Inuit culture

The principal goals of the ICC are to strengthen unity among Inuit of the circumpolar region; to promote Inuit rights and interests on an international level; to develop and encourage long-term policies that safeguard the Arctic environment; and to seek full and active partnership in the political, economic, and social development of circumpolar regions.,[18] or in short: to strengthen ties between Arctic peoples and to promote human, cultural, political and environmental rights and polities at the international level.

[19] The common ancestors of the Inuit and related peoples are believed by anthropologists to have their origin in eastern Siberia, arriving in the Bering Sea area approximately 10,000 years ago.

[23] The first Inuit group, known as Paleo-Eskimos, crossed the Bering Strait in 3000 BCE presumably on winter ice, which was long after earlier migrations by the ancestors to the North American Indians.

The Paleo-Eskimos weathered the winter of the high Arctic with much more difficulty than their later descendants because they lacked technologies such as boats, harpoon-tips, dog sleds, dwellings other than skin tents, and sources of warmth other than small fire pits and wood fuels.

Archaeological evidence shows that between 500 BCE and 500 CE, remarkable technological and cultural advances took place in the area of northern Canada and Greenland known as the Dorset region.

The Dorset people are probably identical to the Tuniit (singular Tuniq, also Tornit or Tunirjuat), who are described in Inuit mythology as powerful giants who dwelt in stone houses.

Presumably, this development, along with the constant pursuit of quarry into higher latitudes and the search for meteorite iron, was a major impetus for the migration of the Alaskan Thule into northern Canada and Greenland.

The artefacts left by the Thule generally suggests that they led a more comfortable lifestyle and had leisure time to artistically decorate their personal effects- their art was not the result of social or economic anxieties.

The traditional way of life was maintained only by communities in the relatively hospitable regions of the Arctic: the southern end of Baffin Island, Labrador, and the southernmost tip of Greenland.

The Canadians erected the first administrative and police stations in 1903, near the important whaling base of Fullerton Harbour on Hudson Bay and on Herschel Island northwest of the Mackenzie Delta.

In that same year, the Norwegian Roald Amundsen started to transit the famous Northwest Passage with his ship Gjøa on a more southerly course than that of his predecessors, alongside the Canadian mainland.

The Inuit tradition of living in tents during summer and in igloos and qarmait (singular: qarmaq, warm half-subterranean houses made from boulders, whale bones and sod) in winter still followed the Thule practices.

Complete self-sufficiency and independence were to a large extent replaced by dependence on goods of western industrialized countries, such as clothing, many kinds of foodstuffs, weapons, tools and technical equipment.

The transitional difficulties were further enhanced, for example, by the fact that at the end of the 1940s, the Kivalliq Region had to be placed under quarantine because of the appearance of serious infectious diseases such as polio (for which there was as yet no vaccine).

The move from the camps to the settlements, which essentially took place during the 1950s, brought about significant changes in this respect: The Inuit now were immediate subjects of governmental administration and care (also social welfare).

[41] The physicians recruited to replace these midwives advocated for a medicalized, tertiary-care level birth, and a de facto policy of flying women to southern hospitals for labour and delivery was adopted.

[48] In rare instances, the child might be considered sipiniq (Inuktitut: ᓯᐱᓂᖅ), meaning the infant is believed to have changed their physical sex from male to female at the moment of birth.

[37] Beginning in the late 1970s and 1980s, women in Nunavut and the other areas of Nunangat began a push to end the practice of being flown to the south of Canada (Douglas- Rankin Inlet).

[42] Furthermore, Inuit women wanted to return to their traditional practice of woman-centred midwifery, using knowledge passed down through the generations to complement a community-centred birthing experience.

[41] Its marginal success has been linked to its relatively low capacity, having only two maternity care workers employed there at any one time- both of whom are almost always southern Canadian midwives there on short-term assignments.

In some areas Inuit children feared the ghosts of those deceased long ago and often whistled or blew air against their hands, in order to "blow away" those supernatural beings.

The adjustment to totally different conditions of living, even more so in new administrative centres that were organized by Canadian public employees by the rules of an industrialized country, was understandably difficult for the Inuit.

The adjustment to life in a modern industrialized country is easier for the young people who find new types of opportunities, but also all the problems that can be paraphrased by the keyword "TV culture".

In many schools of the Arctic, "elders", older residents who are recognized for their experience, are teaching the traditional knowledge, known as Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, about culture, customs and way of living from the pre-settlement time, during planned lectures.

Big hopes were put into the establishment of cooperatives, today the Arctic Co-operatives Limited, that were to help convey to the Inuit the skills of creating added value, so they would take care of themselves again and at the same time preserve their traditional culture.

The production and trade of Inuit art, i.e. of artistic and crafted objects, mainly sculptures made from serpentine, soapstone and marble, and soon afterwards also of graphics (drawings, lithotomies, lithographs, erasures) and tapestry (for example hangings), yielded excellent economic and cultural successes.

In the course of the past 50 years this branch of the cooperatives reached an extraordinary importance for value added in the Inuit regions, and clearly ranks first, far ahead of trading hunting products: antlers, fur, or ivory, but overproduction is a growing problem.

However, the increasing integration into nations foreign to them that were extending into the Arctic made them realize after World War II that they could maintain their cultural identity only if they appeared united at the international level.

It is extremely important for the territorial government of Nunavut to look at ways to clearly rise the national product, which also means to conciliate the Inuit's deeply rooted tradition with the challenges of modern life.

Among the Inuit, there are even nowadays few authors in the strict sense: writers mainly produce reports, summaries and essays about traditional contexts, or their own experiences ("non-fiction"), in seldom cases poems (mostly anthems) or songs.