The Creativity of Suffering: The Eskimo

• Main Author: Motz, Lotte
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University PressNew York, NY 1997
• Subjects: Chukchee; eskimo*; inuit; Siberia
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195089677.003.0005; https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/52595614/isbn-9780195089677-book-part-5.pdf

Abstract The territory of the Eskimo (Inuit) is sparsely settled. A population of about 100,000 dwells in an area that extends across the North American continent and reaches the Chukchee Peninsula of Siberia.1 The most northern of the groups, the Polar Eskimo, lives at the edge of the inhabitable world. Some experts believe that the tribes had been pressed toward the North from a more southerly station of the continent. Whatever their point of origin, they found their new homeland to be a place of harsh and cruel natural conditions that allowed them no more than a life of bare subsistence. In our time the region has been modernized, and Inuit culture has all but vanished.