The Inuit
"They be like to Tartars, with long blacke haire, broad faces, and flatte noses, and tawnie in colour, wearing Seale skinnes ?The women are marked in the faces with blewe streakes downe the cheekes, and round about the eies".
- An officer on Frobisher's 1576 search for the Northwest Passage Distinct from all other Canadian aboriginal peoples by virtue of their culture, language and Asiatic physical features, the Inuit are the dominant people of a territory that extends all the way from northern Alaska to Greenland. Nowadays increasingly confined to reserves, they once led a nomadic existence in one of the most hostile environments on earth, dwelling in domed igloos during the winter and skin tents in the summer, and moving around using kayaks ( umiaks ) or dog sleds ( komatik ). The latter were examples of typical Inuit adaptability - the runners were sometimes made from frozen fish wrapped in sealskin and, in the absence of wood, caribou bones were used for crossbars. Their prey - caribou, musk ox, seals, walruses, narwhals, beluga whales, polar bears, birds and fish - provided oil for heating and cooking, hides for clothing and tents, harpoon lines, ivory and dog harnesses. Using harpoons, bows and arrows and spears, ingenious hunting methods were devised: to catch caribou, for example, huge inuksuits , piles of rocks resembling the human form, were used to steer the herd into a line of armed hunters. The Inuit diet was composed totally of flesh, and every part of the animal was eaten, usually raw, from eyeballs to the heart. Delicacies included the plaited and dried intestines of seals and whole sealskins stuffed with small birds and left to putrefy until the contents had turned to the consistency of cheese. All food was shared and the successful hunter had to watch his catch being distributed amongst other families in the group, in accordance with specific relationships, before his own kin were allowed the smallest portion. Starvation was common - it was not unusual for whole villages to perish in the winter - and consequently infanticide , particularly of females, was employed to keep population sizes down. Elderly people who could not keep up with the travelling group were abandoned, a fate that also befell some offenders against the social code, though the usual way of resolving conflict was the song-duel , whereby the aggrieved would publicly ridicule the behavior of the other, who was expected to accept the insults with good grace. Making clothes , most often of caribou hide, was a task assigned to women and was as essential to survival as a man's ability to hunt. Older women also tattooed the faces of the younger ones by threading a sinew darkened with soot through the face to make lines that radiated from the nose and mouth. Women were usually betrothed at birth and married at puberty, and both polygamy and polyandry were frequent - though female infanticide made it rare for a man to have more than two spouses. Communion with supernatural spirits was maintained by a shaman or angakok , who was often a woman, and the deity who features most regularly in Inuit myth is a goddess called Sedna , who was mutilated by her father. Her severed fingers became seals and walruses and her hands became whales, while Sedna lived on as the mother and protector of all sea life, capable of withholding her bounty if strict taboos were not adhered to. These taboos included keeping land and sea products totally separate - and so seals could never be eaten with caribou and all caribou clothing had to be made before the winter seal hunt. Although sporadic European contact dates back to the Norse settlement of Greenland and some Inuit were visited by early missionaries, it wasn't until the early nineteenth century that the two cultures met in earnest. By 1860 commercial whalers had begun wintering around the north of Hudson Bay, employing Inuit as crew members and hunters for their food in return for European goods. Even then, the impact on the Inuit was not really deleterious until the arrival of American whalers in Canadian waters in 1890, when the liberal dispensing of alcohol and diseases such as smallpox and VD led to a drastic decline in population . By the early decades of the twentieth century fur traders were encouraging the Inuit to stop hunting off the coast and turn inland using firearms and traps. The accompanying missionaries brought welcome medical help and schools, but put an end to multiple marriages, shamanism and other traditional practices. More changes came when Inuits were employed to build roads, airfields and other military facilities during World War II and to construct the line of radar installations known as Distant Early Warning during the Cold War era. As well as bringing new jobs , this also focused government attention on the plight of the Inuit. The consequent largesse was not wholly beneficial: subsidized housing and welfare payments led many Inuit to abandon their hunting camps and settle in permanent communities , usually located in places strategic to Canada's sovereignty in the Arctic. Without knowledge of the English and French languages, these Inuit were left out of all decision-making and often lived in a totally separate part of towns that were administered by outsiders. Old values and beliefs were all but eroded by television and radio, and high levels of depression, alcoholism and violence became the norm. The 1982 ban on European imports of sealskins created mass unemployment , and although hunting still provides the basics of subsistence, the high cost of ammunition and fuel makes commercial-scale hunting uneconomical. All is not gloom, however. Inuit co-operatives are increasingly successful and the production of soapstone carvings - admittedly a commercial adulteration of traditional Inuit ivory art - is very profitable. Having organized themselves into politically active groups and secured such land claims as Nunavut, the Inuit are slowly rebuilding an ancient culture that was shattered in under half a century.
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