Rev 242 | Rev 247 | Go to most recent revision | Blame | Compare with Previous | Last modification | View Log | RSS feed
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN""http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"><html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /><title>Chillin' Polar - About Page</title><meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us" /><meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="no" /><meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="true" /><meta name="description" content="Description" /><meta name="keywords" content="Keywords" /><meta name="author" content="Ira W. Snyder" /><style type="text/css" media="all">@import "css/master.css";</style></head><body><div id="wrapper"><div id="header"></div><div id="menu" ><ul><li><a href="ira.html">Ira</a></li><li><a href="susana.html">Susana</a></li><li><a href="parham.html">Parham</a></li><li><a href="ryan.html">Ryan</a></li><li><a href="maricela.html">Maricela</a></li><li><a href="matt.html">Matt</a></li></ul></div><div id="content" ><ol><li><p>Settlements</p><ul><li><p>Canadian Inuit live primarily in<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunavut">Nunavut</a>,a territory in Canada.</p></li><li><p>There have been Inuit settlements in<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukon">Yukon</a>, especiallyat <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herschel_Island">HerschelIsland</a>, but there are none at present.</p></li><li><p>Crossed the Bering Land Bridge during the Ice Age 35,000 to 22,000 BCE.</p></li><li><p>Inuit also lived in temporary shelters made from show in winter (thefamous <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igloo">Igloo</a>), andduring the few months of the year when temperatures were above freezing,they lived in tents made of animal skins and bones.</p></li></ul></li><li><p>Language Terms of the Region</p><ul><li><p>In <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuktitut">Inuktitut</a>,the language of the Inuit people, "Inuit" means "the people".</p></li><li><p>The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Language">English</a>word "Eskimo" is a Native American word which is widely believed tomean "eater of raw meat," although this meaning is disputed.</p></li><li><p>Many Inuit consider the word <em>Eskimo</em> offensive, but it isstill in general usage to refer to all Eskimo peoples.</p></li></ul></li><li><p>Travel</p><ul><li><p>Sea animals were hunted from single-passenger, covered seal-skinboats called <em>qajait</em> which were extraordinarily buoyant,and could easily be righted by a seated person, even if completelyoverturned. Because of this property, the Inuit design was copied- along with the Inuit word - by Europeans who still make and usethem under the name kayak. Inuit also made umiaq - larger, openboats made out of skins and bones for transporting people, goods anddogs.</p></li><li><p>On land, the Inuit used <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_sled">dog sleds</a> (in Inuktitut, <em>qamutiit</em>, singular <em>qamutiq</em>) for transportation. The<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sled_dog">husky</a> dog breedcomes from Inuit breeding of dogs for transportation.</p></li><li><p>They used landmarks to navigate, and possessed a comprehensivenative system of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toponymy">toponymy</a>. Where natural landmarks were insufficient, the Inuitwould erect an <em>inukshuk</em> (a stone landmark used as amilestone or directional marker, sometimes created in the appearanceof a man) to compensate.</p></li></ul><p class="centeredImg"><img src="images/general/rjc_olympics.png" alt="Vancouver 2010 Logo" /></p></li><li><p>Clothing</p><ul><li><p>The hoods of Inuit women's parkas - <em>amautiit</em> (singular<em>amauti</em>, <em>amaut</em> or <em>amautik</em>) in Inuktitut -were traditionally made extra large; to protect the baby from theharsh wind when snuggled against the mother's back.</p></li><li><p>Boots (Inuktitut: <em>kamik</em> or <em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukluk">mukluk</a></em>)could be made of caribou or sealskin, and designs varied for menand women.</p></li></ul></li><li><p>Oral Tradition Facts and Myths</p><ul><li><p>Nearly all Inuit cultures have oral traditions of raids by Indiansand fellow Inuit, and of taking vengeance on them in return.Although these tales are generally regarded not as accuratehistorical accounts but as self-serving myths - violence againstoutsiders as justified revenge - it does make clear that there was ahistory of hostile contact between Inuit and other cultures.</p></li><li><p>Even within an Inuit band, breaching traditional justice and wronginganother Inuit was routinely punished by murderous vengeance, as thestory of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atanarjuat">Atanarjuat</a>shows. Within a community, punishments were meted out by communitydecision, or by the elders, and a breach meant that the victim and hisor her relatives could seek out restitution or revenge.</p></li><li><p>Martin Frobisher, attempted to find the Northwest Passage. Heencountered Inuit on Resolution Island. Five sailors jumped ship andbecame part of Inuit mythology. The homesick sailors tired of theiradventure attempted to leave in a small vessel and vanished.Frobisher brought an unwilling Inuk to England, doubtless the firstInuk ever to visit Europe. The Inuit oral tradition, in contrast,recounts the natives helping Frobisher's crewmen, who believed theyhad been abandoned.</p></li><li><p>The Moravian missionaries could easily provide the Inuit with the ironand basic materials they had been stealing from whaling outposts -materials whose real cost to Europeans was almost nothing, but whosevalue to the Inuit was enormous - and from then on contacts inLabrador were far more peaceful.</p><ul><li><p>Inuit Throat Singing – This cultural form of artisticexpressive came along with the Inuit across the BeringIce Bridge. Originally decreed illegal by priests, throatsinging has came back into the mainstream.</p></li><li><p>Inuit throat-singing is done the following way: two womenface each other; they may be standing or crouching down; oneis leading, while the other responds; the leader produces ashort rhythmic motif, that she repeats with a short silent gapin-between, while the other is rhythmically filling in thegaps. The game is such that both singers try to show theirvocal abilities in competition, by exchanging these vocalmotives. The first to run out of breath or be unable tomaintain the pace of the other singer will start to laugh orsimply stop and will thus loose the game. It generally lastbetween one and three minutes. The winner is the singer whobeats the largest number of people.</p></li><li><p>Words and meaningless syllables are used in the songs. Whenwords are used, no particular poetical meaning or regularmeaning are assigned to them. These words can simply benames of ancestors, a word or name meaningful at the time thegames are taking place, or other common words. The meaninglesssyllables generally portray sounds of nature or cries ofanimals or birds, or sounds of everyday life.</p></li></ul></li></ul></li></ol><p class="centeredImg"><img src="images/general/rjc_map.png" alt="Map of Inuit Cities" /></p><p>The information on these communities courtesy of the NWT Data Book 1990, compiled bythe Government of the Northwest Territories (published by Outcrop Ltd. Yellowknife,© April 1991).</p><p><a href="http://collections.ic.gc.ca/arctic/inuit/communit.htm">http://collections.ic.gc.ca/arctic/inuit/communit.htm</a></p></div><div id="footer" ><div id="altnav"><a href="ira.html">Ira</a> -<a href="susana.html">Susana</a> -<a href="parham.html">Parham</a> -<a href="ryan.html">Ryan</a> -<a href="maricela.html">Maricela</a> -<a href="matt.html">Matt</a></div>Website Design Copyright © 2006, Ira W. Snyder <br /><!-- Creative Commons License --><a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" border="0" src="http://creativecommons.org/images/public/somerights20.png"/></a><!-- XHTML Validator --><a href="http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=referer"><img style="border:0;width:88px;height:31px" src="http://www.w3.org/Icons/valid-xhtml10" alt="Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional" /></a><!-- CSS Validator --><a href="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/"><img style="border:0;width:88px;height:31px" src="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/images/vcss" alt="Valid CSS!" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike2.5 License</a>.</div></div></body></html>