From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Aboriginals: Inuit/
In the past, the Inuit were often hostile towards the neighbouring Dene, Cree, and Innu (Montagnais-Naskapi) Indians, but this is no longer the case. Today, the Inuit realize that they share the same aboriginal status as the Indians and that it is in their mutual interest to fashion political coalitions.
As for their relations with Euro-Canadians, except for early skirmishes in Labrador and other areas, the Inuit never fought full-fledged wars with the Qallunaat (Europeans). On the contrary, initial hostilities were rapidly followed (except, perhaps, in the Mackenzie region) by a period when the Inuit welcomed the explorers, traders, and missionaries and taught them the skills they needed to survive in the Arctic. Moreover, because southern Canadians never attempted large-scale settlement in the north, the Inuit still constitute a majority within Inuit nunaat and, unlike many Indian nations, they do not have a tradition of land spoliation. For these reasons, no general animosity is felt towards whites, although some may resent the fact that it is often the non-Inuit who hold the best jobs in Arctic communities.
Another grievance concerns the justice system, which has been imported into the Arctic from southern Canada. In Inuit villages, where everybody knows everybody else, no crime can remain hidden for long and offenders are easily discovered and brought to court. This yields a rate of criminality apparently higher than that of Canada as a whole, but in fact most crimes are petty offences: drunkenness, public disorder, minor battery, and the like. Many voices are pleading for a reform of the judiciary system, one that would increase the role of the community and focus on rehabilitating – rather than punishing – the offenders. Some improvements have been made, but they are far from sufficient. These efforts include Inuit policemen, recourse to traditional forms of punishment (such as the temporary removal of the offender to a neighbouring community), and native justices of the peace (plus one Inuit judge of the Provincial Court, in Newfoundland-Labrador).
Some journalists and social scientists may describe contemporary Inuit society as fraught with insoluble problems and without an identity, but such a vision is inaccurate. In fact, the Inuit remain optimistic about their future and their sense of identity is still strong. Most native northerners have a fairly clear idea who an inummarik (“full Inuk”) or inutuinnaq (“real Inuk”) is: an individual able to draw part of his or her subsistence from the land without renouncing the better aspects of modern life. These people realize that modernity is here to stay, and that traditional culture must reach an accomodation with wage work, formal education, and the new political and social organizations. In some cases – among the youngsters in particular – this may generate problems of identity, but, in the main, the Inuit are conscious of their distinctiveness and of a continuity between the past and the present. Despite tremendous changes in their material culture, the Inuit preserve values, social attitudes, a relation to the land, and a sense of their uniqueness that set them apart from other Canadians.
Most Arctic natives still live in close-knit communities. There may exist petty rivalries among family groups or between neighbouring villages, but, generally speaking, social life is rather smooth despite occasional outbreaks of violence. The Inuit prefer to reach decisions through discussion and consensus, and there are no real cleavages betweeen the population and its leaders, the men and the women, or even the young and the old. This kind of informal esprit de corps seems to preserve Canada’s Inuit against external assimilative pressures. For the moment, their sense of identity and their aboriginal organizations clearly define the boundaries of their community. It remains to be seen, however, if the Arctic natives will be able to maintain over time the fragile equilibrium between tradition and modernity, between what some Arctic Quebec Inuit callmaqainniq (“going on the land”) and kiinaujaliurutiit (“the means for making money”).
