tools, and particularly worked iron, which they adapted to native needs.

In the final years of the eighteenth century, the Moravian Church began missionary activities in Labrador, supported by the British who were tired of the raids on their whaling stations. The Moravian missionaries could easily provide the Inuit with the iron and basic materials they had been stealing from whaling outposts, materials whose real cost to Europeans was almost nothing, but whose value to the Inuit was enormous and from then on contacts in Labrador were more peaceful.

Hudson's Bay Company Ships bartering with Inuit off the Upper Savage Islands, Hudson Strait, 1819

The Hudson's Bay Company opened trading posts such as Great Whale River (1820), today the site of the twin villages of Whapmagoostui and Kuujjuarapik, where whale products of the commercial whale hunt were processed and furs traded. The British Naval Expedition (1821-1823) led by Admiral William Edward Parry, which twice over wintered in Foxe Basin, provided the first informed, sympathetic, and well-documented account of the economic, social, and religious life of the Inuit. Parry stayed in what is now Igloolik over the second winter. Parry's writings with pen and ink illustrations of Inuit everyday life (1824) and those of Lyon (1824) were widely read. A few traders and missionaries circulated among the more accessible bands, and after 1904 they were accompanied by a handful of policemen. Unlike most Aboriginal peoples in Canada, however, the lands occupied by the Inuit were of little interest to European settlers—the homeland of the Inuit was a hostile hinterland.

The European arrival eventually damaged the Inuit way of life, causing mass death through new diseases introduced by whalers and explorers, as well as social disruptions. During the nineteenth century, the Western Arctic suffered a population decline of close to 90 percent of their population resulting from foreign diseases including tuberculosis, measles, influenza, and smallpox. The Inuit believed that the cause of the disease came from a spiritual origin, and cures were said to be possible through confession.

In the early years of the twentieth century, Canada, with its more hospitable lands largely settled, began to take a greater interest in its more peripheral territories, especially the fur and mineral rich hinterlands. By the late 1920s, there were no longer any Inuit who had not been contacted by traders, missionaries or government agents. In 1939, the Supreme Court of Canada found in Re Eskimos that the Inuit should be considered Indians and were thus under the jurisdiction of the federal government.

Native customs were worn down by the actions of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who enforced Canadian criminal law on Inuit who often could not understand what they had done wrong, and by missionaries who preached a moral code very different from the one they were used to.

World War II and the Cold War made Arctic Canada strategically important for the first time and, thanks to the development of modern aircraft, accessible year-round. The construction of air bases and the Distant Early Warning Line in the 1940s and 1950s brought more intensive contacts with European society, particularly in the form of public education, which instilled and enforced foreign values disdainful of the traditional structure of Inuit society.

In the 1950s a process of relocation was undertaken by the Government of Canada for several reasons including protection of Canada's sovereignty in the Arctic, lack of food in the area currently occupied, and an attempt to solve the "Eskimo problem," meaning the assimilation and end of the Inuit culture. One of the more notable relocations was undertaken in 1953, when 17 families were moved from Port Harrison (now Inukjuak, Quebec) to Resolute and Grise Fiord. They were dropped off in early September when winter had already arrived. The land they were sent to was very different from that in the Inukjuak area, being more barren, longer winters, and polar night. They were told by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police they would be able to return within two years if conditions were not right. However, two years later more families were relocated to the High Arctic and it was thirty years before they were able to return to Inukjuak.

Nunavut and its capital, Iqaluit (formerly "Frobisher Bay") on Baffin Island. Image courtesy of www.theodora.com/maps, used with permission.

By 1953, Canada's prime minister Louis St. Laurent publicly admitted, "Apparently we have administered the vast territories of the north in an almost continuing absence of mind." The government began to establish about 40 permanent administrative centers to provide education, health, and economic development services for Inuit. Inuit from hundreds of smaller camps scattered across the north, began to congregate in these hamlets. Regular visits from doctors and access to modern medical care raised the birth rate enormously. Before long, the Inuit population was beyond what traditional hunting and fishing could support. By the mid-1960s, encouraged first by missionaries, then by the prospect of paid jobs and government services, and finally forced by hunger and required by police, all Canadian Inuit lived year-round in permanent settlements. The nomadic migrations that were the central feature of Arctic life had for the most part disappeared.

In the 1960s, the Canadian government funded the establishment of secular, government-operated high schools in the Northwest Territories (including what is now Nunavut) and Inuit areas in Quebec and Labrador along with the residential school system. The Inuit population was not large enough to support a full high school in every community, so this meant only a few schools were built, and students from across the territories were boarded there. The Inuit began to emerge as a political force in the late 1960s and early 1970s, shortly after the first graduates returned home.

They formed new politically active associations in the early 1970s, starting with the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami in 1971, which began to make land claims. In 1982, the Tunngavik Federation of Nunavut (TFN) was incorporated, in order to take over negotiations for land claims on behalf of the Northwest Territories Inuit. The TFN worked for ten years and, in September 1992, came to a final agreement with the government of Canada. This agreement called for the separation of the Northwest Territories and the establishment of a territory, the future Nunavut, whose aboriginal population would be predominately Inuit, in the Northern and Eastern part. Nunavut was formally established as a Canadian territory on April 1, 1999.

When Nunavut split off from the Northwest Territories, western Canadian Inuit, known as the Inuvialuit remained. They had received a comprehensive land claims settlement in 1984, with the signing of the Inuvialuit Final Agreement. They live primarily in the Mackenzie River delta, on Banks Island, and in parts of Victoria Island in the Northwest Territories.

With the establishment of part of Labrador as Nunatsiavut ("Our Beautiful Land") in 2005, all the traditional Inuit lands in Canada are now covered by some sort of land claims agreement providing for regional autonomy.

Culture

Inuit basket made by Kinguktuk (1871-1941) of Barrow, Alaska. Ivory handle. Displayed at Museum of Man, San Diego, California.

Traditional Inuit ulu (women's knife) of the type used in the Arctic of Canada. The handle is made from caribou antler and the metal in the ulu is steel.

Diet

Traditionally, the Inuit have been hunters and fishers. They hunted, and still hunt, whales, walruses, caribou, seals, polar bears, muskoxen, birds, and at times other less commonly eaten animals such as foxes. While it is not possible to cultivate plants for food in the Arctic, gathering those that are naturally available has always been typical. Grasses, tubers, roots, stems, berries, and seaweed were collected and preserved depending on the season and the location. The typical Inuit diet is high in protein and very high in fat: in their traditional diet, Inuit consumed an average of 75 percent of their daily energy intake from fat.

Anthropologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson lived with a group of Inuit, observing that the Inuit's extremely low-carbohydrate diet had no adverse effects on Stefansson's health, nor that of the Inuit. Stefansson also observed that the Inuit were able to obtain the necessary vitamins from their traditional winter diet, which did not contain plant matter. In particular, he found that adequate vitamin C could be obtained from raw meat such as Ringed Seal liver and whale skin. While there was considerable skepticism when he reported these findings, they have been borne out in other studies.

Transportation

Inuit man in a kayak, c. 1929 (photo by Edward S. Curtis)

The Inuit hunted sea animals from single-passenger, covered seal-skin boats called qajaq which were extraordinarily buoyant, and could easily be righted by a seated person, even if completely overturned. Because of this property, the Inuit design was copied, along with the Inuit word, by Europeans. They continue to be made and used around the world, kayak. Inuit also made umiak, larger, open boats, 6 m (20 ft) - 12 m (39 ft) long, made of wood frames covered with animal skins for transporting people, goods, and dogs. They were . They also had a flat bottom so that it could come close to shore. In the winter, Inuit would also hunt sea mammals by patiently watching an aglu (breathing hole) in the ice and waiting for the air-breathing seals to use them, a technique also used by the polar bear.

Traditional qamutik,
Cape Dorset, 1999

On land, the Inuit used dog sleds (qamutik) for transportation. The husky dog breed comes from Inuit breeding of dogs. A team of dogs in either a tandem/side-by-side or fan formation would pull a sled made of wood, animal bones, or the baleen from a whale's mouth, over the snow and ice. They used stars to navigate at sea and landmarks to navigate on land and possessed a comprehensive native system of toponymy. Where natural landmarks were insufficient, the Inuit would erect an inukshuk to compensate.

Industry, art, and clothing

Two young Inuit mothers wearing amautit (women parkas with hood) (Nunavut Territory, Canada)

Inuit industry relied almost exclusively on animal hides, driftwood, and bones, although some tools were also made out of worked stones, particularly the readily-worked soapstone. Walrus ivory was a particularly essential material, used to make knives.

Art is a major part of Inuit history. Small sculptures of animals and human figures were made out of ivory and bone usually depicting everyday activities such as hunting and whaling. Beautiful carvings, decorated with fur and feathers, were often used in religious rituals. At ceremonial dances, masks representing the spirits of animals and the forces of nature were worn; face masks by the men, and finger masks by the women.

Inuit made clothes and footwear from animal skins, sewn together using needles made from animal bones and threads made from other animal products such as sinew. The anorak (parka) is in essence made in a similar fashion by Arctic peoples from Europe through Asia and the Americas, including by the Inuit. In some groups of Inuit the hoods of women's parkas (amauti, plural amautiit) were traditionally made extra large, to protect the baby from the harsh wind when snuggled against the mother's back. Styles vary from region to region, from shape of the hood to length of the tails. Boots (kamik or mukluk) could be made of caribou or sealskin, and designs varied for men and women.

Housing

Big igloo in front of Kinngait in southern region of Baffin Island.

An igloo (Inuit language: iglu, plural: iglooit or igluit), translated sometimes as "snowhouse," is a shelter constructed from blocks of snow, generally in the form of a dome. Although iglooit are usually associated with all Inuit, they were predominantly constructed by people of Canada's Central Arctic and Greenland's Thule area.

There are three types of igloo, all of different sizes and all are used for different purposes. Although the most recognizable type of dwelling of the Inuit, the igloo was not the only type; nor was it used at all times. During the few months of the year when temperatures were above freezing, they lived in tents made of animal skins and bones.

The smallest of all iglooit was constructed as a temporary shelter. Hunters while out on the land or sea ice camped in one of these iglooit for one or two nights. Next in size was the semi-permanent, intermediate sized family dwelling. This usually was a single room dwelling that housed one or two families. Often there were several of these in a small area, which formed an "Inuit village."

Inside an igloo

The largest of the iglooit were normally built in groups of two. One of the buildings was a temporary building constructed for special occasions; the other was built near by for living. This was constructed either by enlarging a smaller igloo or building from scratch. These could have up to five rooms and housed up to 20 people. A large igloo may have been constructed from several smaller iglooit attached by their tunnels giving a common access to the outside. These were used to hold community feasts and traditional dances.

Other Inuit people tended to use snow to insulate their houses which consisted of whalebone and hides. The use of snow is due to the fact that snow is an insulator (due to its low density). On the outside, temperatures may be as low as -45 °C (-49 °F), but on the inside the temperature may range from -7 °C (19 °F) to 16 °C (61 °F) when warmed by body heat alone

Gender roles, marriage, and community

Inuit woman, circa 1907

The division of labor in traditional Inuit society had a strong gender component, but it was not absolute. The men were traditionally hunters and fishermen. The women took care of the children, cleaned huts, sewed, processed food, and cooked. However, there are numerous examples of women who hunted out of necessity or as a personal choice. At the same time, men who could be away from camp for several days, would be expected to know how to sew and cook.

The marital customs among the Inuit were not strictly monogamous: many Inuit relationships were implicitly or explicitly sexually open marriages; polygamy, divorce, and remarriage were fairly common. Among some Inuit groups divorce required the approval of the community, if there were children, and particularly the agreement of the elders. Marriages were often arranged, sometimes in infancy, and occasionally forced on the couple by the community. Marriage was common for men when they became productive hunters, and for women at puberty.

The extended family was the social unit. Family structure was flexible: a household might consist of a man and his wife or wives and children; it might include his parents or his wife's parents as well as adopted children; or it might be a larger formation of several siblings with their parents, wives and children; or even more than one family sharing dwellings and resources. Every household had its head, an elder or a particularly respected man.

There was also a larger notion of community, generally several families who shared a place where they wintered. Goods were shared within a household, and also to a significant extent within a whole community.

A pervasive European myth about Inuit was that they killed elderly and unproductive people; although this is not generally true. In a culture with an oral tradition, elders are the keepers of communal knowledge, effectively the community library.

Given the importance that Eskimos attached to the aged, it is surprising that so many Westerners believe that they systematically eliminated elderly people as soon as they became incapable of performing the duties related to hunting or sewing.

It had been presumed by anthropologists that Inuit cultures routinely killed children born with physical defects. However, excavations at the Ukkuqsi archaeological site revealed several frozen bodies (now known as the "frozen family"). Autopsies were performed, and they were interred as the first burials in the Imaiqsaun Cemetery south of Barrow. Years later another body washed out of the bluff—that of a female child, approximately nine years old, who had clearly been born with a congenital birth defect. This child had never been able to walk, but must have been cared for by family throughout her life. That body, dated at about 1200 C.E., suggests that Inuit culture has long valued children, including those with birth defects.

Traditional law and governance

The Inuit were hunter-gatherers. They had very sophisticated concepts of private property and of land ownership that, as with their form of governance, was so drastically different than the Western concepts understood by European observers that the existence of such went entirely undocumented until well into the twentieth century.

Virtually all Inuit cultures have oral traditions of raids by other indigenous peoples such as the Bloody Falls Massacre, even including fellow Inuit, and of taking vengeance on them in return. Western observers often regarded these tales as generally not entirely accurate historical accounts, but more as self-serving myths. However, evidence shows that Inuit cultures had very accurate methods of teaching historical accounts to each new generation. The historic accounts make clear that there was a history of hostile contact within the Inuit cultures and with other cultures.

Justice with Inuit cultures was moderated by their form of governance that gave significant power to the elders in such decisions. Their judgement could be harsh and often included capital punishment for serious crimes against the community or even against an individual. It is also noted that during raids the Inuit, like their non-Inuit neighbors, tended to be merciless.

Inuit traditional laws are anthropologically different to Western law concepts. Customary law was thought nonexistent in Inuit society before the introduction of the Canadian legal system. Indeed, prior to about 1970 Western observers were not aware that any form of governance existed among any Inuit people. Beside their conceptual differences, Inuit laws were not written, but were kept in oral tradition:

We are told today that Inuit never had laws or maligait. Why? They say because they are not written on paper. When I think of paper, I think you can tear it up, and the laws are gone. The laws of the Inuit are not on paper.

Three major concepts exist in Inuit traditional culture:

• maligait refers to what has to be followed
• piqujait refers to what has to be done
• tirigusuusiit refers to what has to be not done.

If someone's action went against the tirigusuusiit, maligait, or piqujait, the angakkuq (shaman) might have to intervene, lest the consequences be dire to the individual or the community.

Traditional Beliefs

Some Inuit believed that the spirits of their ancestors could be seen in the northern lights

Inuit religion was closely tied to a system of rituals that were integrated into the daily life of the people. These rituals were simple but held to be necessary. The harshness and randomness of life in the Arctic ensured that Inuit lived with concern for the uncontrollable, where a streak of bad luck could destroy an entire community. By believing that all things, including animals, have souls like those of humans, any hunt that failed to show appropriate respect and customary supplication would only give the liberated spirits cause to avenge themselves. To offend a spirit was to risk its interference with an already marginal existence.

Mythology

While the dominant religious system of the Inuit today is Christianity, many Inuit still hold to at least some elements of their traditional religious beliefs. Some see the Inuit as having adapted traditional beliefs to a greater or lesser degree to Christianity, while others would argue that it is rather the reverse that it true: The Inuit have adapted Christianity to their worldview.

Inuit mythology has many similarities to the religions of other polar regions. It is a narrative about the world and the place of people in it. In the words of Inuit writer Rachel Attituq Qitsualik:

The Inuit cosmos is ruled by no one. There are no divine mother and father figures. There are no wind gods and solar creators. There are no eternal punishments in the hereafter, as there are no punishments for children or adults in the here and now.

Indeed, the traditional stories, rituals and taboos of the Inuit are so tied into the fearful and precautionary culture required by their harsh environment that it raises the question as to whether they qualify as beliefs at all, much less religion. Knud Rasmussen asked his guide and friend Aua, an angakkuq (shaman), about Inuit religious beliefs among the Iglulingmiut (people of Igloolik) and was told: "We don't believe. We fear." Living in a varied and irregular world, the Inuit traditionally did not worship anything, but they feared much.

Anirniit

The Inuit believed that all things had a form of spirit or soul (in Inuktitut: anirniq - "breath"; plural anirniit), just like humans. These spirits were held to persist after death. The belief in the pervasiveness of spirits has consequences. According to a customary Inuit saying The great peril of our existence lies in the fact that our diet consists entirely of souls. By believing that all things, including animals, have souls like those of humans, killing an animal is little different from killing a person. Once the anirniq of the dead, animal or human, is liberated, it is free to take revenge. The spirit of the dead can only be placated by obedience to custom, avoiding taboos, and performing the right rituals.

For the Inuit, to offend an anirniq was to risk extinction. The principal role of the angakkuq in Inuit society was to advise and remind people of the rituals and taboos they needed to obey to placate the spirits, since he was held to be able to see and contact them.

The anirniit were seen to be a part of the sila - the sky or air around them - and were merely borrowed from it. Although each person's anirniq was individual, shaped by the life and body it inhabited, at the same time it was part of a larger whole. This enabled Inuit to borrow the powers or characteristics of an anirniq by taking its name. Furthermore, the spirits of a single class of thing - be it sea mammals, polar bears, or plants - were in some sense held to be the same, and could be invoked through a sort of keeper or master who was connected in some fashion with that class of thing. In some cases, it is the anirniq of a human or animal who became a figure of respect or influence over animals or things through some action, recounted in a traditional tale. In other cases, it is a tuurngaq, as described below.

Since the arrival of Christianity among the Inuit, anirniq has become the accepted word for a soul in the Christian sense. This is the root word for a number of other Christian terms: anirnisiaq means angel and God is rendered as anirnialuk - the great spirit.

Tuurngait

Some spirits were by nature unconnected to physical bodies. These figures were called tuurngait (singular tuurngaq) and were regarded as evil and monstrous, responsible for bad hunts and broken tools. They could also possess humans, as recounted in the story of Atanarjuat. The angakkuq could fight or exorcise them, or they could be held at bay by rituals.

Tuurngaq has, with Christianization, taken on the additional meaning of demon in the Christian belief system.

Other deities

A number of other Inuit myth figures were thought to hold power over some specific part of the Inuit world. These include such deities as Sedna (or Sanna), the master of sea animals, Nanook (or Nanuk), the master of polar bears, and Tekkeitsertok (or Tuktusiaqtuq), the master of caribou.

Shamanism

The Inuit practiced a form of shamanism based on animist principles. Among the Canadian Inuit, the shaman was known as an Angakkuq (also angakuq; plural angakuit). The Angakkuq of a community of Inuit was not the leader, but rather a sort of healer and psychotherapist, who tended wounds and offered advice, as well as invoking the spirits to assist people in their lives, or as often as not fighting them off. His or her role was to see, interpret and exhort the subtle and unseen. Angakkuq were not trained; they were held to be born with the ability and to show it as they matured. Rhythmic drums, chants and dances were often used in the performance of the duties of the angakkuq. Illumination (Inuktitut: qaumaniq) was often used by the angakkuq to describe a spiritual aura, the removal of which could, in their opinion, result in death.

Caribou Inuit shamans performed fortune-telling through qilaneq, a technique of asking a qila (spirit). The shaman placed his glove on the ground, and raised his staff and belt over it. The qila then entered the glove and drew the staff to itself. Qilaneq was practiced among several other Eskimo groups, where it was used to receive "yes" or "no" answers to questions.

According to Aua (an informant and friend of the anthropologist Rasmussen), one of the shaman's tasks among the Iglulik Inuit is to help the community in times when marine animals, which are kept by the Sea Woman (Takanaluk-arnaluk) in a pit in her house, are scarce. If taboo breaches that displease her lead to the failure of sea hunts, the shaman must visit her. Several barriers must be surmounted (such as a wall or a dog) and in some instances even the Sea Woman herself must be fought. If the shaman succeeds in appeasing her the animals will be released as normal.

Shamans also were reported to have the ability to see themselves as skeletons, naming each part using the specific shaman language.

The function of the angakkuq has largely disappeared in Christianized Inuit society.

Amulets

Amulets were part of the traditional daily life of the Inuit. They were worn for protection, to bring success in hunting, and generally to invoke the support of guardian spirits:

While the human soul was considered to be powerful and the main source of all women's and men's strength, inevitably difficulties arose that could not be resolved by mortals alone. Each Inuk therefore had a helping spirit or ‘familiar,' who aided the hunt and other ventures and protected the person from sickness and accidents. The familiar could be embodied in items worn on or in clothing, such as a carving, animal tooth, claw, or piece of skin, or an unusual objet trouvé.

In particular, for the Netsilik Inuit (Netsilingmiut - People of the Seal) who live in a region with an extremely long winter and stormy conditions in the spring where starvation was a common danger, the general hardship of life resulted in the extensive use of such measures; even dogs could have amulets. People might have large numbers of amulets, and sometimes took numerous names from their ancestors to invoke protection.

Contemporary Inuit

Inuit hunters’ camp at the floe edge (Nunavut Territory, Canada)

Inuit women at Nain, Newfoundland and Labrador

Today, Inuit work in all sectors of the economy, including mining, oil, and gas, construction, government, and administrative services. Many Inuit still supplement their income through hunting. Tourism is a growing industry in the Inuit economy. Inuit guides take tourists on dog sled and hunting expeditions, and work with outfitting organizations. About 30 percent of Inuit derive part-time income from their sculpture, carving and print making.

The settlement of land claims in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Northern Quebec has given the Inuit money and a framework to develop and expand economic development activities. New emerging businesses include real estate, tourism, airlines, and offshore fisheries.

Although Inuit life has changed significantly over the past century, many traditions continue. Traditional storytelling, mythology, and dancing remain important parts of the culture. Family and community are very important. The Inuktitut language is still spoken in many areas of the Arctic and is common on radio and in television programming.

An important biennial event, the Arctic Winter Games, is held in communities across the northern regions of the world, featuring traditional Inuit and northern sports as part of the events. A cultural event is also held. The games were first held in 1970, and while rotated usually among Alaska, Yukon and the Northwest Territories, they have also been held in Schefferville, Quebec in 1976, in Slave Lake, Alberta, and a joint Iqaluit, Nunavut-Nuuk, Greenland staging in 2002.

Visual and performing arts are strong. In 2002 the first feature film in Inuktitut, Atanarjuat, was released worldwide to great critical and popular acclaim. It was directed by Zacharias Kunuk, and written, filmed, produced, directed, and acted almost entirely by Inuit of Igloolik. In 2006, Cape Dorset was hailed as Canada's most artistic city, with 23 percent of the labor force employed in the arts. Inuit art such as soapstone carvings is one of Nunavut's most important industries.

Younger generations of Inuit face a conflict between their traditional heritage and the modern society which their cultures have been forced to assimilate into in order to maintain a livelihood. Such challenges to their identity has led to disturbingly high numbers of suicides among Inuit teenagers.

Inuit communities in Canada continue to suffer under unemployment, overcrowded housing, substance abuse, crime, violence, and suicide. The problems Inuit face in the twenty-first century should not be underestimated. However, many Inuit are upbeat about the future. Inuit arts, carving, print making, textiles, and throat singing, are very popular, not only in Canada but globally, and Inuit artists are widely known. Indeed, Canada has adopted some of the Inuit culture as a sort of national identity, using Inuit symbols like the inukshuk in unlikely places, such as its use as a symbol in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Respected art galleries display Inuit art, the largest collection of which is at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. The Inuit languages, Inuktitut, appears to have a fairly secure future in Quebec and Nunavut. Inuit culture is alive and vibrant today despite the negative impact of their twentieth century history.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Asatchaq, and Tom Lowenstein. The Things That Were Said of Them Shaman Stories and Oral Histories of the Tikiġaq People. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992. ISBN 0520065697
• Bennett, John and Susan Rowley. Uqalurait: An Oral History of Nunavut. McGill-Queen's University Press, 2004. ISBN 978-0773523401
• Burch, Ernest S. The Eskimos. University of Oklahoma Press, 1988. ISBN 0806121262
• Fienup-Riordan, Ann. Boundaries and Passages Rule and Ritual in Yup'ik Eskimo Oral Tradition. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994. ISBN 0806126043
• Hess, Bill. Gift of the Whale: The Inupiat Bowhead Hunt, A Sacred Tradition. Sasquatch Books, 2003. ISBN 1570613826
• Himmelheber, Hans, and Ann Fienup-Riordan. Where the Echo Began And Other Oral Traditions from Southwestern Alaska. Fairbanks, AK: University of Alaska Press, 2000. ISBN 1889963038
• Houston, James A. James Houston's Treasury of Inuit Legends. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2006. ISBN 0152059245
• Issenman, Betty Kobayashi. Sinews of Survival: The Living Legacy of Inuit Clothing. University of British Columbia Press, 1997. ISBN 077480596X
• Kleivan, Inge, and Birgitte Sonne. Eskimos, Greenland and Canada (Iconography of Religions Section 8 - Arctic Peoples). Leiden: The Netherlands:Brill Academic Publishers, 1997. ISBN 9004071601
• Kuhnlein, Harriet. Traditional Plant Foods of Canadian Indigenous Peoples: Nutrition, Botany and Use. London: Taylor and Francis, 1991. ISBN 978-2881244650
• Laugrand, Frédéric, Jarich Oosten, and François Trudel. Representing Tuurngait: Memory and History in Nunavut. Volume 1. Nunavut Arctic College, Iqaluit, Northwest Territories, CA: 2000.
• MacDonald, John. The Arctic Sky Inuit Astronomy, Star Lore, and Legend. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum/Nunavut Research Institute, 1998. ISBN 0888544278
• McGrath, Melanie. The Long Exile: A Tale of Inuit Betrayal and Survival in the High Arctic. Knopf, 2007. ISBN 978-1400040476
• Merkur, Daniel. Becoming Half Hidden: Shamanism and Initiation among the Inuit. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1985. ISBN 9122007520
• Millman, Lawrence, and Timothy White. A Kayak Full of Ghosts: Eskimo Tales. Santa Barbara, CA: Capra Press, 1987. ISBN 0884962679
• Morrison, David A., and Georges-Hebert Germain. Inuit: Glimpses of an Arctic Past. Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1995. ISBN 0660140381
• Oswalt, Wendell H. Eskimos and Explorers, 2nd ed. Omaha, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. ISBN 0803286139
• Trigger, Bruce G., and Wilcomb E. Washburn, eds. The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas 2 Part Set: Volume 1, North America. Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 0521344409
• Waldman, Carl. Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes. New York, NY: Checkmark Books, 2006. ISBN 9780816062744

External links

All links retrieved March 5, 2018.

• Aboriginal Perspectives View National Film Board of Canada films on Canada's Aboriginal Peoples.
• Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, Canada's National Inuit Organization
• Alaskool: Alaska Native Curriculum and Teacher Development Project
• The Inuit - Hunters of the Arctic
• Inuit Culture, Traditions, and History
• Inuit Countries and their Cultures
• Inuit Crystalinks

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