See Alutiiq; Unangan.
"Alutiiq" means "a Pacific Eskimo person"; the plural form is "Alutiit." The Alutiit were a maritime people, also known as Pacific Eskimos, Pacific Yup'ik, South Alaska Inuit, Yuit (with the Yup'ik), or Aleut. However, "Aleut" (of Russian origin) is easily confused with the culturally and linguistically separate Native people of the Aleutian Islands.
The self-designation of the Alutiiq people is Sugpiaq ("real person"). The three traditional subgroups are the Chugachmiuts (Prince William Sound), Unegkurmiuts (lower Kenai Peninsula), and Qikertarmiuts or Koniagmiuts (Kodiak Island). There are many similarities to Unangan culture. The Alutiit lived and continue to live along coastal southern Alaska, between Prince William Sound and Bristol Bay. Kodiak Island was one of the most densely populated places north of Mexico. The aboriginal (mid - to late eighteenth-century) population was between 10,000 and 20,000 people. Alutiit spoke the Sugcestun, or Suk, dialect of the Pacific Gulf Yup'ik branch of Eskimo, an Eskaleut language.
The people recognized one or several chief deities, as well as numerous supernatural beings. Success in hunting required a positive relationship with the spirits of game animals. Human spirits were reincarnated through birth and naming.
Trances, as well as certain masks and dolls, allowed contact with the supernatural.
A large variety of dances, ceremonies, and rituals, including masked performances, songs, and feasts, began in the early winter. Specific ceremonies included a memorial feast, a ritual to increase the animal population, the Messenger's Feast (a potlatch-like affair that took place between two closely related villages), life cycle events, the selection of chiefs, and preparation for the whale hunt. Wise men (Kodiak Island) were in charge of most religious ceremonies, although a dance leader might direct ceremonies and instruct children in dances.
Male and female shamans forecast weather and other events, and they cured disease. Berdaches were often shamans as well. Women also acted as healers through bloodletting and herbal cures.
Despite the existence of fifty or more villages or local groups, there was no strong central government. Most important decisions were made by consensus agreement of a council. Village leaders were chosen on the basis of merit, although there was a hereditary component. They were expected to earn respect and retained their offices by giving gifts and advice. Some controlled more than one village. Their primary responsibilities were to lead in war and guide subsistence activities. From the nineteenth century on, chiefs (toyuq) and secondary chiefs (sukashiq) were appointed by a consensus of elders.
Descent was weakly matrilineal. Women generally had relatively high status, although they did not participate in formal governing structures such as councils. Society was divided into ranked classes:
Noble, commoner, and slave. Slaves might be acquired through trade or war, especially among the Chugaches and the Koniags. High-stakes gambling was a favorite pastime.
Women were secluded in special huts during their menstrual periods and at the birth or death of a child. Seclusion during the initial menstrual period could extend for several months or more. Women's chins were tattooed when they reached puberty. Male transvestites were esteemed and performed the woman's role for life. Some girls were also raised as boys and performed male roles.
Marriage was formalized when gifts were accepted and the man went to live, temporarily, with his wife's family. A woman might have two husbands, although the second would have very low status. Men might also have multiple wives. Divorce and remarriage were possible. Babies' heads were flattened in the cradle, perhaps intentionally for aesthetic purposes. Children were generally raised gently, with no corporal punishment, but toughened with icy water plunges.
Corpses were wrapped in seal or sea lion skin and kept in a special death house. High-status people were mummified. Slaves were sometimes killed and buried with a person of high rank. Mourners blackened their faces, cut their hair, and removed themselves from society. Graveside ceremonies went on for a month or more. Pieces of the corpse of a great whale hunter were sometimes cut up and rubbed on arrow points or used as talismans on hunting boats.
Houses were semisubterranean, with planked walls and sod - and straw-covered roofs. A common main room also served as a kitchen and workshop. Side sleeping rooms, heated with hot rocks, were also used by both sexes for ritual and recreational sweats. Up to twenty people (several families) lived in each house. Winter villages were composed of up to ten or so houses. Some villages had large ceremonial halls (kashim). In fishing and other temporary camps, people lived in bark shelters or even under skin boats.
Salmon was a staple, although other fish, such as herring, halibut, cod, and eulachon (smelt), were also important. Sea mammals, such as whales, porpoises, sea lions, sea otters, and seals, were also key. Dead whales were not pulled ashore but were allowed to drift in the hope that they would come back to camp. The people also ate sea birds. There was some gathering of shellfish and seaweed, as well as greens, roots, and berries. Land mammals, such as caribou, moose, squirrel, mountain goat, and hare, also played a part in the diet.
Woven spruce root baskets were decorated with grass and fern embroidery. Men carved and painted wooden dance masks. Two-hatch skin kayaks were the main vehicle for transportation, whaling, and sealing. They were made of sealskin stretched over branches. The people also used some dugout canoes, umiaks, and plank toboggans pulled by dogs. The Alutiit acquired dentalia and slaves from the Northwest Coast. They exported caribou, mountain goats, and marmot parts. Messenger Feasts/potlatches also involved trade.
In cold weather, the Alutiiq people wore long parkas made of squirrel or sea lion fur and bird skin, rain parkas made of sewn eagle skin or eagle intestine, and boots made of sea lion, salmon, or bearskin. Men's conical bentwood or woven spruce root hats, worn at sea, may reflect a Tlingit influence. Men also wore Unangan-style wooden visors.
Women wore labrets and nose pins. Men also wore ornaments, such as sea lion whiskers, in their ears and noses. Other types of ornaments included coral, shell, and bone. Men braided their long hair, whereas women wore it tied up on their heads.
The Alutiiq people had been living in their historic territory for at least 2,000 and perhaps as many as 7,000 years when the Dane Vitus Bering, working for Russia, arrived in 1741. Although he may not have actually encountered any people, contact became regular in the 1760s and 1770s—and generally resisted by the Alutiit. The first permanent Russian settlement was established in 1784, on Kodiak Island. By that time British and Spanish seamen had also visited the area.
In part by keeping their children as hostages, Russians soon forced the Natives to hunt sea otter pelts and do other work for them. Disease and general oppression soon cut the Alutiiq population dramatically. Many people were acculturated to the Russian religion and customs when the United States gained political control of Alaska in 1867.
At that time there began a renewed push for acculturation in another direction. Children were soon sent to mission and Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools, where they were forced on pain of punishment to accommodate the U. S. model. Economically, canneries and commercial fishing dominated the region from the late nineteenth century on.
Several Alutiiq villages suffered a devastating earthquake and tsunami in 1964. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA, 1971) had a pro-
Found influence on the people. The act established twelve formal culture areas, of which three fell in Alutiiq territory. In 1989 the Exxon Valdez ran aground and spilled nearly 11 million gallons of crude oil in Alutiiq territory, resulting in a tremendous loss of sea life, among other things.
Many villages remain accessible only by air or water. Most people are Russian Orthodox, many older people speak Russian (along with English and Alutiiq), and there are considerable other Russian influences. Most village social activities are church related.
Some Alutiit are more identified with the ANCSA corporate entities than with the original Alutiiq culture. Village concerns include protecting the local fisheries, road construction, and the construction of a boat harbor. Efforts to preserve the Native culture include the formation of the Kodiak Alutiiq Dancers, language classes, oral histories, and craft (woodworking and kayak-making) projects.
See also Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act; Demographics, Historical; Russians, in the Arctic/Northwest; Salmon, Economic and Spiritual Significance of; Women in Native Woodlands Societies.
See Inupiat.
See Inupiat.
See Yup'ik.
See Alutiiq.
See Yup'ik.
See Yup'ik.
See Yup'ik.
See Yup'ik.
"Iglulik" is a name derived (with their main settlement, Igloolik) from the custom of living in snow houses, or igloos. (See also Inuit, Baffinland.) Traditional Iglulik territory is north of Hudson Bay, including northern Baffin Island, the Melville Peninsula, Southhampton Island, and part of Roes Welcome Sound. It lies within the central Arctic, or Kitikmeot. The Iglulik population in the early nineteenth century was roughly 500. Igluliks speak a dialect of Inuit-Inupiaq (Inuktitut), a member of the Eskaleut language family.
Religious belief and practice were based on the need to appease spirit entities found in nature. Hunting and specifically the land-sea dichotomy were the focus of most rituals and taboos, such as that prohibiting sewing caribou skin clothing in certain seasons. The people also recognized generative spirits, conceived of as female and identified with natural forces and cycles. A rich body of legends was related during the long, dark nights.
Male and female shamans (angakok) provided religious leadership by virtue of their connection with guardian spirits. They could also control the weather, improve conditions for hunting, cure disease, and divine the future. Illness was due to soul loss, the violation of taboos, and/or the anger of the dead. Curing methods included interrogation about taboo adherence, trancelike communication with spiritual helpers, and dramatic performance.
There was little real political organization; nuclear families came together in the fall to form local groups, or settlements, that in turn were grouped into three divisions—Iglulingmiuts, Aivil-ingmiuts, and Tununermiuts—associated with
Geographical areas (-mints). Local group leaders were usually older men, with little formal authority and no power. Leaders generally embodied Inuit values, such as generosity, and were also good hunters.
Descent was bilateral. People came together in larger group gatherings in late autumn; that was a time to sew and mend clothing and renew kinship ties. Spring was also a time for visiting and travel. People married simply by announcing their intentions, although infants were regularly betrothed. Prospective husbands often served their future inlaws for a period of time. Men might have more than one wife, but most had only one. Divorce was easy to obtain. The people also recognized many other types of formal and informal partnerships and relationships. Some of these included wife exchanges.
A woman gave birth in a special shelter and lived in another special shelter, in which she observed various taboos for some time after the birth. Because infant mortality was high, infanticide was rare, and usually practiced against females. Babies were generally named after a deceased relative. Children were highly valued and loved, especially males. They were generally given a high degree of freedom. After puberty, siblings of the opposite sex acted with reserve toward each other. This reached an extreme in the case of brothers - and sisters-in-law.
The sick or aged were sometimes abandoned, especially in times of scarcity, or the aged might commit suicide. Corpses lay in state for three days, after which they were wrapped in skins, taken out through the rear of the house, and buried in the snow. The tools of the deceased were left with him or her. No activities, including hunting, were permitted for six days following a death.
Feuds, with blood vendettas, were a regular feature of traditional life. Tensions were relieved in various ways: through games; through duels of drums and songs, in which the competing people tried to outdo each other in parody and song; "joking" relationships; and athletic contests. Outdoor games included ball, hide-and-seek, and contests. There were many indoor games as well. These activities also took place on regular social occasions, such as visits. Ostracism and even death were reserved for the most serious cases of socially inappropriate behavior.
The people lived in domed snow houses for part of the winter. They entered through an aboveground tunnel that trapped the warm air inside. Snow houses featured porches for storage and sometimes had more than one room. Ice or gut skin served as windows. Some groups lined the snow house with sealskins. Snow houses were often joined together at porches to form multifamily dwellings. People slept on raised packed snow platforms on caribou hide bedding. Some larger snow houses were built for social and ceremonial purposes. People generally lived in sealskin tents in the summer. In the spring and fall, some groups used stone houses reinforced with whalebone and sod and roofed with skins.
The Igluliks were nomadic hunters. The most important game animals were seals, whales, walrus, and narwhal. Men hunted seals at their breathing holes in the winter and from boats in the summer, as they did whales and walrus. In the summer, the people traveled inland to hunt caribou, musk ox, and birds and to fish, especially for salmon and trout. Other foods included some berries and birds and their eggs. Meat, which might not be very fresh, was cooked in soapstone pots over soapstone blubber lamps or eaten raw or frozen. In the summer, people burned oil-soaked bones for cooking fuel.
Men used bone knives to cut blocks for snow houses, and they caught fox and wolf in stone or ice traps. Many tools were made from caribou antlers as well as stone, bone, and driftwood. Blades were made of bone or copper. Fires were started with flint and pyrite or a wooden drill. The people carved soapstone cooking pots and seal oil lamps as well as wooden utensils, trays, dishes, spoons, and other objects.
Men hunted in one - or two-person sealskin kayaks. Occasionally, several might be lashed together to form a raft. Umiaks were larger, skin-covered open boats. Dogs pulled wooden sleds, the whalebone or wood runners of which were covered with ice. Dogs also carried small packs during seasonal travel.
Women sewed most clothing from caribou skins, although sealskins were commonly used on boots. Apparel included men's long, gut sealing coats and light swallowtail ceremonial coats. The people wore a double skin suit in the winter and only the inner layer in the summer. Most men's parkas had a long flap in the back; the woman's had two long, narrow flaps. Women's clothing featured large shoulders and hoods for accommodating infants as well as one-piece, attached leggings and boots. They wore high caribou skin and sealskin boots containing square pouches. Men wore small loon beak dancing caps with weasel skin tassels.
They sometimes shaved their foreheads. Both sexes wore tattoos and ivory or bone snow goggles.
The people encountered Scottish whalers early in the nineteenth century. Eventually, Scottish celebrations partly supplanted traditional ones. By the time American whalers arrived in the 1860s, the Igluliks had acquired whaleboats, guns, iron items, tea, and tobacco. Later in the century, the people became involved with fox trapping and musk ox hunting. They also intermarried with non-Natives and acquired high rates of alcoholism and venereal disease.
Regular contact with other Inuits, such as the Netsiliks, was established at local trading posts and missions. These arrived in the early twentieth century, as did a permanent presence of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). Improved medical care followed these inroads of non-Native influence.
The far north took on strategic importance during the Cold War, about the same time that vast mineral reserves became known and technologically possible to exploit. These developments encouraged population movements. Also, as non-Natives increased their influence, such aspects of traditional culture as shamanism and wife exchange began to disappear. In 1954, the federal Department of Northern Affairs and Natural Resources officially encouraged the Inuits to abandon nomadic life. It built housing developments, schools, and clinics. Local political decisions were made by a community council subject to non-Native approval and review.
The snowmobile, introduced in the early 1960s, increased the potential trapping and hunting area and diminished the need for meat (fewer dogs to feed). Such employment as the Inuits could obtain was generally unskilled and menial. With radical diet changes (including flour and sugar), the adoption of a sedentary life, and the appearance of drugs and alcohol, the people's health declined markedly.
The Baffin Regional Association was formed to press for political rights. In 1993, the Tungavik Federation of Nunavut (TFN), an outgrowth of the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada (ITC), signed an agreement with Canada providing for the establishment in 1999 of a new, mostly Inuit, territory on roughly 36,000 square kilometers of land, including Baffin Island.
The people never abandoned their land, which is still central to their identity. Traditional and modern coexist, sometimes uneasily, for many Inu-its. Although people use television (there is even radio and television programming in Inuktitut), snowmobiles, and manufactured items, women also carry babies in the traditional hooded parkas, chew caribou skin to make it soft, and use the semilunar knives to cut seal meat. Full-time doctors are rare in the communities. Housing is often of poor quality. Most people are Christians. Culturally, although many stabilizing patterns of traditional culture have been destroyed, many remain. Many people live as members of extended families. Adoption is widely practiced. Decisions are often made by consensus. However, with access to the world at large, social problems, including substance abuse and suicide among the young, have increased. Fewer than half of the people finish high school.
Politically, community councils have gained considerably more autonomy over the past decade or two. There is also a significant Inuit presence in the Northwest Territories legislative assembly and some presence at the federal level. The disastrous effects of government-run schools have been mitigated to some degree by local control of education, including more culturally relevant curricula in schools. Many people still speak Inuktitut, which is also taught in most schools, especially in the earlier grades. Children attend school in their community through grade nine; the high school is in Frobisher Bay. Adult education is also available.
See also Assimilation; Canada, Indian Policies of;
Nunavut Land Claims Agreement; Women in
Native Woodlands Societies.
"Baffinland Inuit" means "Baffinland People." The people call themselves Nunatsiaqmiut, "People of the Beautiful Land." The Baffin region today, including Baffin Island, and the eastern High Arctic Islands, is known as Qikiqtaaluk. The Baffinland Inuits live on mainly the coastal parts of southern and central Baffin Island and the eastern Northwest Territories. The land is rugged and includes mountains, plains, rolling hills, fjords, lakes, and rivers. The weather is also rugged and extreme, and the tides, especially in the east, are very high. There were approximately
27,000 Baffinland Inuits in the mideighteenth century, most of whom lived on Cumberland Sound. The Native language is Inuit-Inupiaq (Inuktitut), a member of the Eskaleut language family.
Inuit woman in 1903 wearing native garb. (Library of Congress)
Religious belief and practice were based on spirit entities found in nature and needing to be treated with respect. Rituals showing respect to an animal just killed focused on these beliefs, which were also the basis of most taboos and the use of amulets. People could acquire the spirits of objects as protectors. There were also more overarching, generative spirits identified with natural forces and cycles. These were largely female identified. Souls were said to be reincarnated.
Male and female shamans (angakok) provided religious leadership by virtue of their direct connection with guardian spirits. They led group religious activities. They could also cure disease and see into the future. Illness was perceived as having to do with soul loss and/or the violation of taboos. Curing methods included interrogation about taboo adherence, trancelike communication with spiritual helpers, and dramatic performance.
There was no formal political organization; instead, nuclear families combined to form villages in distinct geographical areas (-miuts). Villages occasionally came together as small, fluid, kinship-related bands. The bands were also geographically identified—the - miut suffix—although other groups were not specifically excluded. Larger but ill defined population regions included the Sikosuilarmiuts, Aku-liarmiuts, Qaumauangmiuts, Nugumiuts, Oqomiuts, Padlimiuts, and Akudnirmiuts.
Band leaders (isumataq) were usually older men with little formal authority and no power. Leaders embodied Inuit values, such as generosity, and were also good hunters.
Sharing was paramount in Inuit society. All aspects of a person's life were controlled by kinship relationships. People married by announcing their intentions, although infants were regularly betrothed. Some men might have more than one wife, and divorce was easy to obtain. Wife exchange was practiced as part of formal male partnerships. Infanticide was rare and usually practiced against females. Names were taken from deceased people and given by elders. A person might have several names, each denoting a kinship relationship and particular behaviors. Names were not sex specific. Children were generally raised gently.
The sick or aged were sometimes abandoned, especially in times of scarcity. Corpses were wrapped in skins and covered with rocks. People brought weapons and food to the grave after four days. No work, including hunting, was performed during the days of mourning. Tensions were relieved through games, such as feats of strength, and duels of drums and songs, in which one person tried to outdo another in parody and song. Joking relationships also helped keep people's emotions in check. Ostracism and even death were reserved for the most serious cases of socially inappropriate behavior.
Domed snow houses were used in the winter, although people might also build stone houses covered with skin and plant material. Entry through a tunnel kept the warm air inside. These houses sometimes had more than one room and had storage porches as well. Beds were raised snow platforms covered with branches and skins. The people also built some larger snow or sod and bone houses for ceremonial purposes. Skin tents were generally used in the summer.
The Baffinland Inuits were nomadic hunters. The most important marine animals were seals and beluga whales, but they also hunted walrus, narwhal, and polar bear. Seals were hunted at their breathing holes and also on floe ice. In the summer, the people traveled inland to hunt caribou and birds (and eggs) as well as some small game. They fished year-round and gathered some berries, roots, and shellfish.
Men used bone knives to cut snow blocks for houses. Hunting equipment included harpoons, lances, spears, and the bow (driftwood or antler) and arrow. Wood and leather floats and drags were also used in whale hunting. Birds (their bones made excellent needles) were caught with wood and leather nets as well as whalebone snares; fish were caught with hooks and stone weirs. Most tools were made of caribou antlers as well as stone, bone, and driftwood. Sinew served nicely as thread. Other important items included carved soapstone cooking pots and lamps that burned seal oil/blubber and carved wooden trays, dishes, spoons, and other objects.
The Baffinland Inuits engaged in some trade and other intercourse with nearby neighbors; for instance, the people of Cumberland Sound were in contact with the Iglulik Inuits and those of southern Baffin Island with the Inuits of Labrador (Ungavas), where they obtained wood for their kayaks and umiaks. Other trade items included copper and ivory. Some groups carved wooden and ivory figurines. Storytelling was also considered a high art. Drum dancing, a performance art, combined music, story, dance, and song. Some Inuit women also practiced a form of singing known as throat singing.
Men hunted using one - or two-person kayaks of driftwood frames and sealskin. Umiaks were larger, skin-covered open boats. Wooden sleds carried people and belongings to and from the interior. Dog traction dates generally from the early twentieth century to the 1960s.
Most clothing consisted of caribou skin and sealskin clothing and boots. Women's sealskin parkas had a larger hood for accommodating an infant. Some people were able to acquire pants made of polar bear skin. Waterproof seal intestine suits, partially lined with dog fur, were used for whale hunting. Women coiled or braided their hair.
Parts of Baffin Island were settled over 4,000 years ago. The Thule, or pre-Inuit culture, entered the region about 1200. Norsemen may have visited Baffin Island around the year 1000, but definite contact with non-Natives was not established until the people met early explorers in the late sixteenth century.
Non-Native whaling began in the east (Davis Strait) in the eighteenth century. The Inuit people shortly began to experience high rates of tuberculosis and other diseases, such as measles. Whaling centers established in the nineteenth century employed Inuits and slowly changed their economy, marking the shift to dependency.
Anglican missionaries arrived in the early twentieth century and conducted the first baptisms. A missionary-derived syllabary was created and persisted well into the twentieth century. The Hudson's Bay Company built trading posts from 1911 on, signaling the end of whaling and the beginning of fur trapping as the most important economic activity. This period also saw the beginning of the outside control of the people's lives by traders, missionaries, and police.
The far north took on strategic importance during the Cold War, about the same time that vast mineral reserves became known and technologically possible to exploit. The federal Department of Northern Affairs and Natural Resources (1954) encouraged the Inuits to abandon their nomadic life. It saw to the construction of housing developments, schools, and a general infrastructure. Local political decisions were made by a community council subject to non-Native approval and review. Inuits found generally menial and poorly paying employment. With radical diet changes, the adoption of a sedentary life, and the appearance of drugs and alcohol, health declined markedly.
The Baffin Regional Association was formed to press for political rights. In 1993, the Tungavik Federation of Nunavut (TFN), an outgrowth of the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada (ITC), signed an agreement with Canada providing for the establishment in 1999 of a new, mostly Inuit, territory on roughly 36,000 square kilometers of land, including Baffin Island.
The people never abandoned their land, which is still central to their identity. The traditional and modern lifeways coexist, sometimes uneasily, for many Inuits. Although people use television (there is even radio and television programming in Inukti-tut), snowmobiles, and manufactured items, women also carry babies in the traditional hooded parkas, chew caribou skin to make it soft, and use the semilunar knives to cut seal meat. Full-time doctors are rare in the communities. Housing is often of poor quality. Most people are Christians. Culturally, although many stabilizing patterns of traditional culture have been destroyed, many remain. Many people live as members of extended families, and adoption is widely practiced. Decisions are often made by consensus.
Politically, community councils gained considerably more autonomy around the turn of the century. There is also a significant Inuit presence in the Northwest Territories legislative assembly and some presence at the federal level. The disastrous effects of
Government-run schools have been mitigated to some degree by the local control of education, including more culturally relevant curricula in schools. Many people still speak Inuktitut, which is also taught in most schools, especially in the earlier grades. Children attend school in their community through grade nine; the high school is in Frobisher Bay. Adult education is also available.
See also Canada, Indian Policies of; Norse
Exploration of North America; Nunavut Land Claims Agreement; Trade.
"Caribou Inuit" is a non-Native name reflecting the people's reliance on caribou. The Inuit self-designation was Nunamiut, "inlanders." The Caribou Inuit homeland is located on the southern Barren Grounds west of Hudson Bay (Keewatin District, Northwest Territories). The early population was centered along the coast near Whale Cove. As the population grew during the nineteenth century, the trend was to expand to the north, south, and west (interior), especially as the Chipewyan Indians abandoned the latter region. This windy land consists mainly of gently rolling plains. It is very well watered, although little plant life exists there. There were between 300 and 500 Caribou Inuits in the late eighteenth century. The Caribou Inuits speak a dialect of Inuit-Inupiaq (Inuktitut), part of the Eskaleut language family.
The Caribou Inuits recognized a supreme creative force that took an interest in the affairs of people. This deity may have been associated with the female caribou. The souls of people who had lived well (observed all the taboos, of which there were many) were thought to rejoin this force when they died, thence to be reincarnated on earth. The souls of those who had not lived well were said to be eternally damned.
Religion was essentially hunting based. Respect was owed to all things in nature but especially game animals. People left offerings for the spirits of slain animals. A number of ceremonial dances reinforced these ideas. Shamans specialized in such matters, acting as spiritual intermediaries. They could find out, by communicating with the spirits, who had broken which taboo and how a problem could be rectified (curing).
Political leadership, such as it was, took place in the context of the family. The leader was generally an older man who sat atop the family kinship network. He was also likely to be strong, wise, highly skilled in hunting, and familiar with the spirit world. Other than this, informal, ad hoc leaders advised small groups on hunting matters and when to move camp. There were five bands or societies in the midnineteenth century: Paatlirmiuts, Qairnitmuits, Ahiarmiuts, Hauniqturmiuts, and Harvaqturmiuts. The societies were separate but related by marriage and descent.
Betrothal took place as early as infancy. Cross cousins (children of a mother's brothers or a father's sisters) were regarded as highly desirable marriage partners. There was some regular intermarriage with other Inuit groups such as the Netsiliks and Igluliks. There was little or no marriage ceremony. Newly married couples might live with either set of parents. Men might have more than one wife; widows tended to marry their brothers-in-law.
Although children were highly valued and generally treated very well, and although childless couples often adopted children, there was some female infanticide. Corpses were wrapped in skins and placed within a circle of stones, along with various possessions. The mourning period was highly ritualized.
The extended family was the basic unit. The people displayed a distinct fondness for singing, feasting, and social drum dancing, sometimes in a large snow house or tent. They played several games, many of which included gambling, and took part in athletic contests.
For most of their prehistory, coastal people used stone winter houses, chinked with moss and dirt and covered with snow. Around 1880 they learned, from the Igluliks, to build domed snow houses. These houses generally held ten people at most. Storage was available on the sides of a long entryway, which itself was placed below ground level to keep the cold drafts out. Furniture consisted of snow platforms covered with skins and willow mats. Some people built a small connected kitchen with a smoke hole, although many cooked, when they cooked at all, outside on fires of moss and willow. Houses of family members might be linked by tunnels.
In other seasons, the people used conical skin tents (hair side out for waterproofing), as well as temporary brush windbreaks. Most settlements were occupied by only one extended family, although groups might grow in size in the spring and summer.
Men engaged in extensive summer seal, walrus, and whale hunting before the early to midnineteenth
Inuit spearing salmon in Canada in the early 1900s. (Library of Congress)
Century. A few coastal people continued these activities even after that time. Meat was sun-dried and stored in sealskin bags and retained for winter use.
Especially from the midnineteenth century on, the people depended almost totally on the migrating herds of caribou, which reached their peak numbers in autumn. People intercepted the animals at water crossings, drove them into lakes, and directed them down courseways where hunters waited. The men continued to hunt while women processed the meat and skins. Excess meat was covered with skins and hidden under rocks. When necessary, especially when the caribou meat began to run out, men also hunted musk ox, which were hunted to extinction by about 1900.
Most winter food was eaten frozen and raw. Fishing took place mostly in the winter and spring. Other foods included birds and their eggs, some summer berries, and the plant foods taken from caribou stomachs.
Most material items, such as tools, scrapers, needles, hooks, and arrowheads, were derived from the caribou. Other raw materials included wood and soapstone. Small, weak lamps burned caribou fat or fish oil. Cooking fires burned dwarf shrubbery. Musical instruments included drums and tambourine.
All trade took place in the summer. The people traded caribou skins and soapstone with the
Chipewyans and Crees for snowshoes, moccasins, and pyrite. They also traded with the Aivilik Iglulik Inuits from about 1800 on. Exports included driftwood and seal dog traces and boot soles, among other items. Long, narrow, skin-covered kayaks were sometimes tied together to form rafts for crossing larger bodies of water. After around 1800, the people used dogsleds whose runners were coated with ice-covered peat. Most transportation was overland with the help of tumplines, the Caribou Inuits being particularly strong walkers.
Six to eight caribou skins provided an adult suit of well-tailored clothing, including pants, boots, mittens, and outer and inner parkas. Furs and fur trim came from polar bears, wolves, wolverines, and foxes. Women wore bone or copper headbands. Women's parka hoods were extra large to accommodate babies carried high on the back.
The historic Caribou Inuits descended directly from the ancient Thule people, in local residence since about the twelfth century. The first non-Native explorers arrived in the early seventeenth century, although there may not have been direct contact between the two peoples.
Regular trade with non-Natives began shortly after the people were first visited by Hudson's Bay Company representatives in 1717. Ships brought foreign goods from Churchill, and the Inuits traded for
Items such as metal knives and axes, beads, tobacco, and, later, guns and powder. At that time they often acted as intermediaries between non-Natives and the Igluliks, Netsiliks, and Copper Inuits. Regular trade began at Churchill in 1790.
By the early nineteenth century, Caribou Inuit society had begun to reorient itself, with southerners focusing on the Churchill area and the non-Native trade, and northerners making stronger ties with the Aivilik Iglulik Inuits. The two groups divided about 1810. Shortly thereafter, the two societies became five.
The Hudson's Bay Company conducted commercial whaling from about 1860 to 1915. The Inuit people killed seals and whales each summer, trading most oil and other products, while shifting to almost total dependence on caribou, as well as musk ox and fish to a lesser extent.
Canada established a formal presence in 1903. Trading posts and Catholic missionaries arrived in 1912, followed by various non-Native settlements in the region. A severe famine from 1915 to around 1924 killed perhaps two-thirds of the people. After that event, the people turned to trapping (mainly fox fur) and the wage/trade economy as a means of survival. This marked the end of their independence.
Gradually, continuing hunger and epidemics began to fragment the societies, and the population continued to decline. The situation attracted governmental intervention in the 1950s. Administrative centers were established. Most people relocated by choice to one of five settlements, most of which contained a minority of Caribou Inuits (although a majority of Inuits).
The shift to towns was completed in the 1960s. The people lived in prefabricated housing, generally wore nontraditional clothing, and ate nontraditional foods. With the breakdown of the traditional economy and nothing to take its place, many experienced for the first time problems of substance abuse. Children began learning English in school but little about their traditional culture. Acculturation quickly took hold among the young. The arrival of television in the 1970s and then other electronic media accelerated these trends.
The people never abandoned their land, which is still central to their identity. Traditional and modern coexist, sometimes uneasily, for many Inuits. Although people use television (there is even radio and television programming in Inuktitut), snowmobiles, and manufactured items, women also carry babies in the traditional hooded parkas, chew caribou skin to make it soft, and use the semilunar knives to cut seal meat.
Full-time doctors are rare in the communities. Housing is often of poor quality. Most people are Christians. Culturally, although many stabilizing patterns of traditional culture have been destroyed, many remain. Many people live as members of extended families. Adoption is widely practiced. Decisions are often made by consensus. Intermarriage among the Inuit groups in the five population centers has blurred ethnic identity; people now tend to identify with their settlement.
Politically, community councils have gained considerably more autonomy over the past decade or two. There is also a significant Inuit presence in the Northwest Territories legislative assembly and some presence at the federal level. The disastrous effects of government-run schools have been mitigated to some degree by local control of education, including more culturally relevant curricula in schools. Many people still speak Inuktitut, which is also taught in most schools, especially in the earlier grades. Caribou overhunting has prompted increased government regulations, which are resisted by the Caribou Inuits, who still identify to a significant extent with the caribou.
See also Boarding Schools, United States and
Canada; Canada, Indian Policies of; Hudson's Bay Company; Nunavut Land Claims Agreement; Trade.
"Copper Inuit," meaning "People," is a name bestowed by non-Native explorers who found them using Native copper in tools and weapons. (See also Netsilik.) In the eighteenth century the Copper Inuits were living between Cape Parry and Queen Maude Gulf, especially on southern Victoria Island and along Coronation Gulf. The region is almost entirely tundra, except for some forest to the south and along the Coppermine River. Many Copper Inuits still live in this area of the central Arctic, known as Kitikmeot. The Native population was probably between 800 and 1,300 in the late eighteenth century. Copper Inuits speak a dialect of Inuit-Inupiaq (Inuktitut), a member of the Eskaleut language family.
Religious belief and practice were based on the need to appease spiritual entities found in nature. Hunting and specifically the land-sea dichotomy
Were the focus of most rituals and taboos, such as that prohibiting sewing caribou skin clothing in certain seasons. The people also recognized generative spirits, conceived of as female and identified with natural forces and cycles.
Male and female shamans (angakok) provided religious leadership by virtue of their connection with guardian spirits. They could also control the weather, improve conditions for hunting, cure disease, and divine the future. Illness was due to soul loss, the violation of taboos, and/or the anger of the dead. Curing methods included interrogation about taboo adherence, trancelike communication with spiritual helpers, and dramatic performance.
Nuclear families were the basic economic and political unit. Families were led by the oldest man. They were loosely organized into small local groups associated with geographical areas (-mints). Local groups occasionally came together as perhaps six or seven small, fluid bands. The bands were also geographically identified, their names carrying the -mint suffix as well.
Sharing was paramount in Inuit society. All aspects of a person's life were controlled by kinship relationships. The people recognized many types of formal and informal partnerships and relationships. Some of these included wife exchanges. People came together in larger group gatherings in late autumn; this was a time to sew and mend clothing and to renew kinship ties. Men hunted, made and repaired weapons and tools, and built kayaks, sleds, and shelter. Women prepared skins and made clothing, sewed hides for coverings, caught and prepared fish, raised children, and gathered moss, berries, and other items.
Descent was bilateral. People married simply by announcing their intentions, although infants were regularly betrothed. Prospective husbands often served their future in-laws for a period of time. Men might have more than one wife, but most had only one. Divorce was easy to obtain. Names were taken from deceased people and given by elders.
People often adopted orphans. Children were highly valued and loved, especially males. When a boy killed his first seal, the seal's body was ritually dragged over his. The sick or aged were sometimes abandoned, especially in times of scarcity. Corpses were wrapped in skins and buried in stone or snow vaults or, later, left outside within a ring of stones. No work, including hunting, was performed during the days of mourning.
Tensions were relieved through games, such as feats of strength and duels of drums and songs, in which one person tried to outdo another in parody and song. "Joking" relationships also helped keep people's emotions in check. Ostracism and even death were reserved for the most serious cases of socially inappropriate behavior.
Men built domed snow houses in the winter. Entry through a straight-sided, flat-topped tunnel kept the warm air inside. Some houses had more than one room. Snow platforms covered with the skins of caribou, musk ox, or bear served as beds. The people used larger snow or sod-and-bone houses for ceremonial purposes. They also used caribou skin and sealskin tents built over raised sod rings in the summer and over pits in the autumn.
Copper Inuits were nomadic hunters. The most important game animals were seals and whales. Some polar bears were caught in the winter as well. The people also hunted caribou, musk ox, small game, and fowl, mainly in small groups in the summer and autumn. One - or two-person kayaks, propelled with a double-bladed paddle, were generally used for hunting. Several men could hunt whales in umiaks, which were larger, skin-covered open boats. Fishing was a year-round activity. Some berries were available in the summer.
The summer was trade season. The people exchanged goods, particularly copper and driftwood, with the Inuvialuits, the Caribou Inuits, and the Netsiliks. There were occasional contacts with Athapaskan Indians to their south. Dogs carried burdens in the summer and pulled wooden sleds in the winter. The sleds had wooden runners covered with whalebone, mud, or peat and then ice. Toboggans were occasionally made of skin. The most important artistic traditions were carved wooden and ivory figurines.
Women sewed most clothing from caribou skins, although sealskins were commonly used on boots. Apparel included men's long, gut sealing coats and light swallowtail ceremonial coats. The people wore a double skin suit in the winter and only the inner layer in the summer. Women's clothing featured large shoulders and hoods for accomodating infants as well as one-piece, attached leggings and boots. Men wore small loon beak dancing caps with weasel skin tassels. Both sexes wore tattoos and ivory or bone snow goggles. Clothing decoration consisted mainly of bands of white fur or skin. There was some skin fringing.
Historical Copper Inuit people are descended from ancient pre-Dorset, Dorset, and Thule cultures. They first encountered non-Natives in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Although they obtained some non-Native trade goods, such as iron, and caught new diseases, traditional life remained relatively unchanged for some time thereafter.
Local trading posts were established in the 1920s, bringing items such as rifles, fish nets, and steel traps as well as cloth, tea, and flour. These material changes had the result of extending the caribou season and generally reorienting the people away from the sea. This development, plus the regular presence of trade ships, began to undermine traditional self-sufficiency and social structures. The region's first missionaries arrived at about the same time, as did a permanent presence of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).
It was not until the 1950s, however, that the root aspects of traditional culture began to disappear. Some mixing with western Inuit newcomers occurred during that time. The far north took on strategic importance during the Cold War, about the same time that vast mineral reserves became known and technologically possible to exploit. These two industries offered some wage labor and contributed to the decline of the nomadic life. Other factors contributed as well, such as the decline of the caribou herds.
The federal Department of Northern Affairs and Natural Resources (1954) began constructing wood-frame housing developments, clinics, and schools and encouraged resettlement in these permanent communities. Local political decisions were made by a community council subject to non-Native approval and review. Population centralization was largely completed by the 1970s. Most job opportunities for Inuits were unskilled and menial, although hunting and trapping remained important. With radical diet changes, the adoption of a sedentary life, and the appearance of drugs and alcohol, health declined markedly.
The people never abandoned their land, which is still central to their identity. Traditional and modern coexist, sometimes uneasily, for many Inuit. Fulltime doctors are rare in the communities. Housing is often of poor quality. Most people are Christians. Culturally, although many stabilizing patterns of traditional culture have been destroyed, many remain. Many people live as members of extended families. Adoption is widely practiced. Decisions are often made by consensus.
Politically, community councils have gained considerably more autonomy over the past decade or two. There is also a significant Inuit presence in the Northwest Territories legislative assembly and some presence at the federal level. In 1993, the Tun-gavik Federation of Nunavut (TFN), an outgrowth of the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada (ITC), signed an agreement with Canada providing for the establishment, in 1999, of the new, mostly Inuit, territory of Nunuvut on roughly 36,000 square kilometers of land, including Kitikmeot.
See also Canada, Indian Policies of; Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development; Nunavut, Land Claims Agreement; Trade.
Labrador or Ungava Inuits are actually two groups of northeastern Inuits once differentiated by dialect and custom. Reflecting recent political developments, many people of the latter group now refer to themselves as Inuit Kapaimiuts, "People of Quebec."
From the late sixteenth century on, these people have lived on the northern half of the Labrador peninsula, especially along the coasts and the offshore islands. There is some controversy as to whether Inuit groups ever occupied land bordering the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. The Labrador Inuit population in the mideighteenth century was between 3,000 and 4,200, about two-thirds of whom lived in the south. The people speak dialects of Inuit-Inupiaq (Inuktitut), a member of the Eskaleut language family.
Religious belief and practice were based on the need to appease spiritual entities found in nature. Hunting and specifically the land-sea dichotomy were the focus of most rituals and taboos, such as that prohibiting sewing caribou skin clothing in certain seasons. The people also recognized generative spirits, conceived of as female and identified with natural forces and cycles. Their rich cosmogony and mythology were filled with spirits and beings of various sizes, some superhuman and some subhuman.
Male and female shamans (angakok) provided religious leadership by virtue of their connection with guardian spirits. They could also control the weather, improve conditions for hunting, cure disease, and divine the future. Illness was perceived as stemming from soul loss, the violation of taboos,
And/or the anger of the dead. Curing methods included interrogation about taboo adherence, trancelike communication with spiritual helpers, and dramatic performance.
Nuclear families were loosely organized into local groups of twenty to thirty people associated with geographical areas (-mints). These groups occasionally came together as roughly twenty-five (perhaps ten among the Ungavas) small, fluid bands that were also geographically identified. The Ungava Inuits also recognized three regional bands (Siqinirmiuts, Tarramiuts, Itivimiuts) that were identified by intermarriage and linguistic and cultural similarities.
The harpooner or boat owner provided leadership for whaling expeditions. The best hunters were often the de facto group leaders. The abuse of their authority was likely to get them killed. Still, competition for leadership positions was active, with people dueling through song and woman exchange. Women also competed with each other through singing. Local (settlement) councils helped resolve conflicts that arose in situations without a strong leader, especially in the south.
Women were in charge of child rearing as well as skin and food preparation. They made the clothes, fished, hunted small animals, gathered plant material, and tended the oil lamps. Men hunted and had overall responsibility for all forms of transportation. They made and repaired utensils, weapons, and tools. They also built the houses.
Children were named for dead relatives regardless of gender; they were generally expected to take on the gender roles of their namesake, as opposed to those of their own sex. Children were occasionally brought up in the roles of the opposite gender for economic reasons. People married simply by announcing their intentions, although infants were regularly betrothed. Good hunters might have more than one wife (especially in the south), but most had only one. Divorce was easy to effect. Some wife exchanges were permitted within defined family partnerships; these relationships were considered a kind of marriage.
Infanticide was rare and usually practiced against females; cannibalism, too, occasionally occurred during periods of starvation. Children were highly valued and loved, especially males. Adoption was common. The sick or aged were sometimes abandoned, especially in times of scarcity. Corpses were buried in stone graves covered by broken personal items.
The typical winter house was semiexcavated and made of stone, whalebone, and wood frames filled with sod and stone with a skin roof. Floors were also stone; windows were made of gut. Each house held up to twenty people; spaces were separated by skin partitions. The people also built mainly temporary domed snow houses. Conical and/or domed sealskin or caribou skin tents served as summer housing. There were also large ceremonial and social structures (kashim) as well.
Labrador Inuits were nomadic hunters, taking game both individually and collectively. Depending on location, they engaged in a number of subsistence activities, such as the late summer and fall caribou hunting, whaling, and breathing hole sealing in the winter. They hunted seals from kayaks in the spring and summer. Men and women fished year-round. People also ate birds and their eggs as well as walrus and bear (polar and black). Women gathered numerous berries and some roots as well, as some shellfish and sea vegetables. Coastal hunters traveled into the interior in the spring to hunt caribou, reemerging on the coast in the fall. The results of a hunt were divided roughly equally, with those who played more important roles getting somewhat better (but not generally larger) shares. Drinks included blood and water.
Special harpoons, floats, and drags were used in whaling. Caribou were generally shot with bow and arrow or speared from kayaks. Birds were shot, snared, or brought down with bolas. Fish were caught with hooks, weirs, and spears.
Soapstone lamps burned beluga oil (in the north) or caribou fat (in the south and interior). The latter provided light but not much heat. In the interior and more southern areas, people also molded caribou tallow candles in goose leg skins. They started fires with pyrite, flint, and moss. Coiled baskets and woven willow mats were made around Hudson Bay.
Southeastern groups imported wood for bows and arrows from the Beothuk Indians of Newfoundland. Inlanders and coastal residents exchanged dogs, ivory, caribou, and sealskins. Art objects included woven grass baskets and carved ivory figures. There were also some petroglyphs in steatite quarries.
Travel was fairly well developed, allowing people to move with relative ease to exploit the various regions of their territory. Several types of kayaks were used, generally for hunting sea mammals, birds, and caribou. Umiaks (larger, skin-covered
Open boats that might hold up to thirty people) were generally rowed by women on visits to offshore islands or during seasonal migrations. They were also used in the south for autumn whale hunting. Wooden sleds were pulled by dogs, who also carried some gear. Temporary boats might be made of caribou skin stuffed with branches. Long-distance walking, on snowshoes in the winter, was common (snowshoes may not be native).
Dress throughout Labrador was originally similar to that of the Baffinland Inuits. It consisted mainly of caribou skin and sealskin clothing and boots. Skins of other animals were used as needed. Some island people made clothing of bird skins, especially those of ducks.
Better hunters had newer and better clothing. Decoration was also age and sex appropriate. Ivory, wood, and other materials were used in clothing decoration. Some items were used as amulets or charms, whereas others were basically decorative. Women generally tattooed their faces, arms, and breasts after reaching puberty. Men occasionally tattooed noses or shoulders when they had killed a whale. Both men and women wore hair long, but women braided, rolled, and knotted theirs.
This region has been occupied since about 2500 BCE, probably at first by people emigrating in waves from the northwest. Norse explorers arrived about 1000. The ancient Dorset culture lasted until around the fourteenth century, when it was displaced by Thule immigrants from Baffin Island. Around 1500, some Thule groups began a slow migration to the southern Labrador coast.
World History
