Jean L. Briggs Inuit People Summary

Betrayal, loss, and forgiveness are common themes amongst the Inuit legend of Lumaajuuq (an adaptation of The Blind Boy and the Loon) and the history of FNMI peoples. Inequity is something faced continuously and that has its struggles to be brought forward and addressed. The story of Lumaajuuq grasps all of these concepts and brings them forward beautifully, addressing the problems of the FNMI peoples through an artistic concept and with hidden links and connections within a broken relationship of a boy and his mother.

However, The Netsilik Eskimo was a unique read in the sense that Balicki did much more than just describe their evolution. He achieved his purpose by focusing primarily on the ways of the Netsilik before the introduction of the firearms, imported clothing, or steel tools. Although it could seem outdated to some readers, it was informative in the area of the lifestyle of the Netsilik that the author was focusing on. If a reader wants to learn more about the recent lifestyle of the Netsilik within the last 50 years, this book does not touch on those subjects. Nevertheless, it was fascinating specifically to me because I was looking to learn about how a group of people could survive in such rigid winter conditions for such a long period. They had very little interaction with white people compared to other tribal groups, so the subject is less touched upon in our education system today. Today, when the early education system in our nation focuses on Native North American tribes, the Netsilik is not included because they were not affected by the famous bills and laws passed by the United States

Nanook of the North is an interesting film that documents the lifestyle of an Inuit family in Quebec, Canada. Robert J. Flaherty, the writer, producer and director of the film makes sure to film every aspect of the family’s daily struggles and duties. With nearly everything but cold weather in limited supply, it becomes very obvious that every aspect in their lives serves a specific role aimed towards survival; they have no space extraneous luxuries.

This collecting of folkloric data opened Barbeau’s eyes to the need to salvage the cultures of Native and French Canadians alike. « Fortement inspiré par l’ethnologie de la

You just learned about how dissimilar, and the same two tribes can be to each other, and how they are comparable, how the Dene’s style varies, and how the Inuit are distinct. The Dene and the Inuit are similar on caribou, clothing, and location. The Dene is different because of the houses they live in. The Inuit is different because more of their territory is close to water. Think about this; how unlike do you live, than a person your age living in another place, like London, Paris, Moscow, or the

The Canadian Inuit were a domestic, tribal, egalitarian society in the 19th century. And some cultural changes occurred; making the Inuit adapt and become more aware of other resources they could get hold of, for gathering and hunting for food. In the 19th Century, the Europeans discovered the Inuit culture and this provided new resources for the Inuit to gain an easier way to gather and hunt for food. But because of the European influence, the Inuit’s culture changed to adapt with European Individuals living in their land, and European resources that had been made access to them. By this cultural change in the 19th century there was “an increased diversity in the social structure and material culture of the Labrador Inuit society” (Auger, 1993:27). The Labrador Inuit was a significant Inuit Society to have an ethnographical research made to understand a little bit more to; how the Inuit was affected and how the food process was changed. It will also be discussed the significant ideas and techniques that the Inuit used to gather and hunt for resources.

The people of Inuit, Yup’ik, Unangan, and other Native Americans Indians have lived in the harshest environment on Earth from Siberia, across Alaska and Canada, and to the East of Greenland along the coast of the Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean. From Labrador to the interior of Alaska the Athapaskan, Cree, Innu, and other Native’s people lived in the subarctic region of the land. These people had the ability to depend on their years of knowledge of the sky, ice, ocean, land, and animal behaviors in order to survive. Living in the area that was vast and dealing with seasonal dynamic extremes these Native people of the Artic and Subarctic had a honorable endurance for an millennia of exchanged goods, ceremonies, and shared feasts with neighboring goods that has help them throughout the years.

Throughout history, many different cultures illustrate their history and their beliefs through various artistic objects that they create. These artifacts allow historians to better gage their lifestyle, their beliefs, and how their society operated. One example of this is the “Drum Beater” sculpting created by Karoo Ashevak that is especially famous for its illustrations of the shamans and the spirits. In this research paper, Karoo Ashevak’s “drum beater” will be dissected and analysed; from the Inuit culture itself, to the physical features of the sculpting, as well as the significance and symbolism of the sculpting as it relates to the Inuit culture.

In the film “Eskimo Fight for Life” the Inuit winter camp has a defined social structure. From generation to generation the roles of men and women remain the same. The most important role for men is to hunt to feed the camp. They hunt seal which is a symbol within the camp because it conveys the meaning of survival. The women are responsible for supplying the camp with the necessary clothing such as fur coats and boots. The women also teach their daughters these skills so that they can make their own clothes and boots. The Inuit camp also has their own language which enables them to communicate with one another. With the use of language, the elders, especially the grandmothers, can tell the children stories. These stories are one way they pass

experience and knowledge of indigenous peoples and their various ways of life. He explains the

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

The Inuit are very spiritual people and they do not believe in a lot of the same things we do. They believe in something called Animism, all living and nonliving things have a spirit. When someone or something dies they believe that things spirit goes to the spiritual world. They only people powerful enough to talk or communicate with these spirits are religious leaders, Shamans or “Angakoks”. The way these religious leader speak with them is through dances or charms. They wear masks and clothes of an animal because they believe it helps them to communicate with them better. Not all spirits are good ones, when the weather was bad or there was an illness going around they believed it to be a displeased spirit, but the Inuit used guidelines to try to make the spirit happy. There was five rules that need to be followed in order to please the spirits, 1) women are not allowed to sew caribou skins on the inside of there igloo on sea ice in the winter. 2) Inuit can not eat sea mammal and land mammal at the same meal. 3) A knife used to kill whales had to wrapped in sealskin, not caribou skin. 4) After killing a seal melted snow had to dripped into its mouth to quench the spirit's thirst. 5) The Inuit saved the bladder of the hunted because they believed that’s where the spirit was found inside. One of the most important spirits was Sedna, The Goddess of the Sea. She provided them with food from the sea, which made the Inuit most happy.

The Netsilik (the people of the seal) are Inuit’s that live in the Canadian Arctic north of Hudson Bay above the Arctic Circle. With the sea freezing in September and not thawing out till the end of July living is very difficult. In the mid-nineteenth century, they numbered about five hundred. As time progressed, their population grew up to 4,000. The Netsilik’s native dialect is that of the “Inuit-Inupiaq” (What when how) which is a branch of the “Eskaleut” (WWH) language family. In the past, they lived in small nomadic villages comprised of igloos that traveled in groups or extended families. However, due to contact with other cultures, they have started to utilize things such as snowmobiles, firearms and other technologies instead of their

The acknowledgements follow the foreword. In this section, Karen thanks everyone involved in her path to the muriqui and discusses the culmination of events and people that led her to initiating her research. Her graduate advisor, Irven DeVore was responsible for the inspiration that led to the glory of a book I get to review.

To control territory, individuals need to control travel corridors. In northern Canada, this means controlling access to waterways (Speck 1931:577). If people can control a travel way, then they can monitor access to resources. The control of fisheries directly relates to the control of travel routes (Pike 1896:213-214; Pénard 1929:20-24). Social conflicts and their resolution can evidence territorial frontiers. Throughout the oral traditional, there are instances of tense to aggressive conflicts between Denesųłiné and Inuit that highlight cultural frontiers (Janes 1973:39-54; 1974:7-10). The oral traditions mark the expansion and contraction of territory (Pike 1917:186-203; Smith and Burch 1979:78-93). Instead of borders, frontiers are areas of social interaction at the meeting of two or more cultures (Barth 1969:15-37). Inuit encroached on the Denesųłiné because of a re-alignment of their seasonal rounds during the fur trade. To generalize, in