Inughuit

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Greenland hunter on the frozen sea
Sled dog team in the Qaanaaq region

The Inughuit (other spellings: Innughuit, Innugguit ) are the smallest group of indigenous Greenland Inuit with around 800 people . They live in north-western Greenland in the Thule region between 76 ° and 79 ° north latitude , i.e. over 1,000 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle and around 1,300 kilometers from the North Pole . This makes them by far the most northerly local community in the world. In the Greenlandic language, the homeland of the Inughuit is called “ Avanersuaq ” (German “Land in the most remote north”), which is why they are also called Avanersuarmiut by the West Greenlanders . A common name of the Inughuit in German is "Polar-Eskimo" or "Polar-Inuit".

The vast majority of the Polar Inuit live in Qaanaaq , the largest town in northern Greenland. The rest is mainly divided between the permanent settlements of Savissivik , Siorapaluk and Qeqertat as well as the places Qeqertarsuaq , Moriusaq , Etah and Neqi, which are no longer inhabited all year round .

Most people work in the local fish factory or in public administration. Yet there is hardly a place in Greenland where the traditional hunting for seals, narwhals, walruses and polar bears is still so important.

The Inughuit are often referred to by the West Greenland majority population (Kalallit) as “Inuit” in a derogatory sense. They are considered to be "those who live farthest north". Conversely, some North Greenlanders do not refer to themselves as kalallite to emphasize their own ethnicity .

Origin and history

The activities of polar researcher Knud Rasmussen (left) initiated a cultural change among the polar Inuit at the beginning of the 20th century. Rasmussen took great care to preserve the traditional way of life.
Inughuit women, Cape York (ca.1910)

The Thule region was uninhabited in the 16th and 17th centuries. Around 1700 a group of copper Inuit (Kitlinermiut) immigrated from Canada , whose direct descendants are the Inughuit. For over 150 years, the northern Greenlanders were isolated from all other human populations . During this time, the bow and arrow and the construction of kayaks fell into oblivion. In the 1860s a group of Canadian Inuit immigrated again from Ellesmere Island to North Greenland under the leadership of Qillarsuaq . They brought new myths and rites with them and reactivated the lost technological knowledge.

The British polar explorer John Ross was the first European to come into contact with the Inughuit in 1816. However, they first became known through the American polar explorer Robert Peary , who started his expeditions to the northern polar region from northern Greenland between 1891 and 1909. Until then, they were practically unaffected by West Greenland and the modern world. This only changed after the first visit of the Greenland-Danish polar ethnologist Knud Rasmussen in 1904. Rasmussen then visited northern Greenland several times and had a significant influence on the recent development of the population. The beginning of his activities was the establishment of the post and trading post Thule in the sense of the expansion of the Danish colonial area. It offered the locals a market and was supposed to prevent them from being cheated by whalers passing through. From here, the first modern goods - but also new diseases - reached the polar Inuit. From 1909 to 1934 the Christianization took place by Danish missionaries who wanted to exterminate all animistic beliefs and rituals. However, Rasmussen was interested in keeping the culture change outside of religion as slow as possible. Among other things, he installed a “hunting council” consisting of three locals and three leading colonists. With that he introduced the hierarchical structures of the Europeans; but oriented towards the central interests of the Inuit. Between 1920 and 1930 the community experienced a noticeable growth in population and economy, which was evident in the construction of a church, a school and a hospital.

Inughuit from 1968, the year of the bomber crash

After the Second World War , the US Thule Air Base was established in the Inughuit area . For this, many of the local people were forcibly relocated to Qaanaaq. Even today they still demand the right to return to their homeland.

In order to protect the indigenous culture, contact between the foreigners living in Thule and the locals was forbidden. The air base hit the headlines in 1968 when a B52 long-range bomber stationed there with four hydrogen bombs crashed eleven kilometers north of the base . Three of the bombs could be recovered in the ice, a fourth with several kilograms of plutonium is said to be somewhere in the ice. Many of the Inughuit involved in the rescue fell ill and died of cancer as a result of the radiation.

Population development

Before 1880 the number of Polar Inuit was estimated at 100 to 200, around 1900 at around 250. In 1980 the Inughuit ethnic group numbered around 700 people, in 2010 it was just under 800.

language

The language of North Greenlanders is the idiom Inuktun or Avenarsuarmiutut , which is most closely related to the Canadian Inuktitut . Due to the school system and the media, however, West Greenlandic is becoming increasingly important, so that UNESCO has classified the northern dialect as "clearly endangered". At school, the young Inughuit learn mostly Danish as a foreign language .

Economy, culture and religion

Demonstration of traditional kayaking techniques for hunting narwhals.

Originally, all Greenland Inuit - who are part of the North American cultural area "Arctic" - were hunters, fishermen and gatherers . Even today, this subsistence hunting on the north-west coast, along with administrative jobs and fishing, is an essential part of the supply for most families.

A lasting "westernization" occurred since the 1950s through the influence of the Danes. Nevertheless, numerous traditional cultural elements still exist in northern Greenland today: Many Inughuit people wear self-made fur clothing in the wilderness and use kayaks and traditional hunting instruments such as harpoons. In addition, there are rifles and other modern equipment. In Qaanaaq, televisions and computers have largely replaced traditional leisure pursuits (singing, playing, testing your strength). This does not apply to the traditional diet, which is still largely based on meat and fat from marine mammals - especially seals - but also on polar bears and seasonal fish, bird eggs, crab divers and berries. The "Jagdrat" has banned the use of snowmobiles and motor boats for hunting in order to protect the animal population and preserve the hunting culture. The greatest threat to people's living space today comes from global warming , the effects of which are already very clearly perceptible in these high latitudes.

The vast majority of the Inughiut today are Protestant . Various ideas are still alive about the traditional animistic religion (all-animatedness); However, there can be no question of a syncretistic mixed religion . There are also no more shamans in North Greenland.

"Life-affirming society"

The social psychologist Erich Fromm used ethnographic records to analyze 30 pre-state peoples, including the Polar Inuit , in the context of his work Anatomy of Human Destructiveness . In conclusion, he assigned them to the “life-affirming societies”, whose cultures are characterized by a pronounced sense of community with great social equality, friendly child rearing, tolerant sexual morality and a low tendency to be aggressive. (see also: "War and Peace" in pre-state societies , as well as assignment of the East Greenlanders )

See also

Publications

Movie

literature

  • Polar Skimos: The Thule Hunters. Geo 2/1978, pages 30–50 Verlag Gruner + Jahr, Hamburg, report and pictures by Ivars Silis. "They go out with dog sleds to" make meat ": seals, walruses, narwhals. The most precious prey for the polar skimos, however, is the polar bear."
  • North America Native Museum : Inuit Life on the Edge of the World. Inuit - Life at the Edge of the World. Contrast Verlag, Zurich 2007. With 141 photographs and 7 panorama pictures by Markus Bühler-Rasom. Incl. Booklet «Travel Diary». ISBN 978-3-906729-55-8 (German text), ISBN 978-3-906729-59-6 (English text).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jan Lublinski : Dead polar bears, melting ice , DLF - Forschungs Aktuell , December 21, 2011 (January 5, 2012)
  2. ↑ a b c d Bryan u. Cherry Alexander: Eskimo - hunter of the far north. (from the English by Susanne Stephan) Belser, Stuttgart, Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-7630-2210-4 . Pp. 6-8, 10-11.
  3. ↑ a b c Michael Martin: North Greenland in Winter: Waiting for the first sunlight. Report in spiegel.de from February 29, 2012.
  4. ↑ a b c d e 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. 1053-1055.
  5. ↑ Mark Nuttall (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Arctic. Vol. 1, Routledge, New York and London 2003, ISBN 1-57958-436-5 , p. 780.
  6. ↑ New People - The Thule Culture on the website of the Greenland National Museum, accessed on July 30, 2014 (English)
  7. ↑ Knud Rasmussen ( memento from September 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) in National Geographic magazine online, accessed on July 27, 2015.
  8. ^ Rolf Gilberg: Polar Eskimo , in William C. Sturtevant (ed.): Handbook of North American Indians: Arctic S. 590, 597.
  9. ^ Resolution to the Danish Government, 2003
  10. ↑ North Greenlandic language on UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages ​​in Danger English, accessed July 26, 2015.
  11. ↑ 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.
  12. ^ Frank Sowa: Indigenous peoples in the world society. The cultural identity of the Greenland Inuit in the field of tension between nature and culture . Bielefeld: transcript, 2014, ISBN 978-3-8376-2678-0 . Pp. 221-227.
  13. ↑ 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.