inuit history

Culture

The name Inuit means “the people”. They are the descendants of what anthropologists call the Thule culture, a nomadic people who emerged from western Alaska and spread eastwards across the Arctic, displacing the related Dorset culture. Today there are around 160,000 Inuit people living in the Arctic regions of Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Chukotka, Russia. In Canada there are eight main Inuit tribal groups, the Labrador, Ungava, Baffin Island, Iglulik, Caribou, Netsilik, Copper and Western Arctic Inuit or the Inuvialuit. In Canada the Inuit speak English but also their native language which is called Inuktitut. In Greenland the official Inuit language is called Kalaallisut.

The Inuit culture was essentially based on an egalitarian, hunter-gatherer society. They lived at the very edge of human settlement, a place where crops cannot be grown and all sustenance and means of maintaining life itself must come from one’s own cunning, skill and ingenuity

The land was not owned and was seen to belong to all people and the animals. It was, and still is, however, highly respected. At the heart of the society was the family. Men and women traditionally functioned with very specific roles. The man was the hunter; he made the sledge, tools and managed the dogs. The women prepared food, tended the camp, prepared skins and made clothes. The relationship was very interdependent and in early times it would be very unusual for a man or woman to live alone – indeed, so intrinsically are they linked that names have no gender and could be given to a boy or girl. Southern infl

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