48 Fun Facts About Inuit

What does the word 'Inuit' mean?

The people: one person is an Inuk and two are Inuuk, so a phrase like 'the Inuit people' quietly says 'people' twice.

Nanuq, familiar to English speakers as Nanook, is the Inuit word for which animal?

Polar bear: in Inuit tradition Nanuq was also the master of bears, the spirit who decided whether a hunter deserved success in finding and killing one.

Inuit descend from which culture that spread east from Alaska across Arctic Canada to Greenland?

Thule is a borrowed name: archaeologists took it from a trading post in north-west Greenland near their first finds, and the post had taken it from the ancient Greeks' word for the farthest north.

Inuit legends remember the Tuniit, who lived in the Arctic before them, as what?

Shy giants, in the usual telling: taller and stronger than Inuit yet easily put to flight. Many archaeologists identify them with the Dorset culture, which faded within a few centuries of the newcomers' arrival.

Inuit oral history helped searchers in 2014 find a sunken ship from which lost Arctic expedition?

John Franklin's: HMS Erebus lay in the bay where Inuit accounts said one abandoned ship had drifted, and HMS Terror turned up two years later. Canada said the wrecks would be co-owned with local Inuit.

Long said to mean 'eater of raw meat', the word 'Eskimo' may instead come from an Innu term for lacing what?

Snowshoes: one leading theory traces the word to an Innu term for 'one who laces snowshoes', first used of a neighbouring people. Dictionaries still call the origin unsettled, and many Inuit reject the name either way.

Greenlandic Inuit are known by what name?

Kalaallit is also in the country's own name: Greenlanders call their land Kalaallit Nunaat. The term once covered only the west coast, and the far north and the east still use names of their own.

Inuit Nunangat is the name for what?

The Inuit homeland in Canada spans four regions and about 40 per cent of the country's land. In 2009 Inuit leaders swapped the older 'Nunaat' for 'Nunangat' so that the name would take in water and ice too.

In 1999 Nunavut was carved out of the eastern part of which Canadian jurisdiction?

Northwest Territories: Inuit leaders first proposed a territory of their own in 1976, sealed it in a 1993 land-claim agreement, and on 1 April 1999 saw Canada's map redrawn for the first time in fifty years.

What is the capital of Nunavut?

Iqaluit won the job in a 1995 vote, beating Rankin Inlet. It is still the territory's only city, with fewer than 8,000 people.

Nunavut's capital is unusual among Canadian capitals in having no what?

Road link to the south: there is no railway either, so the city lives on daily flights and, in the short ice-free summer, the yearly sealift of heavy goods.

Nunavut is home to Alert, which holds what distinction?

The world's northernmost permanent settlement is a military and weather station about 800 km from the North Pole. It is staffed all year, yet nobody lives there for good: crews rotate through on postings.

In 2003 Jordin Tootoo of Rankin Inlet became the first Inuk to play in which professional league?

The NHL: Tootoo learned the game on natural ice in an unheated rink, broke in with the Nashville Predators and stayed for 13 seasons.

Inuit syllabics in Canada were adapted from a script that a missionary devised in the 1840s for which language?

Cree: James Evans, a missionary in Manitoba, created the symbols. Later missionaries and Inuit themselves carried an adapted set across the eastern Arctic.

In the Inuit one-foot high kick, an athlete kicks a hanging target and must then do what?

Land on the same foot that kicked, and keep balance. The move is said to come from whaling villages, where a messenger running home would leap and kick in the air to signal a catch from far off.

Inuit kayak hunters sealed their jackets to the cockpit rim so that, after capsizing in icy water, they could do what?

Roll the boat upright: jacket and kayak formed one watertight unit, so a flick of the hips and paddle brought the hunter back up without taking on water.

Though English keeps it for a snow dome alone, the Inuit word iglu means what?

Any kind of house: the word covers homes of every material. The snow kind was only for winter and travel, and in warmer months the same families lived in skin tents.

What did Inuit builders set into the wall of an igloo to serve as a window?

Lake ice or seal gut let the daylight in. Warmth inside did the dome no harm: the wall's inner face thawed, froze again and grew stronger.

The qulliq at the heart of a traditional Inuit home burned what for heat and light?

Seal oil, or raw blubber: the qulliq is a stone lamp, its flame tended along a wick of moss or Arctic cotton grass, and the one lamp lit the home, warmed it and cooked the food.

The ulu, an all-purpose knife with a semicircular blade, is traditionally associated with whom?

Women: ulu means 'woman's knife', and a woman might keep the same one all her adult life for cutting meat and preparing skins. Men carried other blades for the hunt.

The amauti, a woman's parka, has what special feature?

A pouch below the hood for carrying a baby: the child rides against the mother's back until about two, and can be swung round to the front to nurse without ever meeting the cold.

Traditional Inuit snow goggles work by what means?

Narrow slits carved through bone or wood cut the glare that causes snow blindness and, like a pinhole, sharpen the wearer's sight as well.

Muktuk, eaten raw and prized as a source of vitamin C, is the skin and blubber of which animal?

Whale: usually narwhal, bowhead or beluga. Because muktuk is eaten raw, its vitamin C survives, which is how a diet with almost no plants could still keep scurvy away.

Akutaq, 'Alaskan ice cream', is made of what?

Berries mixed with fat, whipped until light: caribou tallow or another animal fat stands in for the cream. Some versions stir in dried fish as well.

In Inuit tradition, who is the sea woman whose severed fingers became the seals and other sea animals?

Sedna keeps the sea animals and has no fingers to tidy her own hair. When hunting failed, a shaman was said to travel down in spirit to smooth out its tangles and coax her into releasing the game.

In traditional Inuit communities, what was an angakkuq?

A shaman and healer: when sickness or misfortune struck, the angakkuq was said to journey in spirit, in trance or in dreams, to find the cause.

Inuit throat singing, or katajjaq, is traditionally performed by whom?

Two women facing each other trade breathy sounds in a game of stamina, and the first to laugh or run out of breath loses. Missionaries once banned it; a revival began in the 1980s.

What does the word 'inuksuk' mean?

That which acts in the capacity of a human: the stone markers stand in for a person, pointing travellers to routes, food caches and good hunting when nobody is there to do it.

The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics logo was based on what?

An inunnguaq stone figure: the emblem, named Ilanaaq, 'friendship', has a head, arms and legs. One Inuit leader objected that true inuksuit are never built with any of those, and that such figures go by this other name.

Kenojuak Ashevak, perhaps the best-known Inuit artist, made her name with which 1960 print, later a Canadian stamp?

The Enchanted Owl, its feathers fanning out like rays, went onto a Canadian postage stamp in the 1970s. Ashevak was urged to keep making art by James Houston, the man who brought printmaking to Cape Dorset.

Which English explorer met Inuit in the Arctic in 1576 and carried a captive home?

Martin Frobisher went back twice for what he took to be gold. He shipped home hundreds of tonnes of worthless rock, along with more Inuit captives, who soon died in England.

In the High Arctic relocation of 1953, Canada moved Inuit families from northern Quebec to which two far-northern settlements?

Resolute and Grise Fiord lie some 2,000 km north of the families' homes. Promised good hunting and a way back after two years, they found months of darkness, scarce game and no passage home.

Besides Alaska, Canada and Greenland, the Inuit Circumpolar Council represents Inuit in which country?

Russia: the council's fourth branch is in Chukotka, the tip of Siberia that faces Alaska across the Bering Strait. Its first meeting, in the Alaskan town of Barrow, drew delegates only from the other three.

Which word completes the translation of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, 'Inuit are [blank] in Canada'?

United: the group began in 1971 as the Inuit Tapirisat, 'Inuit will be united', and moved to the present tense in 2001, once land claims had been settled in every Inuit region.

In 2021 Mary Simon, an Inuk from Nunavik, became the first Indigenous person to hold which Canadian office?

Governor General: Simon was already the first Inuk to hold the rank of ambassador, a post in which she led the talks that created the eight-nation Arctic Council in 1996.

Nanook of the North (1922), a landmark documentary filmed among Inuit of northern Quebec, was directed by whom?

Robert Flaherty cast the hunter Allakariallak as 'Nanook' and staged much of what he shot: for the igloo scenes a second igloo was built with one wall missing, to let in the camera and its operator.

Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001) was the first feature film made entirely in which Arctic language?

Inuktitut: the film was written, directed and acted by Inuit, from a legend handed down by word of mouth. It won the Caméra d'Or at Cannes, and a 2015 Toronto poll named it the best Canadian film ever made.

Which English word for a hooded jacket was borrowed from the Inuit of Greenland?

Anorak comes from the Greenlandic annoraaq. Its rival 'parka' is not an Inuit word at all: it reached English through Alaska from Russian, which is said to have taken it from a Siberian language.

The Sadlermiut of Southampton Island, long isolated from other Inuit, were wiped out in 1902–03 by what?

A ship-borne disease, caught from a sailor on a visiting whaler, killed the last few dozen Sadlermiut in one winter. Their unusual tools and houses had made scholars wonder whether they descended from the older Dorset people.

Kakiniit, marks worn on the face and hands that missionaries once forbade, are a traditional Inuit form of what?

Tattooing: the designs were poked into the skin by hand with a needle. After a century of suppression, Inuit began reviving the art in the 2010s.

Inuit in north-west Greenland long hammered iron blades from what?

A meteorite: generations carried hammer stones long distances to chip metal for knives and harpoon tips from the 'great irons' of Cape York. In the 1890s Robert Peary shipped the biggest pieces to a New York museum.

What was the umiaq, which carried Inuit families between camps?

A large open skin boat. The kayak was the lone hunter's craft; this was the boat for everyone else and all they owned, though crews also hunted whales from it.

Explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who had lived among Inuit, ate only meat for a year in a hospital study that found what?

No ill effects: the doctors reported in 1929 that a man could live for long periods on meat alone, though only with plenty of fat, since lean meat by itself was poorly tolerated.

Linguists say the famous claim of dozens of Inuit 'words for snow' misleads because Inuit languages do what?

Build words from many parts: a speaker adds endings to one root to say what English needs a whole phrase for, so the possible 'words' never run out. One dictionary lists only about a dozen basic snow terms.

What do Inuit in Canada call what they hunt, fish and gather, from caribou to Arctic char?

Country food is the everyday name for it, and it is bound up with Inuit identity as much as with diet. Environmental and economic change is making it costlier and harder to harvest.

Nunavut's legislature runs by consensus: its members are elected and sit without what?

Political parties: candidates run as individuals, and the elected members then pick the speaker, the premier and the cabinet from among themselves. Only one other province or territory works this way.

Which act names Inuit, with First Nations and Métis, as Canada's Aboriginal peoples?

The 1982 Constitution Act defines the Aboriginal peoples of Canada as 'Indian, Inuit and Métis'. The clause was struck out during the 1981 negotiations and restored only after Indigenous leaders, Inuit among them, lobbied to get it back.

In 2019 Canada's prime minister apologised to Inuit for the government's handling of which epidemic in the 1940s to 1960s?

Tuberculosis: patients were shipped south for months or years, and some who died were buried without their families being told. In 2022 the Inuit rate was still over 450 times that of non-Indigenous people born in Canada.