Qailertetang is an Inuit goddess who cares for animals, fishers, and hunters and who controls the weather. She dwells with her companion Sedna at the bottom of the sea in the company of seals, whales, and other sea creatures. Qailertetang is depicted as a "large woman of very heavy limbs". Before hunts, she, along with Sedna, are served by shamans on behalf of the rest of the tribe in rituals designed to ensure success in said hunts[1] as coastal Inuit groups' diets mostly consist of sea animals.
The word also used to refer to two ritual figures in the Inuit new year holiday, Quviasukvik, the most important Inuit holiday. Two gigantic figures wearing heavy boots, several pairs of breeches, a woman's overjacket, and tattooed sealskin masks and carrying seal spears and scrapers in their hands and an inflated buoy of sealskin on their back, would pair off the men and women and then chase them to the woman's hut "where they are for the following day and night man and wife." After this, the qailertetang go to the shore, invoke the north wind for good weather, and ward off the "unfavorable" south wind. As soon as they finish this, all the men of the village attack them with great noise, pretending to kill them and slashing open the buoys they carry. The men leave to get their drinking cups and the qailertetang "awake to new life." After filling their sealskins with water, each man would pass them a cup of water from it and ask about the future, if the hunt will be successful, and about life events in general. They would answer in murmurs which the inquirer would have to interpret themselves. Inuit scholars Laugrand and Oosten call them the representatives of Sedna.[2]
↑ Laugrand, Frédéric; Oosten, Jarich (2002). "Quviasukvik. The celebration of an Inuit winter feast in the central Arctic". Journal de la société des américanistes.88: 207-208. doi:10.4000/jsa.2772.
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.
Sedna is the goddess of the sea and marine animals in Inuit mythology, also known as the Mother of the Sea or Mistress of the Sea. The story of Sedna, which is a creation myth, describes how she came to rule over Adlivun, the Inuit underworld.
In Inuit religion, Pinga is a goddess of the hunt and medicine. She is heavily associated with the sky.
The Adlet are a race of creatures in the Inuit mythology of Greenland, as well as the Labrador and Hudson Bay coasts. While the word refers to inland native American tribes, it also denotes a humanoid dog-legged tribe. The lower part of the body of the canine Adlet is like that of a dog and their upper part is like a man's. All Adlet run quickly, and their encounters with men usually end with man as the victor.
Selkies are mythological creatures that can shapeshift between seal and human forms by removing or putting on their seal skin. They feature prominently in the oral traditions and mythology of various cultures, especially those of Celtic and Norse origin. The term “selkie” derives from the Scots word for “seal”, and is also spelled as silkies, sylkies, or selchies. Selkies are sometimes referred to as selkie folk, meaning 'seal folk'. Selkies are mainly associated with the Northern Isles of Scotland, where they are said to live as seals in the sea but shed their skin to become human on land.
The Inuit angakkuq is an intellectual and spiritual figure in Inuit culture who corresponds to a medicine man. Other cultures, including Alaska Natives, have traditionally had similar spiritual mediators, although the Alaska Native religion has many forms and variants.
Kiviuq is a legendary hero of the epic stories of the Inuit of the Arctic regions of northern Canada, Alaska and Greenland.
Mukluks or kamik are soft boots, traditionally made of reindeer (caribou) skin or sealskin, and worn by Indigenous Arctic peoples, including Inuit, Iñupiat, and Yup'ik.
Seal hunting, or sealing, is the personal or commercial hunting of seals. Seal hunting is currently practiced in nine countries: United States, Canada, Namibia, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Finland and Sweden. Most of the world's seal hunting takes place in Canada and Greenland.
Ennadai Lake is a lake in the Kivalliq Region, Nunavut, Canada. It is 84 km (52 mi) long, and 4.8 to 22.5 km wide. It is drained to the north by the Kazan River. A 615 km (382 mi) section of the Kazan River from the outlet of Ennadai Lake to Baker Lake, was designated as a part of the Canadian Heritage Rivers System in 1990.
Arnapkapfaaluk was the sea goddess of the Inuit of Canada's Coronation Gulf area. Although occupying the equivalent position to Sedna within Inuit religion, in that she had control of the animals of the seas, she was noticeably different as can be seen by the English translation of her name.
Historically Inuit cuisine, which is taken here to include Greenlandic cuisine, Yup'ik cuisine and Aleut cuisine, consisted of a diet of animal source foods that were fished, hunted, and gathered locally.
The Inuit are an indigenous people of the Arctic and subarctic regions of North America. The ancestors of the present-day Inuit are culturally related to Iñupiat, and Yupik, and the Aleut who live in the Aleutian Islands of Siberia and Alaska. The term culture of the Inuit, therefore, refers primarily to these areas; however, parallels to other Eskimo groups can also be drawn.
Nuliajuk is a goddess of the Netsilik Inuit. According to Rasmussen Nuliajuk lives on the bottom of the sea and controls sea mammals. Whenever humans neglect to observe ritual prohibitions, she imprisons the sea-mammals within the drip-basin under her lamp, so that shamans must conjure her so as to release them. Nuliajuk is co-wife with Isarraitaitsoq; their husband is the scorpionfish god Kanajuk. They have an adopted baby, which they stole "from a sleeping mother when her husband was out hunting at the breathing holes".
Grafton was a 56-ton schooner sailing out of Sydney during the 1860s that was wrecked on 3 January 1864 in the north arm of Carnley Harbour, Auckland Island, one of the New Zealand Subantarctic Islands, nearly 480 kilometres (300 mi) south of the South Island. Her castaway crew waited a year for a ship to come to their rescue, which, it soon became apparent, would not come. Six months later, three men decided to set out in a dinghy and managed to cross a distance of 450 kilometres (280 mi) to Stewart Island, 30 kilometres (20 mi) south of New Zealand's South Island. They then funded a rescue mission to pick up their remaining companions. The crew spent a total of 18 months on the sub-Antarctic island and, despite their ordeal, all survived.
Yup'ik clothing refers to the traditional Eskimo-style clothing worn by the Yupik people of southwestern Alaska.
Traditional Inuit clothing is a complex system of cold-weather garments historically made from animal hide and fur, worn by Inuit, a group of culturally related Indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic areas of Canada, Greenland, and the United States. The basic outfit consisted of a parka, pants, mittens, inner footwear, and outer boots. The most common sources of hide were caribou, seals, and seabirds, although other animals were used when available. The production of warm, durable clothing was an essential survival skill which was passed down from women to girls, and which could take years to master. Preparation of clothing was an intensive, weeks-long process that occurred on a yearly cycle following established hunting seasons. The creation and use of skin clothing was strongly intertwined with Inuit religious beliefs.
Archaeological evidence indicates that the use of Inuit clothing extends far back into prehistory, with significant evidence to indicate that its basic structure has changed little since. The clothing systems of all Arctic peoples are similar, and evidence in the form of tools and carved figurines indicates that these systems may have originated in Siberia as early as 22,000 BCE, and in northern Canada and Greenland as early as 2500 BCE. Pieces of garments found at archaeological sites, dated to approximately 1000 to 1600 CE, are very similar to garments from the 17th to mid-20th centuries, which confirms consistency in the construction of Inuit clothing over centuries.
Inuit navigation techniques are those navigation skills used for thousands of years by the Inuit, a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples who inhabit the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Canada, and Alaska. On the tundra, Inuit hunters would travel for long distances when hunting for game, and on the coastal waters, hunters would travel out of the sight of land, and they would need to orientate themselves to the location of favoured fishing or hunting places, or on the return journey to their dwelling place.
Kakiniit are the traditional tattoos of the Inuit of the North American Arctic. The practice is done almost exclusively among women, with women exclusively tattooing other women with the tattoos for various purposes. Men could also receive tattoos but these were often much less extensive than the tattoos a woman would receive. Facial tattoos are individually referred to as tunniit (ᑐᓃᑦ), and would mark an individual's transition to womanhood. The individual tattoos bear unique meaning to Inuit women, with each individual tattoo carrying symbolic meaning. However, in Inuinnaqtun, kakiniq refers to facial tattoos.
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