| |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Proactive disclosure Print version   | |  Environmental Atlas of the Beaufort Coastlands The People: A History
The Inuit living along the Canadian portion of the Beaufort Sea coast call themselves "Inuvialuit" or "real human beings". Their homeland stretches from the Alaskan border east to Amundsen Gulf and the western edge of the Canadian Arctic Islands, centering on the great delta of the Mackenzie River. In recent decades this homeland has seen rapid economic and social change, with the collapse of fur markets, the rise and fall of oil and gas development, the extension of the Dempster Highway to Inuvik, and the on-going evolution of local self-government. But it has an ancient history too, one which long pre-dates the arrival of Europeans. The traditional culture of the Inuvialuit was shattered by European infectious diseases in the late 19th century. What can be reconstructed of events and institutions before that date can be pieced together from traditional oral histories, archaeological research, and the writings of the various 19th-century explorers, fur traders, and missionaries who visited the western Arctic. Society At the time of European contact in the early 19th century, the Inuvialuit were divided into half a dozen distinct territorial groups or "nations". Inuvialuit nations varied in size from a few hundred to nearly a thousand people. All told there were about 2500 Inuvialuit in the early 19th century. They lived in perhaps the richest wildlife area of northern Canada, with a population density many times that of the Central Arctic.
Inuvialuit nations probably functioned much like those of their better documented western neighbours, the Inupiat, as the Inuit or Eskimo of northwestern Alaska are called. Here each karigi (dance house) was built and operated by a single large extended family, often numbering fifty or more people. Each had a family head or chief known as an ataniq, or "boss". A successful, wealthy ataniq was called an umialiq, a "rich man". Their powers were sometimes considerable. It was reported that umialit had the power to boycott trade with whaling ships, and to demand a payment of whaling captains who wished to hire "their" people. The economy of the Inuvialuit was geared towards hunting and fishing, and both activities were the focus of considerable technological sophistication. Caribou were the most important land animal, valued for their meat, and especially for their hides, which were necessary to make warm winter clothing.
From Ancient Times... Biologically, culturally and linguistically the Inuvialuit are Inuit, closely related to all other Inuit people living across the top of North America from Bering Strait to Greenland. All share a recent common origin in a culture which archaeologists call "Thule", which arose in northwestern Alaska about 1000 years ago. Over the course of the next few centuries, Thule pioneers spread rapidly eastward throughout the Arctic in a series of migrations that changed the ethnic map of the North American Arctic. The earliest, well-attested, Thule site in Canada is located on southern Banks Island, and dates to about the year A.D. 1000. Within less than two centuries Thule hunters had spread as far as northern Greenland. These first Thule ancestors of the Inuvialuit are themselves known more by conjecture than direct evidence, in large part because land subsidence seems to have destroyed almost all of the relevant archaeological sites. Inuvialuit culture proved remarkably successful and stable, apparently much better adapted to the riverine environments of the western Canadian Arctic than its Thule predecessor. From its origins about seven hundred years ago to the time of European contact five hundred years later, very little in the way of cultural change is apparent in the archaeological record. But changes were just around the corner...
Author: D. Morrison
|
