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Eskimo

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Peoples

   Distribution of Inuit language variants across the Arctic.
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   Distribution of Inuit language variants across the Arctic.
   An Eskimo family
   Enlarge
   An Eskimo family

   Eskimos, or Esquimaux, are terms used to refer to people who inhabit
   the circumpolar region, excluding Scandinavia and most of Russia, but
   including the easternmost portions of Siberia. There are two main
   groups of Eskimos: the Inuit in northern Alaska, Canada and Greenland,
   and the Yupik of western Alaska and the Russian Far East.

   The Eskimos are related to the Aleuts and the Alutiiq from the Aleutian
   Islands in Alaska as well as the Sug'piak from the Kodiak Islands and
   as far as the Prince William Sound in southcentral Alaska.

   Eastern Eskimo people (Inuit) speak Inuktitut, and western Alaskan
   Eskimo communities (Yup'ik) speak Yup'ik. There is a dialect continuum
   between the two, and the westernmost dialects of Inuktitut could be
   viewed as forms of Yup'ik. Kinship culture also differs between east
   and west, as eastern Inuit lived with cousins of both parents, but
   western Inuit lived in paternal kinship groups. The Sireniki language
   is sometimes regarded as a third branch of Eskimo, but other sources
   regard it as a group belonging to the Yupik branch.

Use of the term Eskimo

   The term Eskimo can include the Alutiiq, Inupiat, Sug'piak, and Yup'ik
   Eskimo populations of Alaska, and the Yupik population of Eastern
   Russia. The speakers of the Yupik languages self-identify as Eskimo ,
   but the majority of the Native population in the Canadian Arctic and
   Greenland prefer to be called "Inuit", or to a smaller extent
   Inuvialuit, and most find the term Eskimo highly offensive.

   The term "Eskimos" is now used by some to refer to rugged and brave
   individuals who are able to deal with cold and ice even if they are not
   natives of the far North. For example, the Cambridge Eskimos,
   established in the 1930s and still active, are an ice hockey team based
   at the University of Cambridge in Britain, as well as the Abitibi
   Eskimos hockey team, based out of Iroquois Falls, Ontario, Canada. In
   somewhat the same vein, the Canadian Football League's Edmonton team is
   called the Eskimos

Origin of the term Eskimo

   Some Algonquian languages call Eskimos by names that mean "eaters of
   raw meat" or something that sounds similar. The Plains Ojibwe, for
   example, use the word êškipot ("one who eats raw," from ašk-, "raw,"
   and -po-, "to eat") to refer to Eskimos. It is entirely possible that
   the Ojibwe have adopted words resembling "Eskimo" by borrowing them
   from French, and the French word merely sounds like Ojibwe words that
   can be interpreted as "eaters of raw meat".

   But in the period of the earliest attested French use of the word, the
   Plains Ojibwe were not in contact with Europeans, nor did they have
   very much direct contact with the Inuit in pre-colonial times.

   The Innu-aimun (Montagnais) language, a dialect of Cree which was known
   to French traders at the time of the earliest attestation of esquimaux,
   does not have vocabulary fitting this etymological analysis.
   Furthermore, since Cree people also traditionally consumed raw meat, a
   pejorative significance based on this etymology seems unlikely. A
   variety of competing etymologies have been proposed over the years, but
   the most likely source is the Montagnais word meaning
   "snowshoe-netter". Since Montagnais speakers refer to the neighbouring
   Mi'kmaq people using words that sound very much like eskimo, many
   researchers have concluded that this is the more likely origin of the
   word.

   The anthropologist Thomas Huxley in On the Methods and Results of
   Ethnology (1865) defined the "Esquimaux race" to be the indigenous
   peoples in the Arctic region of northern Canada and Alaska. He
   described them to "certainly present a new stock" (different from the
   other indigenous peoples of North America). He described them to have
   straight black hair, dull skin complexion, short and squat, with high
   cheek bones and long skulls.

Inuit

   The Inuit inhabit the Arctic coasts of Siberia, Alaska, the Northwest
   Territories, Nunavut, Quebec, Labrador, and Greenland. Until fairly
   recent times, there has been a remarkable homogeneity in the culture
   throughout this area, which traditionally relied on fish, sea mammals,
   and land animals for food, heat, light, clothing, tools, and shelter.

Canada's Inuit

   Canadian Inuit live primarily in Nunavut (a territory in Canada),
   Nunavik (the northern part of Quebec) and in Nunatsiavut (the Inuit
   settlement region in Labrador).

Inupiaq

   The Inupiat are the Inuit people of Alaska's Northwest Arctic and North
   Slope boroughs and the Bering Straits region. Barrow, the northernmost
   city in the United States, is in the Inupiat region. Their language is
   known as Inupiaq.

Inuvialuit

   The Inuvialuit live in the western Canadian Arctic region. They are
   descendants of the Thule people, of which other descendants inhabit
   Russia and parts of Scandinavia. Their homeland - the Inuvialuit
   Settlement Region - covers the Arctic Ocean coastline area from the
   Alaskan border east to Amundsen Gulf and includes the western Canadian
   Arctic Islands. The land was demarked in 1984 by the Inuvialuit Final
   Agreement.

Kalaallit

   The Kalaallit live in Greenland.

Yupik

   The 'Yupik are indigenous or aboriginal peoples who live along the
   coast of western Alaska, especially on the Yukon- Kuskokwim delta and
   along the Kuskokwim River (Central Alaskan Yupik), in southern Alaska
   (the Alutiiq) and in the Russian Far East and St. Lawrence Island in
   western Alaska (the Siberian Yupik).

Alutiiq

   The Alutiiq also called Pacific Yupik or Sugpiaq, are a southern,
   coastal branch of Alaskan Yupik. They are not to be confused with the
   Aleuts, who live further to the southwest, including along the Aleutian
   Islands. They traditionally lived a coastal lifestyle, subsisting
   primarily on ocean resources such as salmon, halibut, and whale, as
   well as rich land resources such as berries and land mammals. Alutiiq
   people today live in coastal fishing communities, where they work in
   all aspects of the modern economy, while also maintaining the cultural
   value of subsistence. The Alutiiq language is relatively close to that
   spoken by the Yupik in the Bethel, Alaska area, but is considered a
   distinct language with two major dialects. The Koniag Dialect is spoken
   on the Alaska Peninsula and on Kodiak Island. The Chugach Dialect is
   spoken on the Kenai Peninsula and in Prince William Sound. Residents of
   Nanwalek, located on southern part of the Kenai Peninsula near
   Seldovia, speak what they call Sugpiaq and are able to understand those
   who speak Yupik in Bethel. With a population of approximately 3,000,
   and the number of speakers in the mere hundreds, Alutiiq communities
   are currently in the process of revitalizing their language.

Siberian Yupik (Yuit)

   Siberian Yupik reside along the coast of the Chukchi Peninsula in the
   far northeast of the Russian Federation and the St. Lawrence Island of
   Alaska. They speak Central Siberian Yupik, a Yupik language related to
   the other Yupik in Russia and Alaska. They were also known as Asian or
   Siberian Eskimo.

Language

   Traditionally, the Eskimo languages family was divided into Inuit and
   Yup'ik (or Yup'ik-Yuit). However, recent research suggests that Yup'ik
   by itself is not a valid node, or, equivalently, that the Inuit dialect
   continuum is but one of several languages of the Yup'ik group. However,
   although it may be technically correct to replace the term Eskimo with
   Yup'ik in this classification, this would not be acceptable to most
   Inuit. Also, the Alaskan-Siberian dichotomy appears to have been
   geographical rather than linguistic.

   An overview of the Eskimo-Aleut languages family is given below:

          Aleut

                Aleut language

                      Western-Central dialects: Atkan, Attuan, Unangan,
                      Bering (60-80 speakers)
                      Eastern dialect: Unalaskan, Pribilof (400 speakers)

          Eskimo (Yup'ik, Yuit, and Inuit)

                Central Alaskan Yup'ik (10,000 speakers)
                Alutiiq or Pacific Gulf Yup'ik (400 speakers)
                Yuit or Central Siberian Yupik (Chaplinon and St Lawrence
                Island, 1400 speakers)
                Naukan (70 speakers)
                Inuit or Inupik (75,000 speakers)

                      Iñupiaq (northern Alaska, 3,500 speakers)
                      Inuvialuktun or Inuktun (western Canada; 765
                      speakers)
                      Inuktitut (eastern Canada; together with Inuktun and
                      Inuinnaqtun, 30,000 speakers)
                      Kalaallisut (Greenland, 47,000 speakers)

          Sirenik (extinct)

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