Wikibooks: Canadian History/The People of the Lands/Inuit

• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic; Canada; Greenland; caribou; eskimo*; First Nations; inuit; musk ox; Tuniit; Alaska; walrus*
• Online Access: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Canadian_History/The_People_of_the_Lands/Inuit

Inuit refers to a large aboriginal group that live in the Arctic Regions. The Arctic is definitely a challenging climate to live in long bitter winters and short cool summers. However the Inuit have been doing it for a extraordinarily long time this native group can trace their ancestry back to thousands of years BCE. They are also wrongly referred to as Eskimos. The Inuit people are not actually considered to be part of The First Nations. This term usually refers to the other indigenous people of Canada. The Inuit are included under the Constitution Act (1982) as Aboriginal peoples of Canada however. = Early History = The Inuit s history was first recorded when they conquered the previous people the Tuniit when they started moving east from Alaska across the Arctic Circle at around 1000 AD. The Inuit reached the Atlantic Ocean around 1400 AD. They had an advantage over the other groups who had settled in the region because they had dogs and boats. Because of the Little Ice Age happening around 1408 AD the Inuit were forced to move to souther Greenland in search of food. By that time the Inuit were struggling with their main way of living. The weather made it too icy to hunt whales in the northern Arctic and they could not afford to live in houses of sod like they had before. Instead they were forced to travel farther and farther down south and had to live in tents and igloos for most of the time. By 1500 AD the Inuit had reached southern Labrador and started their new life. = Diet = The Inuit regularly hunted fished and gathered their food. Tribes that lived on the coast depended more on seals walrus and whales whereas inland tribes hunted more caribou and musk ox. Both tribes ate fish. They consumed a diet high in meat because it kept them warm strong fit and healthy. Another reason was that they had no choice for vegetation was extremely limited in the Arctic and trees were hardly taller than shrubs. Every part of an animal was carefully used including the fat. This fat was collected and used for oil in ...