Concept

Inuit

Overview

Inuit (singular: Inuk) are a group of culturally and historically similar Indigenous peoples traditionally inhabiting the Arctic and Subarctic regions of North America and Russia, including Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, Yukon (traditionally), Alaska and the Chukotsky District of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. The Inuit languages are part of the Eskaleut languages, also known as Inuit-Yupik-Unangan and as Eskimo–Aleut.

Canadian Inuit live throughout much of Northern Canada. The territory of Nunavut is most associated with their culture and history, while significant populations also inhabit Nunavik in the northern third of Quebec, Nunatsiavut in Labrador, and in the Northwest Territories and Yukon, particularly around the Arctic Ocean in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region (ISR). These areas are known, by Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami and the Government of Canada, as Inuit Nunangat. In Canada, sections 25 and 35 of the Constitution Act of 1982 classify Inuit as a distinctive group of Aboriginal Canadians who are not included under either the First Nations or the Métis.

Greenlandic Inuit, also known as Kalaallit, are descendants of Thule migrations from Canada by 1100 CE. Although Greenland withdrew from the European Communities in 1985, Inuit of Greenland are Danish citizens and, as such, remain citizens of the European Union. In the United States, the Alaskan Iñupiat are traditionally located in the Northwest Arctic Borough, on the Alaska North Slope, the Bering Strait and on Little Diomede Island. In Russia, a few pockets of diaspora communities of Russian Iñupiat from Big Diomede Island, of which inhabitants were removed to the Russian mainland, remain in the Bering Strait coast of the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, particularly in Uelen, Lavrentiya, and Lorino.

Many individuals who would have historically been referred to as Eskimo find that term offensive or forced upon them in a colonial way; Inuit is now a common autonym for a large sub-group of these people. The word Inuit (varying forms Iñupiat, Inuvialuit, Inughuit, etc.), however, is an ancient self-referential to a group of peoples which includes at most the Iñupiat of Bering Strait coast of Chukotka and northern Alaska, the four broad groups of Inuit in Canada, and the Greenlandic Inuit. This usage has long been employed to the exclusion of other, closely related groups (e.g. Yupik, Aleut). Therefore, the Aleut (Unangan) and Yupik peoples (Alutiiq/Sugpiaq, Central Yup'ik, Siberian Yupik), who live in Alaska and Siberia, at least at an individual and local level, generally do not self-identify as Inuit.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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They are consequently black in complexion, and have thick and curled hair. They are, moreover, ugly in person, of contracted stature, hot in disposition, and fierce in manners, in consequence of the incessant heats to which they are exposed; and they are called by the common name of Æthiopians. But the human race does not alone afford evidence of the violent heat in these regions; it is shown also by all other…
Ptolemy, Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos
States what Inuit is.
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Other nations are divided into cities and towns; this into ten regiments. At the head of which is a chief, who used to be elected by a majority of votes, and is called by the name of Hetman, or Itman. This captain of the nation was not invested with supreme power. At present the itman is a person nominated by the czar, from among the great lords of the court; and is, in fact, no more that the governor of the…
Voltaire, The History of Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia
States what Inuit is.
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Finno-Tartaric tribes held the shores of the Black Sea, Lithuanians and Fins those of the Baltic and White Sea. Wherever they touched the sea-board, as in the Adriatic and part of the Baltic, the Slavonians had soon to submit to foreign rule. The Russian people shared this common fate of the Slavonian race. Their home, at the time they first appear in history, was the country about the sources and upper course of…
Karl Marx, Secret Diplomatic History of The Eighteenth Century
Close in meaning to Inuit; the term itself is not named.
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Philosophers who discussed Inuit

Bruce Parry

Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Animism.

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