Inuit religion
Inuit religion is the shared spiritual beliefs and practices of the Inuit, an indigenous people from Alaska, northern Canada, parts of Siberia, and Greenland. Their religion shares many similarities with some Alaska Native religions. Traditional Inuit religious practices include animism and shamanism, in which spiritual healers mediate with spirits.[1] Today many Inuit follow Christianity (with 71 per cent of Canadian Inuit identifying as Christian as of 2021);[2] however, traditional Inuit spirituality continues as part of a living, oral tradition and part of contemporary Inuit society. Inuit who balance indigenous and Christian theology practice religious syncretism.[3]
Inuit cosmology provides a narrative about the world and the place of people within it. Rachel Qitsualik-Tinsley writes:
Traditional stories, rituals, and taboos of the Inuit are often precautions against dangers posed by their harsh Arctic environment. Knud Rasmussen asked his guide and friend Aua, an angakkuq (spiritual healer), about Inuit religious beliefs among the Iglulingmiut (people of Igloolik) and was told: "We don't believe. We fear." Authors Inge Kleivan and Birgitte Sonne debate possible conclusions of Aua's words, because the angakkuq was under the influence of Christian missionaries, and later he even converted to Christianity. Their study also analyses beliefs of several Inuit groups, concluding (among others) that fear was not diffuse.[5]
Inuit cultural beliefs[edit]
Angakkuq[edit]
Among Canadian Inuit, a spiritual healer is known as an angakkuq (plural: angakkuit, Inuktitut syllabics ᐊᖓᑦᑯᖅ or ᐊᖓᒃᑯᖅ[7][8]) in Inuktitut[9] or angatkuq in Inuvialuktun.[10] The duties of an angakkuq include helping the community when marine animals, kept by Takanaluk-arnaluk or Sea Woman in a pit in her house, become scarce, according to Aua, an informant and friend of the anthropologist Knud Rasmussen. Aua described the ability of an apprentice angakkuq to see himself as a skeleton,[11] naming each part using the specific shaman language.[12][11]
Inuit at Amitsoq Lake[edit]
The Inuit at Amitsoq Lake (a rich fishing ground) on King William Island had seasonal and other prohibitions for sewing certain items. Boot soles, for example, could only be sewn far away from settlements in designated places.[13] Children at Amitsoq once had a game called tunangusartut in which they imitated the adults' behaviour towards the spirits, even reciting the same verbal formulae as angakkuit. According to Rasmussen, this game was not considered offensive because a "spirit can understand the joke."[14]
Netsilik Inuit[edit]
The homelands of the Netsilik Inuit (Netsilingmiut meaning "People of the Seal") have extremely long winters and stormy springs. Starvation was a common danger.[15]
While other Inuit cultures feature protective guardian powers, the Netsilik have traditional beliefs that life's hardships stemmed from the extensive use of such measures. Unlike the Iglulik Inuit, the Netsilik used a large number of amulets. Even dogs could have amulets.[16] In one recorded instance, a young boy had 80 amulets, so many that he could hardly play.[15][17] One particular man had 17 names taken from his ancestors and intended to protect him.[15][18]
Tattooing among Netsilik women provided power and could affect which world they went to after their deaths.[19]
Nuliajuk, the Sea Woman, was described as "the lubricous one".[20] If the people breached certain taboos, she held marine animals in the basin of her qulliq an oil lamp that burns seal fat. When this happened the angakkuq had to visit her to beg for game. In Netsilik oral history, she was originally an orphan girl mistreated by her community.[21]
Moon Man, another cosmic being, is benevolent towards humans and their souls as they arrived in celestial places.[22][23] This belief differs from that of the Greenlandic Inuit, in which the Moon's wrath could be invoked by breaking taboos.[22]
Sila or Silap Inua, often associated with weather, is conceived of as a power contained within people.[24] Among the Netsilik, Sila was imagined as a male. The Netsilik (and Copper Inuit) believed Sila was originally a giant baby whose parents died fighting giants.[25]
Caribou Inuit[edit]
Caribou Inuit is a collective name for several groups of inland Inuit (the Krenermiut, Aonarktormiut, Harvaktormiut, Padlermiut, and Ahearmiut) living in an area bordered by the tree line and the west shore of Hudson Bay. They do not form a political unit and maintain only loose contact, but they share an inland lifestyle and some cultural unity. In the recent past, the Padlermiut took part in seal hunts in the ocean.[26]
The Caribou have a dualistic concept of the soul. The soul associated with respiration is called umaffia (place of life)[27] and the personal soul of a child is called tarneq (corresponding to the nappan of the Copper Inuit). The tarneq is considered so weak that it needs the guardianship of a name-soul of a dead relative. The presence of the ancestor in the body of the child was felt to contribute to a more gentle behavior, especially among boys.[28] This belief amounted to a form of reincarnation.[27][29]
Because of their inland lifestyle, the Caribou have no belief concerning a Sea Woman. Other cosmic beings, named Sila or Pinga, control the caribou, as opposed to marine animals. Some groups have made a distinction between the two figures, while others have considered them the same. Sacrificial offerings to them could promote luck in hunting.[30]
Caribou angakkuit performed fortune-telling through qilaneq, a technique of asking questions to a qila (spirit). The angakkuq placed his glove on the ground and raised his staff and belt over it. The qila then entered the glove and drew the staff to itself. Qilaneq was practiced among several other Alaskan Native groups and provided "yes" or "no" answers to questions.[31][32]
Copper Inuit[edit]
Spiritual beliefs and practices among Inuit are diverse, just like the cultures themselves. Similar remarks apply for other beliefs: term silap inua / sila, hillap inua / hilla (among Inuit), ellam yua / ella (among Yup'ik) has been used with some diversity among the groups.[33] In many instances it refers to "outer space", "intellect", "weather", "sky", "universe":[33][34][35][36][37] there may be some correspondence with the presocratic concept of logos.[34][38] In some other groups, this concept was more personified ([sɬam juɣwa] among Siberian Yupik).[39]
Among Copper Inuit, this "Wind Indweller" concept is related to spiritual practice: angakkuit were believed to obtain their power from this indweller, moreover, even their helping spirits were termed as silap inue.[40]
Greenland Inuit[edit]
Greenlandic Inuit believed that spirits inhabited every human joint, even knucklebones.[41]
Tuurngait[edit]
Some spirits have never been connected to physical bodies. These are called tuurngait (also tornait, tornat, tornrait, singular tuurngaq, torngak, tornrak, tarngek) and "are often described as a shaman's helping spirits, whose nature depends on the respective angakkuq".[43] Helpful spirits can be called upon in times of need and "[...] are there to help people," explains Inuit elder Victor Tungilik.[43] Some tuurngait are evil, monstrous, and responsible for bad hunts and broken tools. They can possess humans, as recounted in the story of Atanarjuat. An angakkuq with good intentions can use them to heal sickness and find animals to hunt and feed the community. They can fight or exorcise bad tuurngait, or they can be held at bay by rituals; However, an angakkuq with harmful intentions can also use tuurngait for their own personal gain, or to attack other people and their tuurngait.
Though once Tuurngaq simply meant "killing spirit", it has, with Christianisation, taken on the meaning of a demon in the Christian belief system.
Below is an incomplete list of Inuit deities believed to hold power over some specific part of the Inuit world: