Martin Frobisher, attempting to find the Northwest Passage, encountered Inuit on Resolution Island.
The historic accounts make clear that there was a history of hostile contact within the Inuit cultures and with other cultures.
Where natural landmarks were insufficient, the Inuit would erect an inukshuk to compensate.
The Inuit should not be confused with the Innu, a distinct First Nations people who live in northeastern Quebec and Labrador.
In Canada and Greenland the term "Eskimo" has fallen out of favor, is considered pejorative, and has been replaced by the term "Inuit.
The harshness and randomness of life in the Arctic ensured that Inuit lived with concern for the uncontrollable, where a streak of bad luck could destroy an entire community.
Inuit traditional laws are anthropologically different to Western law concepts.
Warfare, in general, was not uncommon among Inuit groups with sufficient population density.
When Nunavut split off from the Northwest Territories, western Canadian Inuit, known as the Inuvialuit remained.
In 1982, the Tunngavik Federation of Nunavut (TFN) was incorporated, in order to take over negotiations for land claims on behalf of the Northwest Territories Inuit.
After roughly 1350, the climate grew colder during the Little Ice Age and the Inuit were forced to abandon hunting and whaling sites in the high Arctic.
The division of labor in traditional Inuit society had a strong gender component, but it was not absolute.
Customary law was thought nonexistent in Inuit society before the introduction of the Canadian legal system.
Inuit religion was closely tied to a system of rituals that were integrated into the daily life of the people.
Many Inuit derive part-time income from their sculpture, carving, and other crafts as well as hunting.
Caribou Inuit shamans performed fortune-telling through qilaneq, a technique of asking a qila (spirit).
The settlement of Natchitoches (along the Red River in present-day northwest Louisiana) was established in 1714, making it the oldest permanent European settlement in the Louisiana Purchase territory.
The establishment of Nunavut as a separate territory in Canada, in 1999, provided both land and autonomy for a large segment of the Inuit population.
The marital customs among the Inuit were not strictly monogamous: many Inuit relationships were implicitly or explicitly sexually open marriages; polygamy, divorce, and remarriage were fairly common.
After the disappearance of the Norse colonies in Greenland, the Inuit had no contact with Europeans for at least a century.
Anthropologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson lived with a group of Inuit, observing that the Inuit's extremely low-carbohydrate diet had no adverse effects on Stefansson's health, nor that of the Inuit.
The lives of the Inuit were largely unaffected by the arrival of visiting Norsemen except for mutual trade.
Inuit legends speak of the Tuniit as "giants," people who were taller and stronger than the Inuit.
A pervasive European myth about Inuit was that they killed elderly and unproductive people; although this is not generally true.
According to a customary Inuit saying The great peril of our existence lies in the fact that our diet consists entirely of souls.
Among the Canadian Inuit, the shaman was known as an Angakkuq (also angakuq; plural angakuit).
The Inuit hunted sea animals from single-passenger, covered seal-skin boats called qajaq which were extraordinarily buoyant, and could easily be righted by a seated person, even if completely overturned.
The Inuit believed that all things had a form of spirit or soul (in Inuktitut: anirniq - "breath"; plural anirniit), just like humans.
Inuit and Aleut are considered separate from other Native Americans.
The typical Inuit diet is high in protein and very high in fat: in their traditional diet, Inuit consumed an average of 75 percent of their daily energy intake from fat.
Before long, the Inuit population was beyond what traditional hunting and fishing could support.
By the late 1920s, there were no longer any Inuit who had not been contacted by traders, missionaries or government agents.
By the mid-1960s, Pop artists had become superstars, and many collaborated on an exhibition called "The American Supermarket" held at the Bianchini Gallery in New York from October 6 to November 7, 1964.
Inuit communities in Canada continue to suffer under unemployment, overcrowded housing, substance abuse, crime, violence, and suicide.
A number of other Inuit myth figures were thought to hold power over some specific part of the Inuit world.
That body, dated at about 1200 C.E., suggests that Inuit culture has long valued children, including those with birth defects.
Inuit guides take tourists on dog sled and hunting expeditions, and work with outfitting organizations.
The problems Inuit face in the twenty-first century should not be underestimated.
Knud Rasmussen asked his guide and friend Aua, an angakkuq (shaman), about Inuit religious beliefs among the Iglulingmiut (people of Igloolik) and was told: "We don't believe.
Other Inuit people tended to use snow to insulate their houses which consisted of whalebone and hides.
The present form of the syllabary for Canadian Inuktitut was adopted by the Inuit Cultural Institute in Canada in the 1970s.
Canadian Inuit do not consider themselves, and are not usually considered by others, to be one of the First Nations, a term which normally applies to other indigenous peoples in Canada.
Inuit made clothes and footwear from animal skins, sewn together using needles made from animal bones and threads made from other animal products such as sinew.
In 1939, the Supreme Court of Canada found in Re Eskimos that the Inuit should be considered Indians and were thus under the jurisdiction of the federal government.
No universal replacement term for "Eskimo," inclusive of all Inuit and Yupik peoples, is accepted across the geographical area which they inhabit.
In Alaska the term "Eskimo" is commonly used, because it includes both Yupik and Inupiat, while "Inuit" is not accepted as a collective term or even specifically used for Inupiat.
The Inuit oral tradition, in contrast, recounts the natives helping Frobisher's crewmen, whom they believed had been abandoned.
An igloo (Inuit language: iglu, plural: iglooit or igluit), translated sometimes as "snowhouse," is a shelter constructed from blocks of snow, generally in the form of a dome.
The European arrival eventually damaged the Inuit way of life, causing mass death through new diseases introduced by whalers and explorers, as well as social disruptions.
The Inuit mainly speak their traditional language, Inuktitut, but they also speak English, and French.
Inuit industry relied almost exclusively on animal hides, driftwood, and bones, although some tools were also made out of worked stones, particularly the readily-worked soapstone.
Respected art galleries display Inuit art, the largest collection of which is at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.
Often there were several of these in a small area, which formed an "Inuit village."
Inuit arts, carving, print making, textiles, and throat singing, are very popular, not only in Canada but globally, and Inuit artists are widely known.
The Inuit are the descendants of what anthropologists call the Thule culture, who emerged from western Alaska around 1000 C.E.
Inuit (plural: the singular, Inuk, means "man" or "person") is a general term for a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Alaska, Greenland, and Canada, and Siberia.
Inuit culture is alive and vibrant despite the negative impact of their twentieth century history.
Inuit mythology has many similarities to the religions of other polar regions.
Inuit art such as soapstone carvings is one of Nunavut's most important industries.
Parry's writings with pen and ink illustrations of Inuit everyday life (1824) and those of Lyon (1824) were widely read.
The anorak (parka) is in essence made in a similar fashion by Arctic peoples from Europe through Asia and the Americas, including by the Inuit.
Justice with Inuit cultures was moderated by their form of governance that gave significant power to the elders in such decisions.
The Inuit practiced a form of shamanism based on animist principles.
Inuit also live in Greenland, where they are known as Kalaallit, and are citizens of Denmark.
The Inuit languages, Inuktitut, appears to have a fairly secure future in Quebec and Nunavut.
Inuit from hundreds of smaller camps scattered across the north, began to congregate in these hamlets.
About 30 percent of Inuit derive part-time income from their sculpture, carving and print making.
The Inuit population was not large enough to support a full high school in every community, so this meant only a few schools were built, and students from across the territories were boarded there.
The Inuit appear not to have interfered with their operations, but they raided the stations in winter for tools, and particularly worked iron, which they adapted to native needs.
Alaskan Inupiat (from Inuit- people - and piaq/t real, so "real people") live on the North Slope of Alaska and the Seward Peninsula.
Bowhead whaling disappeared in Canada and Greenland (but continued in Alaska) and the Inuit had to subsist on a much poorer diet.
The Inuit began to emerge as a political force in the late 1960s and early 1970s, shortly after the first graduates returned home.
Such challenges to their identity has led to disturbingly high numbers of suicides among Inuit teenagers.
An important biennial event, the Arctic Winter Games, is held in communities across the northern regions of the world, featuring traditional Inuit and northern sports as part of the events.
Living in a varied and irregular world, the Inuit traditionally did not worship anything, but they feared much.
Some of the Inuit dialects were recorded in the eighteenth century, but until the latter half of the twentieth century, most were not able to read and write in their own language.
Inuit also made umiak, larger, open boats, 6 m (20 ft) - 12 m (39 ft) long, made of wood frames covered with animal skins for transporting people, goods, and dogs.
The Inuit believed that the cause of the disease came from a spiritual origin, and cures were said to be possible through confession.
The Inuit hunted sea animals from single-passenger, covered seal-skin boats called qajaq which were extraordinarily buoyant, and could easily be righted by a seated person, even if completely overturned.
Yupik people are not considered to be Inuit either by themselves or by ethnographers, and prefer to be called Yupik or Eskimo.
Among some Inuit groups divorce required the approval of the community, if there were children, and particularly the agreement of the elders.
In Canada and Greenland the term "Eskimo" has fallen out of favor, is considered pejorative, and has been replaced by the term "Inuit.
Younger generations of Inuit face a conflict between their traditional heritage and the modern society which their cultures have been forced to assimilate into in order to maintain a livelihood.
Virtually all Inuit cultures have oral traditions of raids by other indigenous peoples such as the Bloody Falls Massacre, even including fellow Inuit, and of taking vengeance on them in return.