About four to eight millennia ago, one of the last native groups to arrive in North America crossed the Bering land bridge and established populations through centuries across the arctic and subarctic regions.
As such, several tribes have descended from this indigenous group, with some spreading across Alaska, Greenland, and Canada.
Among such tribes are the Inuit people, prominent for their long-time existence and culture centered around a freezing climate and harsh environmental conditions.
Still, several historical accounts, cultural developments, and fascinating facts are unknown to many.
Follow along as we unravel pieces of information about the Inuit tribe in this article.
Inuit Tribe History
Pre-European Contact (11th–15th Century)
The Inuit descended from the Thule people, who migrated from Siberia and settled across most Arctic regions around 1000 AD.
They ousted their cultural cousins, the Dorset, likely with the development of more sophisticated technologies and weapons and the adaptation of dogs for transportation.
Their dominance spurred them further east across Canada to Greenland in the 1100s and 1200s.
Soon, the tribe advanced to an indigenous association of eight main ethnic groups — Baffin Island, Nunavimmiut, Iglulingmuit, Inuvialuit, Inuinnait, Labradormiut, Kivallirmiut, and Netsilingmiut.
Like many Native American tribes, the Inuit had trade alliances with other indigenous groups and conflicts arising from territorial disputes and other disagreements.
Climatic conditions in the 1300s influenced their food, architecture, activities, and migration.
However, they were successful with territorial expansion until European contact years later.
European Contact (16th–19th Century)
The Inuit’s foremost European contact was with Vikings in Greenland about a century before Martin Frobisher‘s 1576 search for the Northwest Passage led him to the arctic natives.
Frobisher’s encounter became the first well-documented contact between the Inuit and Europeans.
Most Inuit people were semi-nomadic fishermen, whalers, and hunters who coexisted with the British and French explorers thanks to mutual interest in whaling.
However, the natives still raided the Europeans’ whaling stations for iron and other materials.
By the late 18th Century, the Moravian Church, with support from the British, began missionary activities in the Labrador region of Canada.
They provided the natives with the iron and other essential items they had been stealing from whaling outposts, prompting more peaceful contact between both parties.
Sadly, drastic changes in the Inuit culture and social disruptions would be the price to pay for the settlers’ kindness.
They suffered mass death due to the new infectious diseases from the explorers and whalers and civil upsets resulting from the Europeans’ material wealth.
The Europeans established fur trading businesses in Canada, like the Hudson’s Bay Company, which opened trading posts in many tribal lands during the 19th Century.
Frobisher’s encounter became the first well-documented contact between the Inuit and Europeans.
However, commander William Edward Parry‘s expedition of 1821–23 to the Northwest Passage provided a more detailed, sympathetic, and well-documented report of the Inuit’s social, economic, and religious life.
White settlers and their descendants began marrying from the tribe, calling to mind Captain George Comer and his Inuit wife, Shoofly.
Shoofly convinced the famous American whaling captain to acquire more sewing accessories and beads for trade with her people.
20th Century
All Inuit bands and groups had been contacted by missionaries, traders, or government agents by the 1920s.
However, the Canadian federal government largely ignored them until 1939, when a court ruling decreed the tribe as a federal responsibility, subject to policies that implemented assimilation into the “Canadian” culture.
Inuit children started attending residential schools in the country.
The second World War also impacted the Inuit as military interaction and the construction of air bases improved accessibility to their arctic location, providing more exposure to European society.
By the late 20th Century, the Inuit had become more politically involved in Canadian affairs, fielding representatives in senior cabinet positions in the 21st Century.
Inuit Tribe Culture
The Inuit people made several cultural adjustments before European contact due to migration and changes in climatic conditions.
Modifications have continued over the past three centuries during and after the European colonization of North America.
Hence, the loss of some traditional features. Remarkably, Inuit culture maintains a tribal identity through family, language, lifestyle, art, and cultural laws.
Terminology
Inuit is an Inuktitut term for “the people.” It refers to the indigenous group, most of whom occupy the northern regions of Canada.
An Inuit individual is called an Inuk, while two are called Inuuk.
Language and Ethnic Groups
The Inuit tribe is an indigenous association of eight main ethnic groups, namely:
- Nunavimmiut (Ungava Bay).
- Iglulingmuit (Igloolik hamlet).
- Inuvialuit (Inuvialuit Settlement Region).
- Labradormiut (Labrador region).
- Kivallirmiut (Cariboo region).
- Baffin Island Inuit (Baffin Island).
- Inuinnait people originally inhabiting the adjacent mainland region of the central Canadian Arctic, Banks Island, and Victoria island.
- Netsilingmiut people primarily inhabiting the Gjoa Haven and Kugaaruk of the Kitikmeot Region.
The Inuit people speak “Inuktitut,” a language of five main dialects.
They also speak Inuvialuktun, Inuinnaqtun, and Greenlandic languages of the Inuit-Yupik-Unangan language family.
Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun, collectively known as the Inuit languages, are two official languages of the Canadian Territory of Nunavut.
Contemporary Inuit across the arctic speak major European languages, including English, Danish, and French, while deaf Inuit use the traditional Inuit Sign Language.
Sadly, the deaf’ language is almost extinct, with only a few people using it.
Food
Agriculture did not serve the Inuit as many may expect because of the freezing climatic and harsh geographic conditions.
The natives relied more on fish and meat from the hunted game.
However, they foraged for wild berries and gathered tubers, grasses, roots, plant stems, and edible seaweed in the short and cool summers.
Meat must have served the tribe, providing them with protein and a high-fat percentage which gave them energy in the cold weather.
Cold-water fishes and sea mammals, rich in vitamin A, helped the natives to develop decent eyesight and strong bones.
Animals’ livers also provided healthy fat, while their meals generally contained vitamin D for energy.
Settlement
The Inuit people inhabited “igloos.” Wood and mud, typical materials for constructing homes, were difficult to find in the arctic regions.
As such, the people learned to make warm homes (igloos) out of snow and make tents called “tupiq” during summer.
They made the tupiq with animal skin covering a frame of whalebones or driftwood.
Clothing and Grooming
The Inuit used animal skins and furs to make warm clothes and footwear, including shirts, hats, pants, boots, and hooded jackets called anoraks (parka).
They made the jackets from caribou and sealskin, revered for their insulating properties.
They would process, cut, and sew animal skins to make clothes using needles made from animal or bird bones and walrus ivory and threads from other animal products, like tendons.
Furs from animals like rabbits, polar bears, and foxes were used to line clothes for insulation.
An Inuk woman would wear an amauti (women’s parka), different from the men’s anorak due to its large size and separate compartment below the hood to allow a mother to carry her baby against her back and protect it from the harsh weather.
Facial tattoos had existed among the Inuit people since their early days, common among women.
However, Catholic missionaries outlawed the tradition in the 20th Century.
The body art featured details about a woman’s life, including their place of origin, family, achievements, and social or political position.
Art and Industry
Art played a crucial role in shaping the Inuit society, evidenced by small ivory and bony sculptures of human and animal figures, usually depicting daily activities like whaling and hunting.
Relatively recent artworks include prints and figurative works carved in serpentinite, soapstone, or argillite.
Inuit industries primarily relied on driftwood, ivory, bones, animal hides, and occasionally stones to make hunting tools and other implements.
Iron became a desired material during periods of European contact, and the industry began making metal tools by the late 18th Century.
Transportation
The Inuit found ways to travel long distances despite the arctic region’s challenging landscape.
Their adaptation of dogs for transportation helped them displace their cultural cousins, the Dorset.
They innovated dogsleds called qamutik, using strong sled dogs bred from wolves and dogs to pull sleds made from wood and whale bones on land and ice.
Transportation was not limited to land, as the natives used different types of boats for different activities.
They used small, single-passenger boats called kayaks for hunting sea animals, while larger, faster boats that could come closer to shore, called umiaqs, were used for transporting goods, people, and dogs.
Social Life
The Inuit had flexible social structures, starting from the grassroots of societal organization — family.
Families were nuclear or extended, with a family head rather than a clan chief.
Marital customs were essentially or categorically sexual. As such, polygamy, open marriages, divorce, and remarriage existed.
Some groups mandated the consent and approval of the community, particularly the elders, for divorce if those involved were children.
Most marriages were arranged, sometimes from infancy. While many individuals agreed to such marriages, the community occasionally forced unwilling couples into prearranged marriages.
Several families shared a place during winter, forming a community.
Therefore, households and, often, a whole community shared food items and goods from trades and other activities.
Activities, Gender Roles, and Division of Labor
The Inuit were nomadic hunters and gatherers, relying on hunting, fishing, and whaling for welfare and economic development.
Men hunted, whaled, and fished, while women cared for the children and engaged in home management, cleaning, sewing, food processing, and cooking.
Beliefs
The Inuit people practiced shamanism, centering their beliefs on a person assumed to have received powers through some ecstatic religious experience.
As such, individuals relied on the shaman for spiritual interpretation. They believed in and feared spirits, fearing that they could inflict misfortunes, like destroying an entire community.
The closest they worshiped to a central deity was the Old Woman Sedna, who they believed lived beneath the sea.
They believed the waters housed the gods since it is a central food source.
The natives carried out many simple but necessary rituals, customarily respecting and supplicating spirits before engaging in many activities, including hunting, fishing, and whaling.
Inuit Tribe Facts
- The Inuit used a pile of stones called an “inuksuk” to mark paths and keep them from getting lost.
- Roughly ninety percent of the Inuit people in Western Alaska died from diseases after European contact in the 19th Century.
- About 148,000 Inuit individuals live in four countries, Canada, Greenland, Denmark, and the U.S. Over sixty thousand individuals live in Canada alone.
- Many individuals and other arctic natives in North America find the term “Eskimo” offensive or forced upon them due to colonialism; “Inuit” is a common name for these people.
- Canada has embraced some Inuit cultural elements as national symbols, using traditional icons like the inuksuk. The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver comes to mind, where the organizers used the inuksuk as a symbol.
- The Inuktitut language remains spoken in many Arctic areas and is common in media outlets across the region, unlike many Native North American languages nearing their extinction.
Wrap Up
The Inuit tribe is among the Native North American tribes across the arctic region with a rich ancestry and origin.
Remarkably, most of the tribe’s cultural elements have survived centuries, despite several modifications in the people’s traditional lifestyle.
The natives’ efforts to ensure the survival of their ideas and traditions, despite climatic, social, and environmental challenges, prove their determination and pride in their cultural heritage.
