It is here, based on our ability to use the physical environment and living resources of this geographic region known as the Arctic, where our culture developed and our history unfolded. Inuit are an original people of much of the land now known as Canada, and our history represents an important and fascinating story. It is not just a story about an early chapter of Canadian history.
Indeed, it is an epic tale in the history of human settlement and the endurance of culture. Each chapter of our story provides valuable lessons and insights about issues that matter to cultures everywhere. Our history is about people and their relationship to the environment and to each other; about adapting to change as well as the causes and consequences of change forced upon us through colonialism; and about how we are working towards re-establishing control over our cultural, economic and political destiny through land claims and self-government.
Above all, the story of Inuit is about how we as a culture are able to live in balance with the natural world. This is a story that we must begin to tell for ourselves. Unfortunately until now, most of the research on our culture and history has been done by individuals who come from outside our culture. It will take time to change this situation and we, as Inuit, are certainly prepared to work cooperatively with those who have devoted their professional lives to studying our culture in meaningful and respectful ways.
But their strong spiritual beliefs may help explain their insularity, he adds. The Dorset could have abstained from intermarriage with others to ensure the purity and stability of their ritual life.
The ancestors of the modern Inuit, who arrived in the Canadian Arctic a thousand years ago, with dog sleds, large skin boats, and sophisticated archery equipment, seem to have been equally puzzled by the Dorset. But when the last of the Dorset vanished from the Arctic some years later—possibly as a result of deadly diseases brought to the New World by Viking traders —Inuit storytellers preserved their memory in tales of the Tunit.
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The Paleo-Eskimo people lived in small villages populations of just 20 to 30 scattered across the Arctic, said Bill Fitzhugh , another co-author and an archaeologist at the National Museum of Natural History. In order for these societies to survive for 4, years in isolation, he suggested, they must have been very traditional—extremely connected to the land and the resources they used to survive.
Researchers still have no idea how exactly they disappeared—whether it was violence, disease or some unknown factor that wiped them out. He found evidence that the group was highly inbred, with very little genetic diversity, suggesting that very few of them crossed the Bering Sea into North America from Asia.
Willerslev, a DNA research and evolutionary biologist, says the most fascinating part of the study is that it confirms what Inuit have known for centuries. Inuit still talk about the Tunit people they encountered when they arrived.
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