The Inuit People

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                                The Inuit People

The word Eskimo is not a proper Eskimo word. It means "eaters of raw meat" and was used by the Algonquin Indians of eastern Canada for their neighbours who wore animal-skin clothing and were ruthless hunters. The name became commonly employed by European explorers and now is generally used, even by them. Their own term for themselves is Inuit which means the "real people."


The Inuit developed a way of life well-suited to their Arctic environment, based on fishing; hunting seals, whales, and walruses in the ocean; and hunting caribou, polar bears, and other game on land. They lived in tents or travelled in skin-covered boats called kayaks and umiaks in summer, and stayed in houses made of sod over winter, building igloos when travelling by dogsled on hunting trips. Their culture was largely based on nature and the land, passed on through storytelling, dancing, drumming, and other rituals. Their habitation area extends over four countries: the United States, Canada, the USSR, and Greenland. The language is divided into two major dialectical groups, the Inupik speakers (Greenland to western Alaska) and the Yupik speakers (south-western Alaska and Siberia).


Contact with the outside world has drastically changed Inuit life. Most people now live in wood houses and wear modern clothing instead of animal skin clothes. Snowmobiles and outboards have been replaced with traditional vehicles. Still, the Inuit are trying to preserve their language and identity in a changing world. Their visual arts and sculpture are widely admired, and their growing political status is a hopeful sign for the future of "the people."

Their land is mostly flat, treeless plains where the ground remains permanently frozen except for a few inches of the surface during the short summer season. Although some groups are settled on rivers and depend on fishing, and others follow inland caribou herds, most Eskimo’s traditionally have lived primarily as hunters of maritime mammals (seals, walrus, and whales), they have always been situated near the sea.

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Settlement

In all Eskimo areas a yearly cycle took place in which groups spent the winter together in a larger group and then moved into smaller groups. Such seasonal congregating and breaking up of settlements occurred even in Greenland and western Alaska ; during the summer, people would leave the permanent communities and live in animal- skin tents at favourite spots for seal hunting, for fishing, or for collecting birds, eggs, and plants. The igloo (from an Eskimo word meaning "home") was constructed of packed snow and used only during the winter, villages of igloos ...

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