Kitaamiut

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Greenland women pluck seabirds (1960s)

The Kitaamiut (also West Greenlanders ) are by far the largest ethnic group in Greenland with just under 46,000 people (2005). Their language Kitaamiutut is an idiom of the Greenlandic language Kalaallisut , which is mixed with some Danish loan words. Often times, due to the fact that over 90% of the Greenland Inuit speak this language, it is not differentiated from Kalaallisut.

You live on the west coast between Upernavik and Nanortalik .

Kujataamiut

A small subgroup of the Kitaamiut are the 150 or so South Greenlanders ( Kujataamiut ) who live on the south-west coast with a milder climate (especially in the settlements of Qassiarsuk and Igaliku ) where they raise sheep.

origin

From a genetic point of view, three quarters of the Kitaamiut can be traced back to immigrants of the Thule culture who came from the north after 1000 and settled on the west Greenland coast, and a quarter to Europeans who came to the island since the 18th century.

Culture

Sisimiut , typical town on the west Greenland coast
Two Kitaamiut in traditional kayaks

Originally all Greenland Inuit - who are part of the North American cultural area "Arctic" - were hunters, fishermen and gatherers who mainly fed on marine mammals and fish. Even today, subsistence hunting is an important supplementary supply for many families, alongside fishing, tourism and mining (iron, oil, uranium). As in many other regions of the Arctic, traditional self-sufficiency is increasingly giving way to trust in the modern market economy which, however, leads to a growing dependence on the outside world. This is especially true for the West Greenlanders. Since the 1950s, commercial fishing - especially for cod and shrimp - has become the main source of income for West Greenlanders.

The Kitaamiut are 99% Protestant . Only a few customs of the traditional animistic religion (universal soul) have survived, as Christianization was already well advanced around 1800 and was completely completed by 1901.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hein van der Voort: History of Eskimo interethnic contact and its linguistic consequences , in: Stephen A. Wurm, Peter Mühlhäusler u. Darrell T. Tryon (Ed.) Atlas of Languages ​​of Intercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia and the Americas. Volume 2, International Council of Philosophy and Humanistic Studies (UNESCO), Moutoun de Gruyter, ISBN 3-11-013417-9 . Berlin, New York 1996. p. 1052.
  2. ^ Ida Moltke et al .: Uncovering the Genetic History of the Present-Day Greenlandic Population. pdf version , article in The American Journal of Human Genetics 96, pp. 54-69, January 8, 2015.
  3. ↑ Frank Sejersen: Greenland, published in: Cæcilie Mikkelsen (Ed.): The Indigenous World - 2014. International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), Copenhagen 2014, ISBN 978-87-92786-41-8 . Pp. 20-25.
  4. ↑ Peoples and Cultures of the Circumpolar World I - Module 3: People of the Coast . University of the Arctic, accessed July 21, 2015. pp. 4-5.
  5. ↑ Stefan Bauer, Stefan Donecker, Aline Ehrenfried, Markus Hirnsperger (eds.): Fault lines in the ice. Ethnology of the Circumpolar North (= Contributions to the Circumpolar North. Vol. 1). Lit-Verlag, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-8258-8270-5 , pp. 73–74, 80–86
  6. ^ Rolf Gilberg: Polar Eskimo , in William C. Sturtevant (ed.): Handbook of North American Indians: Arctic p. 597.