Inuit religion

File:Mask used by 'Eskimo' shaman in causation of illness. Wellcome M0012691.jpg

A mask used by an Inuit angakoq, or ritual specialist; part of the Wellcome Collection, London

Inuit religion is the traditional religion of the 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.

The 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.

Definition and classification

File:Eskimo–Aleut -01.svg

Distribution of the Inuit people, alongside the culturally related Aleut people, across northeast Asia and North America. The map illustrates the various cultural and dialectical divisions among the Inuit.

The Inuit people inhabit a stretch of the Arctic and Sub-Arctic region encompassing the northeast tip of Asia and much of northern North America.Template:Sfn This includes the Russian province of Chukotka, the American state of Alaska, northern Canada, and the island of Greenland.Template:Sfn They often self-identify under a range of regional names, often reflecting their own dialects.Template:Sfn The Yupik people of Alaska are sometimes considered culturally distinct from other Inuit, but consider themselves to be part of the Inuit for political purposes.Template:Sfn The Inuit are also closely related to the Aleut people of the Aleutian Islands.Template:Sfn

The term Inuit means "the human beings".Template:Sfn The Inuit have historically also been referred to as the Eskimo.Template:Sfn This term likely derived from a Mi'kmaq language term meaning "the eaters of raw flesh" and was subsequently widely adopted by Europeans. By the early 21st century, the term Eskimo was largely rejected as derogatory, with Inuit favoured in its place.Template:Sfn

Inuit religion has been characterised as being highly individualised.Template:Sfn It has been informed by the difficult natural conditions in which the Inuit live.Template:Sfn Historical documentation of these traditions comes largely from Christian missionaries and explorers as well as anthropologists active since the late 19th century.Template:Sfn

Beliefs

Jakobsen noted that the Greenland Inuit's belief system "derives from a holistic view of the visible and the invisible existing side by side".Template:Sfn

Theology

Carving of Sedna, depicted with her legs turned into the tail of a fish, and her fingers cut off.

Sedna, an Inuit deity

Among the Copper, the Sea Mother is called Arnakapshaluk.Template:Sfn The veneration of the sea mother was spread from northern Alaska through to eastern Greenland.Template:Sfn Nuliajuk, the Sea Woman, was described as "the lubricous one". If the people breached certain taboos, she held marine animals in the basin of her qulliq (an oil lamp that burns seal fat). When this happened, the angakkuq had to visit her to beg for game. In Netsilik oral history, she was originally an orphan girl mistreated by her community. Because of their inland lifestyle, the Caribou have no belief concerning a Sea Woman. Other cosmic beings, named Sila or Pinga, control the caribou, as opposed to marine animals. Some groups have made a distinction between the two figures, while others have considered them the same. Sacrificial offerings to them could promote luck in hunting.

Moon Man, another cosmic being, is benevolent towards humans and their souls as they arrived in celestial places. This belief differs from that of the Greenlandic Inuit, in which the Moon's wrath could be invoked by breaking taboos.

Sila or Silap Inua, often associated with weather, is conceived of as a power contained within people. Among the Netsilik, Sila was imagined as a male. The Netsilik (and Copper Inuit) believed Sila was originally a giant baby whose parents died fighting giants.

Below is an incomplete list of Inuit deities believed to hold power over some specific part of the Inuit world:

• Agloolik: evil god of the sea who can flip boats over; spirit which lives under the ice and helps wanderers in hunting and fishing
• Akna: mother goddess of fertility
• Amaguq/Amarok: wolf god who takes those foolish enough to hunt alone at night
• Anguta: gatherer of the dead; he carries them into the underworld, where they must sleep for a year.
• Ignirtoq: a goddess of light and truth.
• Nanook: (Nanuq or Nanuk in the modern spelling) the master of polar bears
• Pinga: the goddess of strength, the hunt, fertility and medicine
• Qailertetang: weather spirit, guardian of animals, and matron of fishers and hunters. Qailertetang is the companion of Sedna.
• Aipaloovik, an evil sea god associated with death and destruction
• Sedna: the mistress of sea animals and mother of the sea. Sedna (Sanna in modern Inuktitut spelling) is known under many names, including Nerrivik, Arnapkapfaaluk, Arnakuagsak, and Nuliajuk.
• Silap Inua or Sila: personification of the air
• Tekkeitsertok: the master of caribou.
• Tarqiup Inua: lunar deity
• Pukkeenegak: Goddess of domestic life, including sewing and cooking.

The term silap inua / sila, hillap inua / hilla (among Inuit), ellam yua / ella (among Yup'ik) has been used with some diversity among the groups. In many instances it refers to "outer space", "intellect", "weather", "sky", "universe": there may be some correspondence with the presocratic concept of logos. In some other groups, this concept was more personified ( among Siberian Yupik). Among Copper Inuit, this "Wind Indweller" concept is related to spiritual practice: angakkuit were believed to obtain their power from this indweller, moreover, even their helping spirits were termed as silap inue.

Inuit religion holds that human illness can be caused by offending the spirits.Template:Sfn Fear of retribution from spirits results in caution so as to avoid offending them.Template:Sfn To help prevent causing offence, Inuit peoples have observed various rules and taboos, have offered prayers and songs, worn amulets, and consulted their angakut specialists.Template:Sfn Scarcity of game animals is for instance often attributed to breaches in traditional observances and can be remedied through reconciliation with the animals or their indwellers.Template:Sfn

Knud Rasmussen asked his guide and friend Aua, an angakkuq (spiritual healer), about Inuit religious beliefs among the Iglulingmiut (people of Igloolik) and was told: "We don't believe. We fear." Authors Inge Kleivan and Birgitte Sonne debate possible conclusions of Aua's words, because the angakkuq was under the influence of Christian missionaries, and later converted to Christianity. Their study also analyses beliefs of several Inuit groups, concluding (among others) that fear was not diffuse.

Other-than-human persons

Inuit beliefs also involve a range of other beings whose existence is not accepted by modern scientific investigation. The anthropologist Erica Hill suggested that these entities could be described as "other-than-human persons", a term originally devised by anthropologist Alfred Irving Hallowell.Template:Sfn A belief in similar entities can be found across the Inuit world, from the Yupik in the west to Greenland Kalaallit in the east.Template:Sfn

Among the Yupik, dangerous water-based entities included the human-shaped kogat which dwell in lakes and the palraiyuk which live in swamps.Template:Sfn Posing threats on land is the tisikh-puk, a large worm with a human head, while the qununit have seal bodies and human faces, with holes in their hands or shoulders.Template:Sfn In many cases, Yupik people have identified specific areas of the landscape where they believe such non-human entities live.Template:Sfn

• Ahkiyyini: a skeleton spirit
• Aningaat: a boy who became the moon; brother to Siqiniq, the sun; sometimes equated to the lunar deity Tarqiup Inua
• Aumanil: a spirit which dwelled on the land and guided the seasonal movement of whales
• Qallupilluit: monstrous human-like creatures that live in the sea and carry off disobedient children.
• Saumen Kar: also called Tornit or Tuniit are the Inuit version of the Sasquatch or Yeti myth. They may be the people of the Dorset culture who were said to be giants.
• Siqiniq: a girl who became the sun; sister to Aningaat, the moon
• Tizheruk: snake-like monsters.

Mythology and cosmology

Inuit cosmology provides a narrative about the world and the place of people within it. Rachel Qitsualik-Tinsley writes:

The Inuit cosmos is ruled by no one. There are no divine mother and father figures. There are no wind gods and solar creators. There are no eternal punishments in the hereafter, as there are no punishments for children or adults in the here and now.

Some people starring in unipkaaqtuat ("traditional stories") or unikkaaqtuat ("to tell stories") include:

• Kiviuq: a wandering hero.
• Uumarnituq and Aakulujjuusi: the first Inuit, who created childbirth, womanhood, and death.

Souls and Anirniit

Humans were a complex of three main parts: two souls ( and : perhaps "life force" and "personal spirit") and a name soul (). After death, the departed for the east, but the other soul components could be reborn.

—Lowenstein

In Inuit traditional belief, a human has two souls, one of which can leave the body at night.Template:Sfn Among various Inuit groups, the free soul is referred to as a shadow.Template:Sfn In many Inuit communities, when flying the free soul could be visible as fire; Merkur suggested that the widespread distribution of this belief suggests it was once a pan-Inuit notion.Template:Sfn Inuit on Saint Lawrence Island and in northern Alaska for instance traditionally believed that the soul wandered during sleep, while among the Mackenzie Inuit was recorded the idea that the human eyes journey during sleep.Template:Sfn The prolonged absence of the free-soul can result in bodily death.Template:Sfn

The Caribou have a dualistic concept of the soul. The soul associated with respiration is called umaffia (place of life) and the personal soul of a child is called tarneq (corresponding to the nappan of the Copper Inuit). The tarneq is considered so weak that it needs the guardianship of a name-soul of a dead relative. The presence of the ancestor in the body of the child was felt to contribute to a more gentle behavior, especially among boys. This belief amounted to a form of reincarnation.

File:Bathurst Inlet + 1998-07-11.jpg

Human remains on a beach near Bathurst Inlet

Dreams are generally deemed to have religious significance, for instance sometimes having a prophetic quality.Template:Sfn According to ethnographic accounts from the Polar and Labrador Inuit, a recurring belief was that ghosts and spirits may visit a person through their dreams.Template:Sfn

Inuit religion maintains that a free soul travels to the afterlife after bodily death, but that if death taboos are not observed then their free soul may become a ghost and remain in the vicinity of the living.Template:Sfn Ghosts were often thought to take the form of fire, sometimes perceived as a ball of fire.Template:Sfn

Some spirits have never been connected to physical bodies. These are called (also , , , singular , , tornrak, ) and "are often described as a shaman's helping spirits, whose nature depends on the respective ". Helpful spirits can be called upon in times of need and "are there to help people", as explained by Inuit elder Victor Tungilik.

Animal relations

File:Ringed seal 1 2000-08-13.jpg

A modern Inuit hunter dressing a ringed seal that has been killed; in Inuit culture, killing animals for food poses risks

Inuit traditional beliefs maintain that humans are interconnected with the broader natural world.Template:Sfn This view impacts Inuit relations, especially with animals who provide them with food and garments.Template:Sfn Hunters must propitiate their prey, ingratiating themselves with them and warding off their vengeance.Template:Sfn The Iglulik angakoq Aua told the ethnographer Knud Rasmussen that "The greatest peril of life lies in the fact that human food consists entirely of souls."Template:Sfn

Across the various Inuit groups, it is considered important to treat the flesh and bones of killed animals in prescribed ways so as to remain good relations with their species.Template:Sfn Archaeologists have excavated caches of seal bones in Nelson and Nunivak Islands which probably reflect these attitudes.Template:Sfn

Taboos

Inuit at Amitsoq Lake on King William Island had seasonal and other prohibitions for sewing certain items. Boot soles, for example, could only be sewn far away from settlements in designated places. Children at Amitsoq once had a game called tunangusartut in which they imitated the adults' behaviour towards the spirits, even reciting the same verbal formulae as angakkuit. According to Rasmussen, this game was not considered offensive because a "spirit can understand the joke."

Tattooing among Netsilik women provided power and could affect which world they went to after their deaths.

Practice

Angakut

File:Across Arctic America p 186.png

Niaqunguaq, an angakoq photographed between 1921 and 1924

The main ritual specialist in Inuit religion is termed the angakoq (plural angakut).Template:SfnTemplate:Efn These terms exist in slightly different forms across the various Inuit dialects,Template:Sfn although their etymology is unclear.Template:Sfn Certain regions also had other terms for these specialists, usually those which highlighted the importance of the angakoq's helping spirit.Template:Sfn The Chugach for instance used the term kalalik, meaning a "possessor of a kalaq or kalagaq" helping spirit.Template:Sfn Various Bering Sea Inuit referred to the tunghak, tunghalik, or tunralik, meaning "one who is furnished with a helping spirit".Template:Sfn

Europeans devised their own terms for the angakoq. In Danish, which became dominant in Greenland, the angakoq was called an åndemaner (spirit-invoker).Template:Sfn Various English-language sources refer to them as "shamans";Template:Sfnm introduced to English from the Tungusic languages at the end of the 17th century, the term "shamanism" has never received a commonly agreed definition and has been used in at least four distinct ways.Template:Sfn An alternative English-language term is "medicine men", although has attracted criticism.

Both men and women have become angakut,Template:Sfnm although most have been male.Template:Sfn On Saint Lawrence Island, Inuit communities were recorded as maintaining that "transvestite homosexuals" made the best angakuq.Template:Sfn Transvestite angakuq have not been historically documented among other Inuit communities,Template:Sfn however Merkur noted that legends of both male and female homosexual angakut across central and eastern Inuit groups suggests that "ritual transvestitism" was once widespread.Template:Sfn In recorded history, the angakut were typically married,Template:Sfn and throughout many Inuit societies, male angakut had the prerogative of demanding sex with other men's wives.Template:Sfn

The angakut were historically important for their community's social life, its health, and its prosperity.Template:Sfn Accordingly, Jakobsen noted that they could exert "a huge influence on their society".Template:Sfn Reflecting an ambiguous relationship, Inuit people typically respected angakut,Template:Sfn but also feared them;Template:Sfnm these specialists were deemed capable of using their spirits to harm as well as to heal, and efforts to help one family might bring misfortune to another.Template:Sfn The angakut were also often attributed with the ability to steal all or part of a person's soul.Template:Sfn

Angakut spirits, powers, and tasks

Angakut possess helper spirits,Template:Sfn entities often residing in dolls or figurines that the angakut create for that purpose.Template:Sfn It was the command of these spirits that distinguished angakut from other individuals in Inuit society.Template:Sfn A trained angakoq was expected to control their spirits,Template:Sfn often using certain words, spells, or songs known only to the angakut.Template:Sfn In Eastern Greenland, these serving spirits were called tartoks.Template:Sfn In this region, various spirit types were recorded. These included the tarajuatsiaks, shadow forms with pointed bald heads that could make the wind blow or steal and/or retrieve souls; the timerseks, who live inland and were also useful in stealing souls; and the inersuaks, spirits of the sea who could assist in attracting marine animals to the shore.Template:Sfn Historical records also indicate that many angakut had an amortok as a helper spirit; this was a being with black arms that could bring news and answer questions. It was dangerous and those who touched it were reputed to turn black and die.Template:Sfn

File:Ikpukhuak and his shaman wife Higalik.jpg

Higalik (right), an angakoq, and her husband Ikpukhuak (left)

Inuit lore traditionally attributed special powers to the angakut, including an ability to fly,Template:Sfn and to display silanigtalersarput, an enhanced vision allowing them to see in the darkness and through clothing and flesh.Template:Sfn Their ability to withstand physical dangers, such as harmful spirits, was also taken as evidence of their power.Template:Sfn

The angakut's central function was healing.Template:Sfn At other times, they were tasked with curing female infertility,Template:Sfn locating lost objects,Template:Sfn or attracting game animals.Template:Sfn Elsewhere, they were asked to predict future events like the weather or the outcome of a hunt,Template:Sfn or to determine if a traveller faced problems on a road ahead, and if so, to remove those obstacles.Template:Sfn In payment for their efforts, angakut were traditionally given meat or other goods,Template:Sfn things which would supplement a primary income from their existing livelihood.Template:Sfn

Angakut séances

File:1907 coat of shaman Ava - front.png

The coat of Aua, an Inuit angakoq from Greenland

The particular practices of angakut could be highly individualised,Template:Sfn with Merkur noting that no two seances were "ever quite the same".Template:Sfn Patients will often approach the angakoq, who will then seek to determine the cause of their illness using divination.Template:Sfn The most common divinatory method employed is qilaneq ('head-lifting').Template:Sfn Most illnesses will subsequently be diagnosed as soul-loss caused by spirits, indwellers of nature, or witchcraft.Template:Sfn The angakoq will commonly respond with a séance in which they send their helping spirit out to find the lost soul, or, if the angakoq is more experienced, to go on their own "spirit journey" to retrieve it.Template:Sfn

An angakoq will often verbally ask their helping spirit a question, for instance the cause of a patient's illness, and then receive a visual image in their mind that provides them with an answer.Template:Sfn In many cases, an angakoq will attribute a patient's illness to their breach of a taboo that has offended the spirits;Template:Sfn often, given the small, close-knit nature of Inuit communities, the angakoq will already have been aware of any broken taboos due to community gossip.Template:Sfn

Angakut often made, or directed the manufacture, of their ritual paraphernalia.Template:Sfn During rituals, they have often been naked or naked above the waist;Template:Sfn alternatively they may wear a gutskin raincoat.Template:Sfn If undertaking a spirit-journey, a common practice among many angakut was to cover their face.Template:Sfn

Angakut rites typically involved inducing a trance state as part of a séance engaging with the spirits.Template:Sfn These have most commonly taken place at night, inside huts with the lights turned out, but sometimes have occurred outdoors during daylight hours.Template:Sfn Merkur termed these techniques a "platform séance".Template:Sfn In many cases, the angakoq secreted themselves on a sleeping platform at the back of their hut, behind a curtain of skins, to perform their ceremony.Template:Sfn The arrival of spirits at the séance may be signalled by sounds of growling and scraping.Template:Sfn Some angakut produced noises during the séance, which other attendees would then interpret.Template:Sfn

File:Shaman's mask, Eskimo, Bering Strait, Alaska, wood, No. 1880.04.1238 - Etnografiska museet - Stockholm, Sweden - DSC01313.JPG

An angakoq mask from the Bering Strait, on display at the Stockholm Ethnographic Museum

There are also accounts of angakut performing the shaking tent rite found among many North American Native communities.Template:Sfn Inuit variants of this ritual often feature the angakoq being bound hand and foot, or sometimes with their neck to their knees, using cords.Template:Sfn Sometimes, at the end of the rite, they are found to still be bound in the same manner, or alternatively to be free of all bondage.Template:Sfn In East Greenland, those angakoq who performed these bound seances were called qimarraterssortugssat, and among them it was often considered the greatest of the angakoq feats.Template:Sfn

Inuit observers often recognised that angakut employed ventriloquism and sleights of hand during their séances and other rites, but believe that there remains spiritual importance to this.Template:Sfn These sleights of hand were sometimes aided by assistants.Template:Sfn To demonstrate that they have been in combat with spirits, the angakoq sometimes presented their torn clothes, or evidence that their hands or weapons had been reddened with blood, to the audience.Template:Sfn They might also present apparent wounds indicating that they have been stabbed, with these wounds evidently healing without trace.Template:Sfn

Angakut spirit journeys

The ability to journey to other realms in spirit form was deemed an exceptional feat and only angakut of considerable ability are thought capable of achieving it.Template:Sfn When the angakoq travels to the spirit world, the audience around them may sing to encourage them on their way.Template:Sfn In various cases, Inuit belief maintained that there were dangers facing the traveling angakoq. West Greenlandic legends outlined how these soul-travelers were repeatedly almost captured by the dangerous spirit Amarsiniook.Template:Sfn

For instance, angakut may respond to bad weather by spirit-journeying, or sending their helper spirit, to the indweller of the winds, blizzard, or rain;Template:Sfn there are accounts of angakut traveling to Narsuk to stop the storms.Template:Sfn Sometimes, angakut have also pursued spirit-journeys for their own curiosity, for instance to visit the Moon Man or the abode of the dead.Template:Sfn

Becoming an angakoq

File:Yupik shaman Nushagak.jpg

A Yup'ik angakoq, dressed in ritual mask, at Nushagak, Alaska, c.1890

Becoming an angakoq typically required an innate aptitude, one which was deemed to often be reflected in a dream.Template:Sfn The Inuit rarely hold to the idea of sick people subsequently becoming angakut – in this they differ from Siberian ethnic groups, who often believed that ill individuals became ritual specialists.Template:Sfn There are various accounts of people becoming an angakoq on their own initiative,Template:Sfn for instance as a response to some frustration or humiliation.Template:Sfn Although there are no records of ethnographers observing an angakoq initiation, various accounts of such a process have been provided by angakoq and other Inuit.Template:Sfn Initiation to become an angakoq is a secretive process, about which comparatively little is known by outsiders.Template:Sfn

An aspiring angakoq was usually expected to train with an existing practitioner.Template:Sfn Children would typically be taken on as apprentices, although sometimes adults were too.Template:Sfn In Northeast Asia and Alaska, angakut often selected their own child, grandchild, or nephew as an apprentice.Template:Sfn More broadly, and especially in Eastern Greenland, it was common for angakut to choose an orphan.Template:Sfn If the apprentice was not a close relation of their teacher, it was common for the former to make a payment of furs or other goods.Template:Sfnm The new apprentice was often prohibited from telling others about their training,Template:Sfn was expected to adopt a specific diet,Template:Sfn and was made to follow certain taboos.Template:Sfnm

The length of an apprenticeship varied.Template:Sfn In Greenland, it often took around ten years,Template:Sfnm while among the Caribou this instruction could be accompanied over a single winter.Template:Sfn Among various Inuit groups, the apprentice had to acquire a metaphorical "inner light".Template:Sfn Unlike other communities, the Iglulik explicitly linked this acquisition of the inner light to the Moon Man.Template:Sfn The inner light was obtained before acquiring any helper spirits.Template:Sfn During their training, an apprentice was expected to learn special terminologies to communicate with the spirits.Template:Sfn To become skilled, a trainee was expected to then gather as many tartoks as possible.Template:Sfn In the early stages of training, an angakoq exposes themselves to spirit possession with no control over the spirits.Template:Sfn A recurring notion in these initiatory experiences was an encounter with a bear spirit, something that challenged the apprentice's strength and their ability to endure hardship.Template:Sfn If an angakoq, having completed their apprenticeship, failed to alert their community of their new status then it was sometimes believed that they would become an ilisiitsoq.Template:Sfn

Initiation required going to remote areas to seek out a spirit encounter.Template:Sfn In a case from eastern Greenland recorded in the late 19th century, an apprentice traveled to a cleft or cave to rub a stone upon another stone in the direction of the sun for three days, at which point their first spirit was believed to appear.Template:Sfn Another account, recorded by Rasmussen, involved an apprentice going to a lonely place and calling out for three days, each time hearing his echo. At the end of that period, another voice was reputed to be heard, which would be that of the apprentice's helping spirit.Template:Sfn

Divination

A widely used divinatory practice among the Inuit is qilaneq.Template:Sfn This involves a sick person lying prone, with their face up; beneath their head will be fastened either the diviner's waistbelt or a line attached to a ceremonial stick. The diviner will then seek to move the patient's head up and down through the affixed fabric, asking questions while doing so. When the head is deemed to become heavy, particularly so heavy that it cannot be moved, then that is interpreted as an affirmative answer to a question.Template:Sfn It is believed that the disease-causing spirit is the entity ultimately answering the questions the diviner is putting to it.Template:Sfn Qilaneq may practiced by angakut but also by other individuals,Template:Sfn for unlike the practices of an angakoq is does not require the involvement of a helping spirit.Template:Sfn These sorts of divination using weight oracles is also found among various Siberian societies and the Sámi people.Template:Sfn

File:Kaarale Tupilak 03.jpg

An illustration of a tupilak from 1934

Inuit society also contains various individuals deemed clairvoyant, and thus capable of seeing spirits, but these differ from angakut in not engaging in seances. They may nevertheless offer services for diagnosing illnesses, finding lost property, and prophesying.Template:Sfn Among the Netsilik Inuit, for example, an individual called an angarkungaruk does not perform seances but is thought capable of seeing a disease-causing spirit and thus diagnosing a person's illness.Template:Sfn The nerfalassok is a type of clairvoyant responsible for locating missing objects and diagnosing illness among the Inuit of Western Greenland.Template:Sfn

Feasts and celebrations

File:Inuit dance near Nome 1900.jpg

Iñupiat dance near Nome, Alaska, 1900

In Alaska, the influence of neighboring indigenous communities has resulted in the extensive development of Inuit festivals.Template:Sfn Angakut have often been involved in feasts connected with the start and end of the hunting season.Template:Sfn The Yupik bladder festival involves a feast to which is brought the bladders of seals, walruses, and caribou killed that year. After the feast, the bladders are placed back into the sea to ensure that these species will offer themselves up as prey for the following year.Template:Sfn

Amulets

Inuit have historically often employed amulets, the efficacy of which is attributed to its corresponding spirit.Template:Sfn Amulets may be constructed by angakuq but also by lay Inuit too.Template:Sfn

Unlike the Iglulik Inuit, the Netsilik used a large number of amulets. Even dogs could have amulets. In one recorded instance, a young boy had 80 amulets, so many that he could hardly play. One particular man had 17 names taken from his ancestors and intended to protect him.

Cursing

File:Kaarale Qajartortup tupilak naalippaa.jpg

A drawing of a tupilaq, produced between 1920 and 1934

An angakoq might create an entity called a tupilaq that had the function of killing a person. To create this, an angakoq would craft an object using hair, grass, or moss, before ritually bringing it to life.Template:Sfn Merkur described these beings as "witchcraft automatons".Template:Sfn In Inuit belief, an angakoq was often thought capable of determining if a person was a witch.Template:Sfn Due to a belief that witches were bloodless, accused witches might be stabbed to see if they bleed from the wound.Template:Sfn If executed, the body of the witch would be carried onto a mountain and cut to pieces.Template:Sfn

History

European contact

File:Histoire de l'Amerique Septentrionale - divisée en quatre tomes (1753) (14577039230).jpg

A European ship coming into contact with Inuit in the ice of Hudson Bay in 1697

European ships first began encountering Inuit in what became northeast Canada in the 16th century.Template:Sfn When Christianity was introduced to the Inuit, they often displayed what Jakobsen called "an openness" to incorporating Christian elements into their "existing spirit world".Template:Sfn In Greenland, angakut continued to practice, sometimes secretly, following Christianity's introduction.Template:Sfn In 1746, the Danish King Christian VI wrote a formal letter to Greenlanders complaining about the continued activities of the angakut.Template:Sfn

The 19th century saw substantial population decline among the Inuit of continental North America, largely due to the introduction of new diseases.Template:Sfn Increasingly, Inuit were employed by whalers, economic changes that contributed to cultural change.Template:Sfn Ethnographic accounts from the period highlight the decline in many traditional Inuit customs, such as the tattooing of women.Template:Sfn Europeans generally perceived the demise of Inuit culture to be inevitable,Template:Sfn with white ethnographers like Franz Boas and Knud Rasmussen hoping to document Inuit culture before it disappeared.Template:Sfn

File:Inuksugalait Foxe-PI 2002-07-26.jpg

Inuksuit at the Foxe Peninsula (Baffin Island), Canada.

In Canada, the first Anglican mission post among Inuit was established in 1894 at Uumanarjuaq, with the first Roman Catholic post created at Igluligaarjuk in 1912.Template:Sfn Christianity subsequently spread rapidly among Canada's Inuit population.Template:Sfn Often, the Christian missionaries were interested in recording Inuit traditions.Template:Sfn In the 20th century, the Canadian government pursued a policy of deliberately settling the Inuit in permanent communities.Template:Sfn

The Polar Inuit of Northwest Greenland were all baptised by 1934, and the angakut were extinct among them by the mid-20th century.Template:Sfn In Eastern Greenland, the angakut remained in operation, largely unhindered by Christianity, until the early 20th century.Template:Sfn

Revivalism

File:Qulliq 1999-04-01.jpg

An Inuit woman lighting a candle to mark the creation of the Nunavut government in 1999

During the 1970s, the emergence of a pan-Inuit ideology contributed to a growing appreciation of old Inuit traditions.Template:Sfn The Inuit Cultural Institute launched in 1975.Template:Sfn In 1999, the Nunavut government was established in Canada, something that assisted research into traditional Inuit culture.Template:Sfn

In 1991, Merkur noted that Inuit religion was varyingly "extinct, obsolescent, and persisting", depending on the community in question.Template:Sfn

Demographics

As of since 2021Template:Dated maintenance category (articles), 71 percent of Canadian Inuit identified as Christian.

See also

• Inuit group, a set of satellites that orbit Saturn, many named after figures from Inuit religion

References

Bibliography

• Translation of Gabus 1944.
• Hungarian translation of Rasmussen 1926.

Further reading

• Anderson, Wanni W. 2005. The Dall Sheep Dinner Guest: Iñupiaq Narratives of Northwest Alaska. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press.
• Blake, Dale. Inuit Life Writings and Oral Traditions Inuit Myths. St. John's, Nfld: Educational Resource Development Co-operative, 2001. Template:ISBN
• Christopher, Neil, Louise Flaherty, and Larry MacDougall. Stories of the Amautalik Fantastic Beings from Inuit Myths and Legends. Iqaluit, Nunavut: Inhabit Media, 2007. Template:ISBN
• Fienup-Riordan, Ann. Boundaries and Passages Rule and Ritual in Yup'ik Eskimo Oral Tradition. The Civilization of the American Indian series, v. 212. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994. Template:ISBN
• Fienup-Riordan, Ann. 1983 The Nelson Island Eskimo: Social Structure and Ritual Distribution. Anchorage: Alaska Pacific University Press
• Fienup-Riordan, Ann. 1990. "The Bird and the Bladder: The Cosmology of Central Yup'ik Seal Hunting." Etudes/Inuit Studies 14(1), pp. 23 - 38.
• Fitzhugh, William W., and Susan A. Kapla. 1982. Inua: Spirit World of the Bering Sea Eskimo. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.
• Hall, Edwin S. The Eskimo Storyteller: Folktales from Noatak, Alaska. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1975.
• Hill, Erica. 2011 Animals as Agents: Hunting Ritual and Relational Ontologies in Prehistoric Alaska and Chukotka. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 21(3):407—42
• Himmelheber, Hans, and Ann Fienup-Riordan. Where the Echo Began And Other Oral Traditions from Southwestern Alaska. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2000. Template:ISBN
• Houston, James A. James Houston's Treasury of Inuit Legends. Orlando, Fla: Harcourt, 2006. Template:ISBN
• Lantis, Margaret. 1947. Alaskan Eskimo Ceremonialism. New York: J. J. Augustin.
• MacDonald, John. The Arctic Sky Inuit Astronomy, Star Lore, and Legend. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum/Nunavut Research Institute, 1998. Template:ISBN
• Merkur, Daniel, "Contrary to Nature: Inuit Conceptions of Witchcraft," 1987
• Merkur, Daniel. 1985 Souls, Spirits, and Indwellers in Nature: Metaphysical Dualism in Inuit Religion. Temenos: Nordic Journal of Comparative Religion (Helsinki) 21:91-1
• Millman, Lawrence, and Timothy White. A Kayak Full of Ghosts Eskimo Tales. Santa Barbara: Capra Press, 1987. Template:ISBN
• Morrow, Phyllis. 1984 "It Is Time for Drumming": A Summary of Recent Research on Yup'ik Eskimo Ceremonialism. Etudes/Inuit/Studies 8(supp.):113-40.
• Norman, Howard A., Leo Dillon, and Diane Dillon. The Girl Who Dreamed Only Geese, and Other Tales of the Far North. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1997. Template:ISBN
• Pratt, Kenneth L. 1993 Legendary Birds in the Physical Landscape of the Yup'ik Eskimo. Anthropology and Humanism 18(1):13—20.
• Spalding, Alex. Eight Inuit Myths = Inuit Unipkaaqtuat Pingasuniarvinilit. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada, 1979.
• Wolfson, Evelyn. Inuit Mythology. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Pub, 2001. Template:ISBN