Barrow, Alaska is the United States’ northernmost city on the Arctic Ocean. Barrow is made up of a population of mostly Iñupiat Eskimo native and a fraction of Caucasian and other minority citizens. Point Barrow (n.d.) suggests that “archaeological evidence dates human habitation by Iñupiat Eskimos in the area from about 500 A.D.” The city was named for “Sir John Barrow, British promoter of Arctic exploration; its Iñupiaq name is Ukpeagvik, meaning ‘Place Where Owls Are Hunted’” (Point Barrow, n.d.). With scarce resources available, Iñupiat peoples subsist on the land and sea of north and northwest Alaska. “Construction of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) line and exploration in the National Petroleum Reserve brought new people to the region” …show more content…
The majority of Iñupiat peoples live in the Northwest Arctic Borough and the North Slope Borough—which includes Barrow, Alaska (Stern, 2013). Bering Strait Iñupiat, Kotzebue Sound Iñupiat, North Alaska Coast Iñupiat (Tareumiut), and Interior North Iñupiat make up most of the worlds Native Iñupiat population (The Alaska Native Heritage Center Museum, 2011). Stern (2013) suggests that “archaeological evidence indicates that the Iñupiat region has been continuously occupied for the last 4,000 years, and roots of Iñupiaq culture can be traced archaeologically from the Birnik Culture through sites identified as part of the Thule tradition.” Iñupiat villages are mostly semi permanent and depend heavily on marine mammals like bowhead whales (aġviq in Iñupiaq) and seals, while also relying on caribou and other land animals (Sakakibara, 2011; Stern, 2013). Through their interactions with non-Natives the Iñupiaq-speaking peoples became a single cultural entity rather than a separate regional group (Stern, …show more content…
As important as it is, Arctic coastal sea ice plays a vital role in dynamics of the coastline, covers stretches of open water which serve as important biological habitats, and serves as a platform for a broad range of activities by residents and industries (Druckenmiller et al., 2009). Sea ice is also important because it is used as a platform for harvesting seals and whales in spring, transport of personnel and supplies to camps, and as a network of trails (Druckenmiller et al., 2009). Dangerous effects of climate change include “ice breakouts” which are when large chunks of ice that whalers are using as working areas break off of the main ice blocks and take whaling camps out to sea (Druckenmiller et al.,
In this paragraph I will tell you about the Inuit. The Inuit are a tribe in the North and North West of Canada. Some scientists think they could be some of the people that came to North America using the land bridge. They live in tipis made out of animal
The Inuit people live at a unique location. They live in the far North and into Canada. “There is a Canadian village, named Grise Fjord, just 500 miles from the North Pole” (Sontella 7). The Inuit people
A geographical expedition was done in 1982 by Burr Tyrell that explored the Canadian landscape where the Canadian Inuit had adapted as early as the “second half of the 16th century” (Auger, 1993:27). A statement was concluded after this
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 Inuit and Aleut tribes lived in the inhospitable frozen deserts of present-day Alaska, Canada, and Greenland near the Arctic Circle. Both tribes adopted similar ways of life in this harsh climate. Natives lived in dome shaped homes made of sod, timber, or even ice blocks if they lived in
When Alaskan Inupiat, Yupiit, and Sugpiat were uncertain in their ways of life as part of Norton tradition, Canadian Inuit, and Greenlandic Eskimo’s. All of the eastern Inuit lived peripatetic lives. They fulfilled the technique of architecture snow houses, constructing of soapstone, and hunting seals. The owners were now called the Dorset Culture. The Dorset people left Greenland by 986 AD when Norse immigrants settled a colony on the island. The new new-comer’s found only the remnant of houses and tools. By 1200 AD, when the Europeans first listed actual connectoin with Eskimo’s in Greenland, the people they’ve met were by-gone Dorsets. The Dorset culture is called Thule after Greenland was first found in their leftovers by archaeologists.
The polar ice caps are melting at a pace few nations can afford to ignore, which is yielding potentially profitable sources of energy, minerals, and shipping. But debate is building over whether the Arctic can be developed peaceably. In the 21st century, many experts believe that climate change, technological advances, and ever increasing global demand for resources unlock the economic potential of the Polar North. The melting of Arctic sea ice to record lows in recent years has motivated many nations, mainly those with Arctic Ocean coastlines, such as the United States, Canada, Russia, Norway, and Greenland to reassess their engagements and interests in the icy polar reaches. Canada’s
The Inuit people live in the harsh conditions of the Arctic region of North America. Once referred to commonly as “Eskimos,” Inuit’s are spread out in different regions across the Arctic. As a foraging culture, the Inuit’s live and operate in wide range of terrains as they forage and hunt. This paper will explore the traditional kinship systems of the Inuit people and contrast them with similar systems used by the American Culture.
The increasing global temperatures have caused many problems in Arctic ecosystems. The increasing warmth has caused ice caps to melt, and permafrost to thaw, causing shifts in the ecosystems around them. 1According to Harris (2005) “Permafrost is soil, rock or sediment that is frozen for more than two consecutive years. In areas not overlain by ice, it exists beneath a layer of soil, rock or sediment, which freezes and thaws annually and is called the "active layer".” (p. 17). While the melting of ice may not seem like a big issue at first glance, its effects are truly catastrophic. Many professionals in this field, such as Houghton (2009) have said 2“Warming is expected to be strongest in the Arctic, with the continuing retreat of
In this paper, I aim to summarize and critique the ethnographic work produced by Jean L. Briggs that studies the behaviour and emotive concepts of the Utkuhikhaligmiut Inuit people (hereafter referred to as the Utku people, as done by Briggs) (1970, 4). Briggs spent seventeen months living with the Utku people in the various seasonal settlements they occupy as she attempted to understand and explain their lifeways.
When studying the Inuit, Pamela Stern and Lisa Stevenson learned about their culture and how it intertwined with the rest of Canada. They learned the Inuit have a closely-knit social system that people often rely on in times of unemployment or hardship. She also experienced seeing Inuit work in a labor-intensive job, gathering materials for basket making and found politically the Inuit aim to self-govern. In their government they have created a wide variety of programs to try and promote tradition and culture such as education programs that teach Inuit culture and language (Stern, 2006).
The first region of the country described in class was that of the Arctic. The Arctic tribes cover the western part of Alaska, northern part of Canada, and southern part of Greenland. People within this region are known as Inuits and their culture is very rich. The Arctic is a very cold area with little to no vegetation, and the Inuit culture and music reflects this. Just like the other regions that have been and will be described, the Native Americans of the Arctic have their own unique sound, song structure, and instrumentation. The first thing we will look at is instrumentation.
Why the Inuits would have needed to understand the natural patterns of Arctic wildlife is because the Inuit’s way of transportation is by
The Artic holds a unique ecosystem and very cold temperatures; however, some indigenous peoples have adapted quite well to these extreme conditions.
To fully appreciate the Inuit, you need to fully understand them first. The Inuit people speak Inuinnaqtun, Inuktitut, Inuvialuktun, and Greenlandic languages, which all belong to the Eskimo-Aleut language family and in Canada and Alaska, they speak English. The Inuit peoples’ diet consisted of whales, walruses, and seals, which are high in protein and fat. The skin from these animals were used to make boats. The typical Inuit day consists of hunting for the men and cleaning, cooking, tending to children, and other