Inuit

I

Introduction

Inuit, a people inhabiting small enclaves in the coastal areas of Greenland, Arctic North America (including Canada and Alaska), and extreme northeastern Siberia. The name Inuit means “the people.” In 1977 the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, held in Barrow, Alaska, officially adopted Inuit as the replacement for the term “Eskimo.” There are several related linguistic groups of Arctic peoples, including the Kalaallit in Greenland, the Inuvialuit in Canada, and the Inupiat, Yupiget, Yuplit, and Alutiit in Alaska. Many of these groups prefer to be called by their specific “tribal” names rather than as Inuits. In Alaska the term “Eskimo” is still commonly used.

II

Physical Characteristics and Regional Groupings

The Inuit vary within about 5 cm (about 2 in) of an average height of 163 cm (5 ft 4 in), and they display metabolic, circulatory, and other adaptations to the Arctic climate. Inhabiting an area spanning almost 5,150 km (almost 3,200 mi), Inuit have a wider geographical range than any other aboriginal people and are the most sparsely distributed people on earth. They fall generally into the following geographical divisions, moving from east to west: (1) Greenland Inuit, living on the eastern and western coasts of southern Greenland, who have adopted many European ways and are known as Greenlanders or Kalaallitt (Kalâtdlit); (2) Labrador Inuit, occupying the coast from a point opposite Newfoundland Island to Hudson Bay, with a few settlements on southern Baffin Island; (3) Central Inuit, including those of far northern Greenland and, in Canada, Baffin Island and western Hudson Bay; (4) Banks Island Inuit, on Banks Island, Victoria Island, and other large islands off the central Arctic coast; (5) Western Arctic Inuit or Inuvialuit, along the western Arctic coast of Canada; (6) Alaskan Inuit; (7) Alaskan Yuit; and (8) Siberian Yuit.

III

History

From archaeological, linguistic, and physiological evidence, most scholars conclude that the Inuit migrated across the Bering Strait to Arctic North America. A later arrival to the New World than most indigenous peoples, the Inuit share many cultural traits with Siberian Arctic peoples and with their own closest relatives, the Aleuts. The oldest archaeological sites identifiable as Inuit, in southwest Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, date from about 2000 bc and are somewhat distinct from later Inuit sites. By about 1800 bc the highly developed Old Whaling or Bering Sea culture and related cultures had emerged in Siberia and in the Bering Strait region. In eastern Canada the Old Dorset culture flourished from about 1000 to 800 bc until about ad 1000 to 1300. The Dorset people were overrun by the Thule Inuit, who by ad 1000 to 1200 had reached Greenland. There, Inuit culture was influenced by medieval Norse colonists and, after 1700, by Danish settlers.

IV

Language and Literature

The languages of the Inuit peoples constitute a subfamily of the Inuit-Aleut (Eskimaleut) language family. A major linguistic division occurs in Alaska, according to whether the speakers call themselves Inuit (singular, Inuk) or Yuit (singular, Yuk). The eastern branch of the subfamily—generally called Inupiaq in Alaska but also Inuktitut in Canada and Kalaallisut (Kalâdtlisut) in Greenland—stretches from eastern Alaska across Canada and through northern into southern Greenland. It forms a dialect chain—that is, it consists of many dialects, each understandable to speakers of neighboring dialects, although not to speakers of geographically distant dialects. The western branch, called Yupik, includes three distinct languages: Central Alaskan Yupik and Pacific Gulf Yupik in Alaska and Siberian Yupik in Alaska and Canada, each with several dialects (see Native American Languages). The Inupiaq dialects have more than 40,000 speakers in Greenland and more than 20,000 in Alaska and Canada. Yupik languages are spoken by about 17,000 people, including some 1,000 in the former Soviet Union. These various languages are used for the first year of school in some parts of Siberia, for religious instruction and education in schools under Inuit control in Alaska, and in schools and communications media in Canada and Greenland.

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The Inupiaq and Yupik languages have an immense number of suffixes that are added to a smaller number of root words; these suffixes function similarly to verb endings, case endings, prepositional phrases, and even whole clauses in the English language. A root word can thus give rise to many derivative words, often many syllables long and highly specialized in meaning, and sometimes complex enough to serve as an entire sentence.

Because these languages are among the most complex and difficult in the world, few explorers or traders learned them; instead, they relied on a jargon composed of Danish, Spanish, Hawaiian, and Inupiaq and Yupik words. The Inupiaq and Yupik languages themselves have a rich oral literature, and a number of Greenland authors have written in Greenland Inupiaq. The first book in Inupiaq was published in 1742.

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