Culture of the Inuit Tribes of Alaska

Kinship and Culture of the Inuit Tribes of Alaska

By

2013 June 09

The Inuit tribes of Alaska are a foraging and horticultural people, moving during the different seasons to wherever the best source of food is. The different Inuit travel in smaller tribes during the Summer so as to not place a large strain on the available recourses and environment of the certain area, this is called Fission, during the Winter months the Inuit tribes come back together to form larger tribes and this is called fusion (Nowak B & Laird P, 2010) because of the small bands the Inuit rely heavily on a kinship type of culture, during this paper I will explain how kinship has affected the Inuit way of life.

The Inuit people live in environments that are considered very harsh and unable to be cultivated for crops the Inuit people must rely on the ability to forage and hunt for food. When an individual goes to hunt for seal of elk because those are the staple foods of the Inuit people (Nowak B & Laird P, 2010) if he is successful then he will first ensure that his family is fed but because the Inuit are constantly moving to where the food is, having the excess food turns out to be a hindrance because then they would have to insure that the extra traveled with them, so instead after insuring that his own family is fed a hunter will then share the extra meat with a hunter who was not successful during that particular hunt, this is called Generalized reciprocity, which is an act in which something is given with the belief that things will eventually even themselves out such as while one hunter may have been successful during the hunting season and another was not the successful hunter will share his food with the knowledge that the other hunters will also support him during his time of need in the future (Nowak B & Laird P, 2010).

The kinship system impacts the lives of the Inuit's because being a foraging society that must move from one area to the next very hastily to keep up with migration patterns of the different foods, the Inuit's as I stated before must always be prepared to move which includes the necessity to cut down on unnecessary items to be carried. Another way that the kinship system affects the group is through religious and spiritual beliefs (Nowak B & Laird P, 2010). One Such example of this is healing rituals when the Inuit are gathered in large enough groups. These beliefs can also lead to negative affects within a kinship system such as the different social and religious taboos that the Inuit have which they believe can have repercussions for the whole tribe when disobeyed, such as illnesses and food or supply shortages(isumaproductions, 2006).

When compared to my own life or American culture in general I would say that there may be very few similarities but very many