| Summary: | Between AD 1000 and 1940, North American arctic communities made almost continuous modifications of their economies, demographic behaviour, and social relations in response to changes in their physical and social environments. Some communities, unable to make appropriate changes, became extinct; others were able to use the opportunities of specific physical and social environments to create and maintain flourishing societies. Responses to particular events within the two kinds of environments included migration, expansion of population and territory, and occupational diversification. In their external relations with each other and with other aboriginal communities, Paleo- Eskimo, Neo-Eskimo, and Inuit societies used war, alliance, and trade as means of ensuring access to adequate supplies of necessary resources. Between 1700 and 1950, depending on place, Asians, Europeans and Americans entered the arctic and, again depending on place, created new social environments. Initially, and in nearly all cases, they opened up new opportunities for solving problems of economic uncertainty and unpredictability. Historic Inuit responded with a wide range of strategies, balancing traditional approaches with innovations. Inuit worldviews not only provided descriptions of the arctic world, they also offered prescriptions for behaviours appropriate to that world. Social organization both reflected worldview and supported it. In spite of failures of the ideological and social systems which resulted in extinctions of some communities, Inuit society as a whole survived extreme pressures from both physical and social environments until the early twentieth century. The successes reinforced worldviews and contributed to the maintenance of an essentially Eskimoan way of life. Until the imposition of government and government-backed agencies, Historic Inuit societies continued to direct their own affairs. The "Government Era," or more accurately, the "Government Eras," began at different times in different places, and resulted in the ...
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