The Inuit Community : A Shamanistic Society

Yupik or Yupiq are part of Alaska Native indigenous people. It represents both the name of the clan and name the language. Yupik communities occupy the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta area and the coastline of Western Alaska. Yupik speaking communities were semi-nomadic and they depended heavily on hunting and fishing for food. They built seasonal camps and leave with extended families. They had gender based roles and houses in which men and older boys lived in qasqiq, men’s house and women and children lived in ena. Traditionally, Yupik people believed in divine healing power of the shamans. Shaman’s roles were to heal, search for animal’s spirit for the hunters and ask for survival necessities (Alaska Native Heritage Center). They also believed that no one ever truly dies, but that their soul is reborn in another generation. In the 19th century, missionaries came to the Yupik region and caused and impact that is still in effect today

The 2004 documentary film In Pursuit of the Siberian Shaman by Anya Bernstein implies that Valentin Khagdaev is not a true shaman because true shamans were already gone before the Soviet religious repressions of the late 1920’s began. Bernstein (2004), uses the silent 1928 footage of a Buryat shaman to frame our understanding of what a shaman appears to be by opening the documentary with a short excerpt of the shaman dancing and beating his drum while wearing his ceremonial costume. When Valentin Khagdaev is first introduced the audience sees him performing a shamanic ritual which involves drumming and singing while wearing a very similar costume to

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 have a Bladder Feast, which is a act of respect for the seals they catch during the year (Institution and Smithsonian). Lots of the Inuit culture is about them giving respect to the animals they kill and they use every part of that animal. The Inuit would hunt animals like bison, whales, fish, and arctic bears. The Inuit people have mastered the skills of survival in the arctic region. They use many tools in order to hunt. They use spears for catching whales and they hunt in groups on land. Over the years they have improved their ways of hunting and building their

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.

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.

They could make “the world and the waters with beats of wings”, as the Inuits thought, or build

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.

Believed the supernatural powers can be manipulated by “medicine men or women” who would cure and advise other tribe members and act as a medium between our world and the spirit world. Shamans were believed to predict the future and use medicine and magic to heal the sick.

Not only did the Inuit people of the Artic adapt biologically, they did so culturally as well. They adapted culturally in three main ways via clothing, houses and living in small groups. The Inuit were clothing that would best suit their environment. The type of clothing worn was intended to keep in heat in addition to not expose any skin. They were clothes that weren’t loose and fit around the wrists as well as the ankles

Another characteristic of an indigenous religion deals with the emphasis placed on the spiritual specialists. The general consensus is that anyone can have personal or direct access to spirits or that which is unseen, yet felt (democratized shamanism). There is no special requirement in most indigenous systems that stipulate ‘who’ can commune or interact with spirits, however, as a general rule, many feel that it is best to leave interactions with spirits to those that have been taught or trained through ritual or purification of some sort. Most indigenous religions are not written down, but based on oral

Some Things that we do different then then how the Inuit people did is that, They traded items for items, or item for food/clothing. Today, we don’t give items for items we pay for items using money. This was stated on page 83 in the book. “We exchange items very differently than how the Indians did.” This affects the environment because back then they would make items out of wood and animal just to trade. For a Difference for religion is that the Inuit people had one big religion and that was Shaman. In this religion they believed that some people could talk to spirits. “The Inuit people have many religions like us.” Mr. G said one religion was shaman. This had sometimes a bad effect because they would kill creatures and plant life just for

Shamans do their work by changing the state of their mind, or consciousness. This can be achieved through the use of the rhythm of the drum or of music. It can be achieved through physical activities such as long ceremonies of dancing and singing. It can also be achieved through the use of hallucinogens such as Ayuhuasca. What shamans do to shift their consciousness is different in different cultures. It is important to know that a large amount of shamanic healers don’t use

In Artic cosmology, the spirits dominate Inuit life. For example, the Sea Spirit, which is the most famous spirit, exercises suzerainty over all animals which provide food for humans. The Spirit of the Air affects the weather and can cause failure in hunting. Finally, there is the Moon Spirit, which is tied to fertility moral propriety, and in the case of the Alaskan Inuit, the control of animals. It is also believed that in the sky and under the world’s surface, each realm is defined by a major spirit who dwelt there.

support, providing cures to illnesses not only using herbs, but also via the spirit world. They would