Tradition

Inuit religion

Overview

Inuit religion is the traditional religion of Inuit people. It is practiced within Inuit communities in parts of Chukotka, Alaska, northern Canada, and Greenland. The tradition has no formal leadership or organizational structure and displays much internal variation.

Traditional Inuit theology encompasses a range of deities and spirits inhabiting the Arctic and Sub-Arctic landscapes. Humans are regarded as having two souls, one of which can journey out of the body. Historically, an important role was played by ritual specialists known as angakut (sing. angakoq), who mediated between humanity and the spirits. They performed rituals for healing, to recover lost objects, or to assist the hunt. Hunting was traditionally a crucial part of Inuit subsistence, and is informed by various religious taboos. The use of amulets and the observance of various taboos have also been important parts of Inuit tradition.

Inuit were first exposed to Christian Europeans in the 16th century. Over the following centuries, Christian missionaries made efforts to proselytise among Inuit communities, and by the mid-20th century most Inuit had formally converted to Christianity. This process resulted in the substantial decline in the angakut and various other Inuit traditions. From the 1970s, there was a renewed movement to encourage Inuit pride and celebrate traditional culture.

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

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Siberia, as far as China, was in a state of idolatry; and, in some of the provinces, they were utter strangers to all kind of religion. Perry, the engineer, and baron Strahlemberg, who both resided so many years in Russia, tell us, that they found more sincerity and probity among the Pagans than the other inhabitants; not that paganism made them more virtuous, but their manner of living, which, was that of the…
Voltaire, The History of Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia
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The other has spiritual beings as its object, spirits, souls, geniuses, demons, divinities properly so-called, animated and conscious agents like man, but distinguished from him, nevertheless, by the nature of their powers and especially by the peculiar characteristic that they do not affect the senses in the same way: ordinarily they are not visible to human eyes. This religion of spirits is called _animism_. Now…
Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
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Closely connected with these original ancestors there is a third sort of totem or of totemic objects which we may briefly designate as _inanimate_. The objects are regarded as possessing magical powers and as having been bequeathed by the original ancestors, thus representing a legacy of the magical Alcheringa age. It is particularly stones and pieces of wood that are held to be the abode of these totemic spirits…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
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Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Shamanism.

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