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Knud Johan Victor Rasmussen was a Greenlandic-Danish polar explorer and anthropologist. He has been called the "father of Eskimology" and was the first European to cross the Northwest Passage via dog sled. He remains well known in Greenland, Denmark and among Canadian Inuit.
Inuit religion is the shared spiritual beliefs and practices of the Inuit, an indigenous people from Alaska, northern Canada, parts of Siberia and Greenland. Their religion shares many similarities with some Alaska Native religions. Traditional Inuit religious practices include animism and shamanism, in which spiritual healers mediate with spirits. Today many Inuit follow Christianity ; however, traditional Inuit spirituality continues as part of a living, oral tradition and part of contemporary Inuit society. Inuit who balance indigenous and Christian theology practice religious syncretism.
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Traditional Alaskan Native religion involves mediation between people and spirits, souls, and other immortal beings. Such beliefs and practices were once widespread among Inuit, Yupik, Aleut, and Northwest Coastal Indian cultures, but today are less common. They were already in decline among many groups when the first major ethnological research was done. For example, at the end of the 19th century, Sagdloq, the last medicine man among what were then called in English, "Polar Eskimos", died; he was believed to be able to travel to the sky and under the sea, and was also known for using ventriloquism and sleight-of-hand.
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Uvavnuk was an Inuk woman born in the 19th century, now considered an oral poet. The story of how she became an angakkuq, and the song that came to her, were collected by European explorers of Arctic Canada in the early 1920s. Her shamanistic poem-song, best known as "Earth and the Great Weather", has been anthologised many times.
Eleeshushe Parr was an Inuk graphic artist and sculptor, from the Kingnait area, who produced over 1,160 drawings. Her work has been exhibited in Canada, the United States, and Sweden.
Malaya Akulukjuk was an Inuit artist who drew works inspired by her life as a shaman and Inuit spirituality through depictions of human-animal transformations. Akulukjuk was born in 1915, and lived a traditional Inuit life in the Qikiqtat Camp of Nunavut before moving to Pangnirtung on Baffin Island in 1962. Her career as an artist started later than most, at the age of 51.
The Goose Wife is a mythical female character that appears in tales from the Inuit and other ethnic groups that dwell across the circumpolar Arctic region. The usual story is that the geese alight on land, become women by taking off their goose-skins and bathe in a lake. However, they are unaware that a human hunter is spying on them, and he steals the goose-skin of one of them, forcing her to be his wife. Due to the great similarities between both characters, the goose wife has been compared to the swan maiden, another female that alternates between human and bird forms.
References
- ↑ Jakobsen 1999, p. 143.
- 1 2 3 Dixon-Kennedy 1998, p. 121.
- 1 2 Burland 1996, p. 140.
- 1 2 Turner & Coulter 2013, "Idlirvirissong".
- 1 2 3 Bane 2016, p. 75.
- 1 2 Kroeber 1900, p. 318.
- 1 2 Kroeber 1900, p. 319.
- 1 2 Rasmussen 1929, p. 77.
- ↑ Rasmussen 1929, p. 49.