![]() Shamans, known as Angakok, can control the spirits and communicate with the spirit world. One way they show respect for the animal they hunted is to use every part of it so nothing went to waste. The Inuit believed that if they did not pay respects, the animal’s spirit would reappear as a demon. The Inuit would pay respect to the animal’s spirit when hunting so that it would reappear in another animal’s body. The Inuit also treated the animals they hunted with respect, as they believed the creatures possessed souls just like those of humans. The Inuit believe that everything has its own Inua (or spirit), and the Inua of the moon, sea, and air was of particular importance. Inuit spirituality is animistic, which is the belief that everything on earth, from objects to animals, is inhabited by a spirit. Some dances were religious, and others were celebratory. Many Inuit ceremonies consisted of singing and dancing. The Inuit pass stories from one generation to another as a way to preserve their culture. Many Inuit traditions and customs have developed over thousands of years and include extensive oral history and storytelling traditions. Although Inuit life has changed over the past centuries, the Inuit have maintained their cultural identity and traditions. In Canada, many Inuit children attended residential schools, which were federally-run and aimed at assimilating Indigenous children into the Eurocentric Canadian culture. Colonization caused some of the most drastic alterations to their ways of life and has impacted Inuit culture substantially. The continued arrival of explorers and traders caused numerous cultural changes for the Inuit. In Canada, Inuit is the preferred term, while in Greenland, they use Greenlanders or Kalaallit as well. They favor the term Yupik, Yupiit, or Eskimo. However, the Yupik people of Alaska and Siberia do not consider themselves Inuit and are ethnically different from Inuit people. ![]() It is now considered a derogatory term, and the Indigenous people of Greenland, Alaska, and Canada prefer the term “Inuit” instead. The word “Eskimo” was once commonly used to refer to the two main Indigenous groups in the Arctic: the Inuit of northern Alaska, Canada, and Greenland, and the Yupik of western Alaska, south-central Alaska, and the Russian Far East. Archaeologists found that the Thule culture developed along the Alaskan coast and moved east towards Canada and Greenland. DNA evidence suggests that the present-day Inuit descended from the Thule, a group thought to have migrated to the Arctic around the year 1000. The Inuit are Indigenous people who live in the Arctic regions from Alaska to Siberia.
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