Inuit history

Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, and Alaska. Inuit languages are part of the Eskimo–Aleut languages, also known as Inuit-Yupik-Unangan, and also as Eskaleut. Inuit Sign Language is a critically endangered language isolate used in Nunavut.

Inuit live throughout most of Northern Canada in the territory of Nunavut, Nunavik in the northern third of Quebec, Nunatsiavut and NunatuKavut in Labrador, and in various parts of the Northwest Territories, particularly around the Arctic Ocean, in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region. With the exception of NunatuKavut, these areas are known, primarily by Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, as Inuit Nunangat. In Canada, sections 25 and 35 of the Constitution Act of 1982 classify Inuit as a distinctive group of Aboriginal Canadians who are not included under either the First Nations or the Métis.

Greenlandic Inuit are descendants of Thule migrations from Canada by 1100 CE. Although Greenland withdrew from the European Communities in 1985, Inuit of Greenland are Danish citizens and, as such, remain citizens of the European Union. In the United States, the Alaskan Iñupiat are traditionally located in the Northwest Arctic Borough, on the Alaska North Slope, and on Little Diomede Island.

Many individuals who would have historically been referred to as "Eskimo" find that term offensive, and/or forced upon them in a colonial way; "Inuit" is now a common autonym for a large sub-group of these people. The word "Inuit" (varying forms Iñupiat, Inuvialuit, Inughuit, etc.), however, is an ancient self-referential to a group of peoples which includes at most the Iñupiat of northern Alaska, the four broad groups of Inuit in Canada, and the Greenlandic Inuit. This usage has long been employed to the exclusion of other, closely related groups (e.g. Yupik, Aleut). in Therefore, the Aleut (Unangan) and Yupik peoples (Alutiiq/Sugpiaq, Central Yup'ik, Siberian Yupik), who live in Alaska and Siberia, at least at an individual and local level, generally do not self-identify as "Inuit".

History

Pre-contact history

Inuit are the descendants of what anthropologists call the Thule people, who emerged from western Alaska around 1000 CE. They had split from the related Aleut group about 4000 years ago and from northeastern Siberian migrants. They spread eastward across the Arctic. They displaced the related Dorset culture, called the in Inuktitut, which was the last major Paleo-Eskimo culture.

Inuit legends speak of the as "giants", people who were taller and stronger than Inuit. Less frequently, the legends refer to the Dorset as "dwarfs". Researchers believe that Inuit society had advantages by having adapted to using dogs as transport animals, and developing larger weapons and other technologies superior to those of the Dorset culture. By 1100 CE, Inuit migrants had reached west Greenland, where they settled. During the 12th century, they also settled in East Greenland.

Faced with population pressures from the Thule and other surrounding groups, such as the Algonquian and Siouan-speaking peoples to the south, the gradually receded. The were thought to have become completely extinct as a people by about 1400 or 1500. But, in the mid-1950s, researcher Henry B. Collins determined that, based on the ruins found at Native Point, the Sadlermiut were likely the last remnants of the Dorset culture, or . The Sadlermiut population survived up until winter 1902–1903, when exposure to new infectious diseases brought by contact with Europeans led to their extinction as a people.

In the early 21st century, mitochondrial DNA research has supported the theory of continuity between the and the Sadlermiut peoples. It also provided evidence that a population displacement did not occur within the Aleutian Islands between the Dorset and Thule transition. In contrast to other populations, the Aleut and Sadlermiut benefited from both geographical isolation and their ability to adopt certain Thule technologies.

In Canada and Greenland, Inuit circulated almost exclusively north of the " arctic tree line", the effective southern border of Inuit society. The most southern "officially recognized" Inuit community in the world is Rigolet in Nunatsiavut.

South of Nunatsiavut, the descendants of the southern Labrador Inuit in NunatuKavut continued their traditional transhumant semi-nomadic way of life until the mid-1900s. The Nunatukavummuit people usually moved among islands and bays on a seasonal basis. They did not establish stationary communities. In other areas south of the tree line, non-Inuit indigenous cultures were well established. The culture and technology of Inuit society that served so well in the Arctic were not suited to subarctic regions, so they did not displace their southern neighbours.

Inuit had trade relations with more southern cultures; boundary disputes were common and gave rise to aggressive actions. Warfare was not uncommon among those Inuit groups with sufficient population density. Inuit such as the Nunamiut (''Uummarmiut''), who inhabited the Mackenzie River delta area, often engaged in warfare. The more sparsely settled Inuit in the Central Arctic, however, did so less often.

Their first European contact was with the Vikings who had settled in Greenland centuries prior. The sagas recorded meeting ', probably an undifferentiated label for all the indigenous peoples whom the Norse encountered, whether , Inuit, or Beothuk.

After about 1350, the climate grew colder during the period known as the Little Ice Age. During this period, Alaskan natives were able to continue their whaling activities. But, in the high Arctic, Inuit were forced to abandon their hunting and whaling sites as bowhead whales disappeared from Canada and Greenland. These Inuit had to subsist on a much poorer diet, and lost access to the essential raw materials for their tools and architecture which they had previously derived from whaling.

The changing climate forced Inuit to work their way south, pushing them into marginal niches along the edges of the tree line. These were areas First Nations had not occupied or where they were weak enough for Inuit to live near them. Researchers have difficulty defining when Inuit stopped this territorial expansion. There is evidence that the Inuit were still moving into new territory in southern Labrador when they first began to interact with European colonists in the 17th century.

Post-contact history

Canada

=Early contact with Europeans

=
The lives of Paleo-Eskimos of the far north were largely unaffected by the arrival of visiting Norsemen except for mutual trade. The Labrador Inuit have had the longest continuous contact with Europeans. After the disappearance of the Norse colonies in Greenland, Inuit had no contact with Europeans for at least a century. By the mid-16th century, Basque whalers and fishermen were already working the Labrador coast and had established whaling stations on land, such as the one that has been excavated at Red Bay, Labrador. Inuit do not appear to have interfered with their operations, but raided the stations in winter, taking tools and items made of worked iron, which they adapted to their own needs.

Martin Frobisher's 1576 search for the Northwest Passage was the first well-documented contact between Europeans and Inuit. Frobisher's expedition landed in Frobisher Bay, Baffin Island, not far from the settlement now called Iqaluit. Frobisher encountered Inuit on Resolution Island where five sailors left the ship, under orders from Frobisher, with instructions to stay clear of the Inuit. They became part of Inuit mythology. Inuit oral tradition tells that the men lived among them for a few years of their own free will until they died attempting to leave Baffin Island in a self-made boat and vanished. Frobisher, in an attempt to find the men, captured three Inuit and brought them back to England. They were possibly the first Inuit ever to visit Europe.

The semi-nomadic Inuit were fishermen and hunters harvesting lakes, seas, ice platforms and tundra. While there are some allegations that Inuit were hostile to early French and English explorers, fishermen and whalers, more recent research suggests that the early relations with whaling stations along the Labrador coast and later James Bay were based on a mutual interest in trade. In the final years of the 18th 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 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 Inuit was enormous. From then on, contacts between the national groups in Labrador were far more peaceful.

The exchanges that accompanied the arrival and colonization by the Europeans greatly damaged Inuit way of life. Mass death was caused by the new infectious diseases carried by whalers and explorers, to which the Indigenous peoples had no acquired immunity. The high mortality rate contributed to the enormous social disruptions caused by the distorting effect of Europeans' material wealth and introduction of different materials. Nonetheless, Inuit society in the higher latitudes largely remained in isolation during the 19th century.

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 expedition of 1821–23 to the Northwest Passage led by Commander William Edward Parry twice over-wintered in Foxe Basin. It provided the first informed, sympathetic and well-documented account of the economic, social and religious life of Inuit. Parry stayed in what is now Igloolik over the second winter. Parry's writings, with pen and ink illustrations of Inuit everyday life, and those of George Francis Lyon were widely read after they were both published in 1824. Captain George Comer's Inuk wife Shoofly, known for her sewing skills and elegant attire, was influential in convincing him to acquire more sewing accessories and beads for trade with Inuit.

=Early 20th century

=
During the early 20th century a few traders and missionaries circulated among the more accessible bands. After 1904, they were accompanied by a handful of North-West Mounted Police (NWMP). Unlike most Aboriginal peoples in Canada, however, Inuit did not occupy lands that were coveted by European settlers. Used to more temperate climates and conditions, most Europeans considered the homeland of Inuit to be a hostile hinterland. Southerners enjoyed lucrative careers as bureaucrats and service providers to the peoples of the North, but very few ever chose to visit there.

Once its more hospitable lands were largely settled, the government of Canada and entrepreneurs 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 a decision known as ''Re Eskimos'', that 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 RCMP, who enforced Canadian criminal law on Inuit. People such as Kikkik often did not understand the rules of the alien society with which they had to interact. In addition, the generally Protestant missionaries of the British preached a moral code very different from the one Inuit had as part of their tradition. Many of Inuit were systematically converted to Christianity in the 19th and 20th centuries, through rituals such as the ''Siqqitiq''.

=The Second World War to the 1960s

=
World War II and the Cold War made Arctic Canada strategically important to the great powers for the first time. Thanks to the development of modern long-distance aircraft, these areas became 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 for children. The traditionalists complained that Canadian education promoted foreign values that were disdainful of the traditional structure and culture of Inuit society.

In the 1950s, the Government of Canada undertook what was called the High Arctic relocation for several reasons. These were to include protecting Canada's sovereignty in the Arctic, alleviating hunger (as the area currently occupied had been over-hunted), and attempting to solve the "Eskimo problem", by seeking assimilation of the people and the end of their traditional 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; it was barren, with only a couple of months when the temperature rose above freezing, and several months of polar night. The families were told by the RCMP they would be able to return to their home territory within two years if conditions were not right. However, two years later more Inuit families were relocated to the High Arctic. Thirty years passed before they were able to visit Inukjuak.

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 forty permanent administrative centres to provide education, health, and economic development services. 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 and decreased the death rate, causing a marked natural increase in the population that made it more difficult for them to survive by traditional means. In the 1950s, the Canadian government began to actively settle Inuit into permanent villages and cities, occasionally against their will (such as in Nuntak and Hebron). In 2005 the Canadian government acknowledged the abuses inherent in these forced resettlements. 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, most Canadian Inuit lived year-round in permanent settlements. The nomadic migrations that were the central feature of Arctic life had become a much smaller part of life in the North. The Inuit, a once self-sufficient people in an extremely harsh environment were, in the span of perhaps two generations, transformed into a small, impoverished minority, lacking skills or resources to sell to the larger economy, but increasingly dependent on it for survival.

Although anthropologists like Diamond Jenness (1964) were quick to predict that Inuit culture was facing extinction, Inuit political activism was already emerging.

=Cultural renewal

=
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. These schools, in Aklavik, Iqaluit, Yellowknife, Inuvik and Kuujjuaq, brought together young Inuit from across the Arctic in one place for the first time, and exposed them to the rhetoric of civil and human rights that prevailed in Canada in the 1960s. This was a real wake-up call for the Inuit, and it stimulated the emergence of a new generation of young Inuit activists in the late 1960s who came forward and pushed for respect for the Inuit and their territories.

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 Tapirisat of Canada (Inuit Brotherhood and today known as Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami), an outgrowth of the Indian and Eskimo Association of the '60s, in 1971, and more region specific organizations shortly afterwards, including the Committee for the Original People's Entitlement (representing the Inuvialuit), the Northern Quebec Inuit Association (Makivik Corporation) and the Labrador Inuit Association (LIA) representing Northern Labrador Inuit. Since the mid-1980s the Southern Labrador Inuit of NunatuKavut began organizing politically after being geographically cut out of the LIA, however, for political expediency the organization was erroneously called the Labrador Métis Nation. These various activist movements began to change the direction of Inuit society in 1975 with the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement. This comprehensive land claims settlement for Quebec Inuit, along with a large cash settlement and substantial administrative autonomy in the new region of Nunavik, set the precedent for the settlements to follow. The northern Labrador Inuit submitted their land claim in 1977, although they had to wait until 2005 to have a signed land settlement establishing Nunatsiavut. Southern Labrador Inuit of NunatuKavut are currently in the process of establishing land claims and title rights that would allow them to negotiate with the Newfoundland Government.

Canada's 1982 Constitution Act recognized Inuit as Aboriginal peoples in Canada. In the same year, the Tunngavik Federation of Nunavut (TFN) was incorporated, in order to take over negotiations for land claims on behalf of Inuit living in the eastern Northwest Territories, that would later become Nunavut, from the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, which became a joint association of Inuit of Quebec, Labrador, and the Northwest Territories.

=Inuit cabinet members at the federal level

=
On October 30, 2008, Leona Aglukkaq was appointed as Minister of Health, " ecomingthe first Inuk to hold a senior cabinet position, although she is not the first Inuk to be in cabinet altogether." Jack Anawak and Nancy Karetak-Lindell were both parliamentary secretaries respectively from 1993 to 1996 and in 2003.

Nomenclature

The term ''Eskimo'' is still used by people, but in the 21st century, usage in North America has declined.

In the United States the term "Eskimo" was, as of 2016, commonly used to describe Inuit and the Siberian and Alaskan Yupik, and Iñupiat peoples. Eskimo is still used by some groups and organizations to encompass the Inuit and Yupik, as well as other Indigenous Alaskan and Siberian peoples.

In 2011, Lawrence Kaplan of the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks wrote that "Inuit" was not generally accepted as a term for the Yupik, and "Eskimo" was often used as the term that applied to the Yupik, Iñupiat, and Inuit. Since then Kaplan has updated this to indicate that the term "Inuit" has gained acceptance in Alaska.

Though there is much debate, the word Eskimo likely derives from a Innu-aimun (Montagnais) in exonym meaning "a person who laces a snowshoe", but is also used in folk etymology as meaning "eater of raw meat" in the Cree language. Though the Cree etymology has been discredited, "Eskimo" is considered pejorative by some Canadian and English-speaking Greenlandic Inuit.

In Canada and Greenland, "Inuit" is preferred. ''Inuit'' is the Eastern Canadian Inuit (Inuktitut) and West Greenlandic (Kalaallisut) word for "the people". Since Inuktitut and Kalaallisut are the prestige dialects in Canada and Greenland, respectively, their version has become dominant, although every Inuit dialect uses cognates from the Proto-Eskimo ''*ińuɣ'' for example, "people" is ''inughuit'' in North Greenlandic and ''iivit'' in East Greenlandic.

Cultural history

Languages

Inuit speak Inuinnaqtun, Inuktitut, Inuvialuktun, and Greenlandic languages, which belong to the Inuit-Inupiaq branch of the Inuit-Yupik-Unangan language family. The Greenlandic languages are divided into: Kalaallisut (Western), Inuktun (Northern), and Tunumiit (Eastern).

Inuktitut is spoken in Canada and along with Inuinnaqtun is one of the official languages of Nunavut; they are known collectively as the Inuit Language. In the Northwest Territories, Inuvialuktun, Inuinnaqtun and Inuktitut are all official languages. Kalaallisut is the official language of Greenland. As Inuktitut was the language of the Eastern Canadian Inuit and Kalaallisut is the language of the Western Greenlandic Inuit, they are related more closely than most other dialects.

Inuit in Alaska and Northern Canada also typically speak English. In Greenland, Inuit also speak Danish and learn English in school. Canadian Inuit may also speak Québécois French.

Finally, deaf Inuit use Inuit Sign Language, which is a language isolate and almost extinct as only around 50 people still use it.

Diet

The Inuit have traditionally been fishermen and hunters. They still hunt whales (esp. bowhead whale), seal, (esp. ringed seal, harp seal, common seal, bearded seal), polar bears, muskoxen, birds, and fish and at times other less commonly eaten animals such as the Arctic fox. The typical Inuit diet is high in protein and very high in fat – in their traditional diets, Inuit consumed an average of 75% of their daily energy intake from fat. While it is not possible to cultivate plants for food in the Arctic, the Inuit have traditionally gathered those that are naturally available. Grasses, tubers, roots, Plant stems, berries, and seaweed (''kuanniq'' or edible seaweed) were collected and preserved depending on the season and the location. There is a vast array of different hunting technologies that the Inuit used to gather their food.

In the 1920s, anthropologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson lived with and studied a group of Inuit. The study focused on Stefansson's observation that the Inuit's low-carbohydrate diet apparently had no adverse effects on their health, nor indeed, on his own health. Stefansson (1946) also observed that the Inuit were able to get the necessary vitamins they needed from their traditional winter diet, which did not contain any plant matter. In particular, he found that adequate vitamin C could be obtained from items in their traditional diet of raw meat such as ringed seal liver and whale skin (muktuk). While there was considerable skepticism when he reported these findings, the initial anecdotal reports were reaffirmed both in the 1970s, and more recently.

Modern Inuit have lifespans 12 to 15 years shorter than the average Canadian's, which is thought to be influenced by factors such as their diet and limited access to medical services. The life expectancy gap is not closing and remains stagnant.

Tattoos

The ancient art of face tattooing among Inuit women, which is called ''kakiniit'' or ''tunniit'' in Inuktitut, dates back nearly 4,000 years. The facial tattoos detailed aspects of the women's lives, such as where they were from, who their family was, their life achievements, and their position in the community. When Catholic missionaries arrived in the area in the early 20th century they outlawed the practice, but it is now making a comeback thanks to some modern Inuit women who want to honor the practices of their ancestors and get in touch with their cultural roots. The traditional method of tattooing was done with needles made of sinew or bone soaked in suet and sewn into the skin, but today they use ink. The Inuit Tattoo Revitalization Project is a community that was created to highlight the revitalization of this ancient tradition.

Transport, navigation, and dogs

The Inuit hunted sea animals from single-passenger, seal-skin covered boats called '' qajaq'' (Inuktitut syllabics: ''ᖃᔭᖅ'') which were extraordinarily buoyant, and could be righted by a seated person, even if completely overturned. Because of this property, the design was copied by Europeans and Americans who still produce them under the Inuit name kayak.

Inuit also made ''umiaq'' ("woman's boat"), larger open boats made of wood frames covered with animal skins, for transporting people, goods, and dogs. They were long and had a flat bottom so that the boats 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. This technique is also used by the polar bear, who hunts by seeking holes in the ice and waiting nearby.

In winter, both on land and on sea ice, the Inuit used dog sleds (''qamutik'') for transportation. The ''husky'' dog breed comes from the Siberian Husky. These dogs were bred from wolves, for transportation. 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 and even frozen fish, over the snow and ice. The Inuit used stars to navigate at sea and landmarks to navigate on land; they possessed a comprehensive native system of toponymy. Where natural landmarks were insufficient, the Inuit would erect an ''inukshuk''. Also, Greenland Inuit created Ammassalik wooden maps, which are tactile devices that represent the coast line.

Dogs played an integral role in the annual routine of the Inuit. During the summer they became pack animals, sometimes dragging up to of baggage and in the winter they pulled the sled. Yearlong they assisted with hunting by sniffing out seals' holes and pestering polar bears. They also protected the Inuit villages by barking at bears and strangers. The Inuit generally favored, and tried to breed, the most striking and handsome of dogs, especially ones with bright eyes and a healthy coat. Common husky dog breeds used by the Inuit were the Canadian Eskimo Dog

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases