Inuit culture

Inuit describes the various groups of indigenous peoples who live throughout Inuit Nunangat, that is the Inuvialuit Settlement Region of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut of Northern Canada, Nunavik in Quebec and Nunatsiavut in Labrador, as well as in Greenland. The term culture of the Inuit, therefore, refers primarily to these areas; however, parallels to other Eskimo groups can also be drawn.

The traditional lifestyle of the Inuit is adapted to extreme climatic conditions; their essential skills for survival are hunting and trapping. Agriculture was never possible in the millions of square kilometres of tundra and icy coasts from Siberia to Northern America and Greenland. Therefore, hunting became the core of the culture and cultural history of the Inuit. Thus, the everyday life in modern Inuit settlements, established only some decades ago, still reflects the 5,000-year-long history of a typical hunting culture which allowed the Inuit peoples and their ancestors to achieve one of the most remarkable human accomplishments, the population of the Arctic.

Europeans in North America used to refer to the Inuit as Eskimos, but the people consider that term pejorative. The primary reason some people consider Eskimo derogatory is the questionable but widespread perception that in Algonquian languages it means "eaters of raw meat." One Cree speaker suggested the original word that became corrupted to Eskimo might indeed have been askamiciw (which means "he eats it raw"), and the Inuit are referred to in some Cree texts as askipiw (which means "eats something raw").

The word Inuit is the autonym, the name which the people use for themselves and it means "the people." Its singular form is Inuk.

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