Talk:Inuit
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Are we going to act?
I agree with Diderot and 142.103.243.155. Greenlanders and Eastern Canadian Eskimos can be referred to as Inuit without any second thoughts. Western Canadian Eskimos can generally be referred to the same way, but it's not entirely true. When one gets into Yupik and Iñupiaq territory, however, the term is no longer applicable under any standard.
Having Eskimo redirect to Inuit is a fallacy, as is the usage of Inuit-Aleut languages instead of Eskimo-Aleut languages. We should reorganize this article and move some information so that Eskimo refers to all the circumpolar peoples that traditionally speak Eskimo-Aleut languages, while Inuit refers only to those Eskimos whose traditional homeland lies in Eastern Canada and Greenland. A thorough explanation of the controversy surrounding the issue, as well as the continued academic use of Eskimo as a more general term and Inuit as a specific term, should be on *both* pages.
Political correctness is good, but there is such a thing as being too politically correct: with the best intentions, people found most occurances of "eskimo" in Wikipedia articles and replaced them with "Inuit". No doubt an Eastern Canadian Eskimo would probably have found their usage offensive, but the usage of the term "Inuit" for both possible meanings is ambiguous and thus should not be common practice; in addition many non-Inuit Eskimos are offended by the usage of the term "Inuit" to describe them, as they are most certainly *not* Inuit.
In addition, Inuktitut is not the language of the Eskimos, it is the language of the Inuit. Each group of Eskimos has their own language (Yupik, Inupiaq, Aleut, Siberian Yupik, Western Canadian Inuktitut [aka Inuvialuktun], Yuit, Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, sometimes Greenlandic Inuit), each distinct from the others.
The time has come to reach a mutual decision on this point rather than continued procrastination! -- Ifoolyou 00:47, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- Thanks very much to the contributors who refactored this article properly, and who resolved my ignorance as expressed in the old comments below. - Montréalais 06:20, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Comment
The convention is generally to exclude the Aleuts and Yupik from the label "Inuit." The word means "people" or "human" in Inuktitut, and the Aleuts and Yupiks don't speak Inuktitut anymore than Spanyards speak Romanian. Inuit does cover the people who live north of the tree line from the east coast of Greenland to where the Yupik communities start in Alaska. "Eskimo" is a discouraged word - although not for very good reasons IMHO - and sometimes does include Aleuts and Yupiks.
-- Diderot
"Inuit" vs. "Eskimo"
The Eskimos of Alaska are also called "Inuit," or so I thought, and I thought the natives of Greenland are too. I don't know how these people are related to the natives of northern Siberia. --LMS, who is from Alaska but who is not Inuit
- As far as I can gather, they are called Inuit, and belong to the subgroup Yupik. Inuit is the broadest term. - montréalais
- Inuit is not the broadest term. It is the term which refers to one particular people, and most of the Yupik strongly object to being called Inuit, though they don't mind Eskimo. Inuit explicitly does not include the Yupik-- it's like using Chinese to describe all East Asians because the collective term "Oriental" is found offensive by some. Linguists continue to use Eskimo to cover both groups, cf. http://www.uaf.edu/anlc/yupik_inuit.html . Eskimo is the only broadest term to describe both. However, since the Inuit themselves object to the term, it's problematic. -- User:142.103.243.155
I have moved the material from Eskimo here and redirected it. I also added some material that was in the Esperanto ("Inuko") article. - montréalais
"Native Peoples", "First Peoples", or "Aboriginal Peoples"
I have seen "Native" used most often in the phrase "Native-newcomer relation" in Canadian history books (where "newcomer" refers to Europeans). And I've seen some Inuit-F.N.-Métis joined publications where they self-refer as "Aboriginal". But I have never heard of "First Peoples" (only "First Nations"), but apparently there are over 2,000 Googles (http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&safe=active&q=%22First+Peoples%22+inuit+nations)] for it. Many are government webpages, so it must be solidly used. --Menchi 03:54, 29 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Geronticide?
The Inuit practice geronticide, according to many cultural anthropology textbooks. I would love to see this incorporated in the article, because it is a fascinating and perverse idea to many in contemporary industrialized societies. The handling of this, specifically the view that it is normal or expected, reveals a lot about the harshness of their environment.
Google reveals much information on this topic, but not being well-versed in anthropology, I'd be afraid to add it.
- The Inuit practiced geronticide. The past tense is important here. The ease and speed with which they abandonned it attests to how much it was a matter of necessity when they did practice it, not deeply ingrained cultural values. It was also not a universal practice - there were groups that found the notion profoundly immoral well before the missionaries showed up. Necessity was a key factor wherever it took place. Even among the Inuit who did use this practice, killing an elderly family member without the justification of severe necessity - not merely the existence of a burden - constituted murder. This point needs to be emphasized.
- They cared about their old people too, but they didn't always have the means to support community members who would never be able to contribute to the real economy. The practice ended more or less with the arrival of the missionaries and, not too much later, the government. Even before that, it was something practiced largely under conditions of severe resource shortages - usually bad hunting years - and more often than not with the consent of the elderly victims. Those who knew they were a severe burden on their families often chose suicide in some form rather than remaining a burden. Infanticide was also practiced under severe conditions, as it has been in every human society. Infanticide was also more commonplace than geronticide - which has also generally been true of all human societes.
- In general, the Inuit had respected elders as de facto commmunity leaders. Theirs was not a Logan's Run sort of society.
- I have no objection to saying something like this in the article, but don't do the "they abandonned their elderly on ice floes" thing. That's a myth. The practice was a lot less cruel than that as I understand it. Most of the time, it was a form of assisted suicide rather than an imposed death sentence. Abandonment was far more often used for infanticide than geronticide. And, geronticide was far from expected. People did not go through their lives knowing that they would end up abandoned on the ice.
- --Diderot 11:05, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)