Inuit

V

Social Organization

The manners and customs of the Inuit, like their language, are remarkably uniform despite the widespread diffusion of the people. The family—including the nuclear family, nearby relatives, and relations by marriage—is the most significant social unit. In traditional culture, marriages, although sometimes arranged, are generally open to individual choice. Monogamy is the usual pattern, but both polygyny and polyandry also occur. Marriage, a virtual necessity for physical survival, is based on strict division of labor. Husband and wife retain their own tools, household goods, and other personal possessions; men build houses, hunt, and fish, and women cook, dress animal skins, and make clothing. Food sources such as game and fish are considered community property. The underlying social law is the obligation to help one’s kin. Community ridicule is the most common means of social control; in extreme cases, after lengthy deliberation, an offender may be socially ostracized or put to death. With the absence of any communal legal structure, harming someone from another group jeopardizes one’s own kinship group (which is held responsible for the offense) and raises the possibility of a blood feud. Provocative displays of emotion are strongly disapproved. Some groups control conflict by means of wrestling matches or song duels, in which the angry parties extemporize insulting songs; the loser might be driven from the community.

Alliances between non-relatives are formed and maintained through gift giving and the showing of respect. The highest such form of gift giving occurs when a head of household offers the opportunity of a temporary sexual liaison with the most valued adult woman of his household. The woman maintains the power to refuse the liaison, in which case respect will be symbolized through the presentation of a different gift.

VI

Provision of Food

The traditional Inuit diet consists mainly of fish, seals, whales, and related sea mammals, the flesh of which is eaten cooked, dried, or frozen. The seal is their staple winter food and most valuable resource. It provides them with dog food, clothing, and materials for making boats, tents, and harpoon lines, as well as fuel for both light and heat. In the interior of Alaska and Canada, caribou are hunted in the summer. To a lesser extent the polar bear, fox, hare, and Arctic birds, chiefly sea birds, also furnish important supplies. Large game such as whale, walrus, and caribou require bigger hunting expeditions than are possible for one kinship group. Many families follow a seasonal hunting and fishing cycle that takes them from one end to the other of their customary territory; trade with other groups often occurs along the way. Today many Inuit work for wages and buy commercially prepared food.

VII

Housing, Transportation, and Clothing

Inuit homes are of two kinds: walrus or sealskin tents for summer and huts or houses for winter. Winter houses are usually made of stone, with a driftwood or whalebone frame, chinked and covered with moss or sod. The entrance is a long, narrow passage just high enough to admit a person crawling on hands and knees. During long journeys some Canadian Inuit build igloos, winter houses of snow blocks piled in a dome shape (the term igloo comes from the Inuit iglu, meaning 'house'). Such snow houses, rare in Greenland and unknown in Alaska, were once permanent winter houses of the Inuit of central and eastern Canada. In the 20th century many Inuit moved into towns to live in government-built, Western housing.

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The principal traditional means of conveyance are the kayak, the umiak, and the dogsled. The light, seaworthy kayak is a canoelike hunting boat made of a wood frame completely covered with sealskin except for a round center opening, where the single occupant sits. In Greenland and Alaska the skin around the hole can be laced tightly around the occupant, making the kayak virtually watertight. The umiak, a larger, open boat about 9 m (about 30 ft) long and 2.4 m (8 ft) wide, and made of a wooden frame covered with walrus skins, is used for whaling expeditions and, sometimes, to transport families and goods. The sled, drawn by a team of native dogs admirably adapted for the purpose, is common among all Inuit except those in southern Greenland. When iron was obtained through trade, iron runners largely supplanted ivory and whalebone runners. In the last half-century motorboats and snowmobiles have become important modes of travel.

Traditional Inuit dress for both men and women consists of watertight boots, double-layer trousers, and the parka, a tight-fitting double-layer pullover jacket with a hood, all made of skins and furs. An enlarged hood forms a convenient cradle for nursing infants.

VIII

Religious Beliefs

Traditional Inuit beliefs are a form of animism, according to which all objects and living beings have a spirit. All phenomena occur through the agency of some spirit. Intrinsically neither good nor bad, spirits can affect people’s lives and, although not influenced by prayers, can be controlled by magical charms and talismans. The person best equipped to control spirits is the shaman, but anyone with the appropriate charms or amulets can exercise such control. Shamans are usually consulted to heal illnesses and resolve serious problems. Communal and individual taboos are observed to avoid offending animal spirits, and animals killed for food must be handled with prescribed rituals.

Inuit rituals and myths reflect preoccupation with survival in a hostile environment. Vague beliefs of an afterlife or reincarnation exist, but these receive little emphasis. Most communal rites center on preparation for the hunt, and myths tend to deal with the relations that exist between humans, animals, and the environment. In arctic Canada, Greenland, Labrador, and southern Alaska, large numbers of Inuit have converted to Christianity.

IX

Arts and Crafts

From prehistoric times Inuit tools have been noted for their careful construction and the artistry of their carved ornamentation. Ivory from walruses and whales, the most accessible material for carving, is fashioned into figurines representing animals and people, and into decorated knobs, handles, and other tool parts. Driftwood and whalebone are carved into ceremonial masks, some small enough to be worn on women’s fingers during a ritual dance. After contact with European, Canadian, and United States traders began in the 18th century, the Inuit also made, as trade items, scrimshaw-carved tusks and ivory and whalebone objects such as canes and cribbage boards. After about 1950, the Canadian government, concerned with pressures that increasingly pushed the Inuit into a cash economy, encouraged the carving and sale of highly sophisticated soapstone sculptures. Sculpture and printmaking, marketed through cooperatives, have become mainstays of the Canadian Inuit economy and the best-known aspect of Inuit culture.

Inuit performing arts center on ceremonial songs and dances. Some magical songs are personal property and can be sold or traded. The principal musical instrument is the shallow, tambourinelike shaman’s drum.

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