Tunumiit

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East Greenlanders with harpoon in kayak seal hunt (2006)

The Tunumiit (also East Greenlanders ) are the second largest indigenous group in Greenland with 3400 people (2005) . Their language Tunumiisut is an idiom of Kalaallisut .

The Tunumiit only came into contact with Europeans around 1884 and have so far been able to best preserve the traditional culture of the Greenlanders . Today they live in the Tasiilaq and Ittoqqortoormiit districts . Due to their history, their dialect is similar to the idiom in Nunavut in Canada .

origin

From a genetic point of view, the Tunumiit can be traced back almost exclusively to immigrants from the Thule culture of West Greenland, who settled on the east coast in the 13th or 14th century. The assumption that the East Greenlanders were partly descendants of the Dorset culture , which perished around the year 1000 - traces of which can also be found in East Greenland - has been refuted by genetic studies.

Culture, history and religion

Tasiilaq , with around 2,000 inhabitants, the largest city in East Greenland
Tunumiit couple from Kulusuk
Anda Kûitse , the last shaman on Kulusuk Island

Originally, all Greenland Inuit - who are part of the North American “Arctic” cultural area - were hunters, fishermen and gatherers , especially of marine mammals and fish. Even today, subsistence hunting is an essential part of the supply of most families along with tourism and small-scale fishing on the east coast . Only marine animals (seals, walrus, narwhal and salmon) are hunted, as there are no other large mammals living on land except for the polar bear East there.

The Tunumiit lived completely isolated from the rest of the world until 1884. It is conceivable that they had contacts with European whalers before, but the existing records could also be traced back to reports from southwest Greenland that were told on the east coast.

In 1884 Gustav Frederik Holm came to East Greenland with his women's boat expedition. He had a keen interest in the rich, as yet completely unaffected culture and described in detail the religious ideas and customs, the legends and the music that played a significant part in the everyday life of the Tunumiit. There were a number of social commandments that had to be strictly observed for fear of the workings of evil spirits. Shamans ( angakkut ) danced and came into contact with the otherworldly world with the help of shaman's drums in order to drive away bad weather and cure diseases. The drum songs sung on every occasion had a magical meaning. The hunters mumbled magical verses ( serratit ) to get the hunt a happy ending, the women sang meaningful songs to their children.

In 1894 the first mission and trading post was established in Tasiilaq and West Greenland and Danish missionaries began their work to convert the pagans and to eradicate all animistic beliefs and rituals. The Danish philologist and Eskimo researcher William Thalbitzer (1873-1958), who wintered in Tasiilaq in 1905/06, was able to record some of the magic formulas of drum dance with the phonograph .

Although all Greenlanders have been officially Christianized since the beginning of the 20th century (with the establishment of a Danish school system and the transition to the monetary economy ), the original beliefs have been preserved in the remote regions of North and East Greenland to this day. It can be assumed that most of the 400 or so people who officially professed the Inuit religion in 2001 are mostly from East Greenland. However, these will mainly be older people. According to the Danish social anthropologist Merete Demant Jakobsen, the Tunumiit are the last bastion of Greenlandic shamanism . Some shamans still practiced here in the 1960s, but they were no longer considered as powerful by the population as their ancestors. The activities of today's Angakkut in East Greenland (such as Anda Kûitse from Kulusuk , 1951–2019) include, in addition to traditional tasks, above all the profane representation of the classical drum dance and the role of telling mysterious stories.

Although there are still Tunumiit who only speak East Greenlandic, there are many who can also speak Danish. Due to the school system and the media, West Greenlandic is becoming more and more important, so that the Eastern dialect has been classified by UNESCO as "clearly endangered". The West Greenlanders refer to the Tunumiit as "those who live on the back".

"Non-destructive-aggressive society"

The social psychologist Erich Fromm analyzed the willingness of 30 pre-state peoples, including the East Greenlanders, to use ethnographic records to analyze the anatomy of human destructiveness . He finally assigned them to the “non-destructive-aggressive societies”, whose cultures are characterized by a sense of community with pronounced individuality (status, success, rivalry), targeted child-rearing, regulated manners, privileges for men and, above all, male tendencies to aggression - but without destructive ones Tendencies (destructive rage, cruelty, greed for murder, etc.) - are marked. (see also: "War and Peace" in pre-state societies , as well as assignment of the North Greenlanders )

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b 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.
  2. ↑ 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
  3. ^ 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.
  4. ↑ 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.
  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. ↑ a b c 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. pp. 1043-1094, isnb. Pp. 1054-1055.
  7. ^ A b Michael Hauser : Traditional and Acculturated Greenlandic Music . In: Arctic Anthropology , Vol. 23, No. 1/2, 1986, pp. 359-386, here pp. 359 f., JSTOR 40316122
  8. ^ Rolf Gilberg: Polar Eskimo , in William C. Sturtevant (ed.): Handbook of North American Indians: Arctic pp. 577-594, in particular pp. 590, 597.
  9. ^ Religious Adherents of Greenland , en: Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA), accessed July 26, 2015.
  10. ↑ Merete Demant Jakobsen: Shamanism: Traditional and Contemporary Approaches to the Mastery of Spirits and Healing. Berghahn Books, New York 1999, ISBN 1-57181-195-8 , pp. 52, 114 f.
  11. ↑ Rósa Rut Þórisdóttir: Kap Dan, Kulusuk Photo report of a study trip as part of a doctoral thesis, 1998. In: thearctic.is, accessed on July 27, 2015.
  12. ^ East Greenlandic language on UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages ​​in Danger English, accessed on July 26, 2015.
  13. ^ Based on notes by Margaret Mead (ed.): Cooperation and Competition Among Primitive Peoples. Transaction Publishers, New Jersey (USA) 2002 (original 1937). P. 51ff.
  14. ↑ Erich Fromm: Anatomy of human destructiveness . From the American by Liselotte et al. Ernst Mickel, 86th - 100th thousand edition, Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1977, ISBN 3-499-17052-3 , pp. 191-192.