From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Aboriginals: Inuit/
The Inuit of old had moved to different locations according to the seasons, in order to avail themselves of the presence of game. They spent the winter in snowhouses (known as igloos, from the Inuktitut word iglu , “inhabited dwelling”), except in the Mackenzie and Labrador regions, where they lived in semi-subterranean stone and sod huts. Some north Baffin people also occupied huts in early winter. When spring came, huts and igloos were replaced by seal- or caribou-skin tents. Both winter and spring/summer dwellings were heated and lighted by a soapstone lamp burning sea mammal blubber.
From one region to another, the hunting, fishing, and gathering activities showed a high degree of similarity, even if they varied in important details. A typical eastern Arctic seasonal cycle would be as follows. During winter, the men waited for seal, either at the floe edge or at the breathing holes this animal maintains in the sea ice. The hunters used harpoons and, from the mid-1800s, guns. Men and women also trapped a few fox and fished through freshwater lake ice. Transportation was by sled and dog-team. At springtime, the men hunted seal basking on the floe ice, cautiously approaching the animal till it was within harpoon reach or rifle shot. They also lay in wait on the seashore, at those locations where the floe had begun to break, for marine mammals (beluga, narwhal, walrus, and several species of seal). In the Mackenzie region, break-up signalled the opening of the whale hunting season.
Summertime was the occasion for several productive activities: hunting from kayaks for the men, gathering wild berries for the women and children, and catching fish at stone weirs for family groups. In many regions, people went inland at the end of August (often travelling upriver in large sealskin boats called umiat ) to hunt caribou till September or October. During these hunts, the women and children’s task was to shout at the animals in order to induce them to run towards the concealed men who were waiting with their bows and spears.
Back on the coast during fall, the families prepared for the coming winter. While the men cached seal, walrus, caribou, and bird (principally goose and duck) meat, women made and mended winter clothing: hooded parkas, breeches, boots, mitts, and so on, all made of seal and caribou skin. Adequate clothing was – and still is – essential to survival in the Arctic.
The raw materials and food extracted from the environment fulfilled the immediate needs of the families. What could not be eaten, used, or cached by the hunter’s, fisher’s, or gatherer’s immediate relatives was shared with his or her companions, according to quite complicated distribution rules. The Inuit were not a communistic society, but those in need expected to be helped by their companions. The few non-perishable surplus goods (skins, ivory, flotsam wood) were sometimes kept aside, to be later traded with other Inuit groups. When famine struck, however, the sharing rules did not apply any more; everybody then tried to survive by all possible means.
Between 1830 and 1930, trading posts were established in various parts of Inuit nunaat (for example, Fort Chimo, 1830; Great Whale River, 1855; Cape Wolstenholme, 1909; Aklavik, 1912; Chesterfield Inlet, 1912; Pond Inlet, 1912; Frobisher Bay, 1914; Pangnirtung, 1921; Cambridge Bay, 1923; Coppermine, 1927). As a consequence, commercial seal and beluga hunting, as well as the trapping of Arctic fox, became increasingly important while subsistence hunting and fishing diminished accordingly. Store-bought food and clothing materials partly replaced the meat and skins that the Inuit no longer had time to procure by themselves, although people never became completely dependent on the traders. At the end of World War II, they could still be considered as largely autarchic hunter-gatherers, except, perhaps, in the Mackenzie delta, where muskrat and fox trapping was so lucrative that subsistence hunting had almost become a thing of the past.
While trading posts, weather stations, police detachments, and military installations (since 1942) had provided a few salaried jobs before the end of World War II, post-war development provoked a tremendous increase in the need for local construction workers, janitors, general labourers, and interpreters. From 1959 on, the cooperative movement opened new opportunities in the fields of commercial fishing, arts, and handicrafts. Northern Labrador and Quebec’s Ungava Bay area started exporting salmon and Arctic char to southern Canadian markets, and communities such as Povungnituk, Cape Dorset, Baker Lake, and Holman Island became known for their carvings and stone-cut prints. As an effect of these developments, the kayaks and dog-teams were rapidly replaced by outboard canoes and snowmobiles. Up to the early 1970s, however, only a small part of the Inuit population was involved in full-time wage work. Most individuals still devoted their time to hunting, fishing, and trapping, making ends meet with occasional odd jobs and/or transfer payments from the government.
During the 1970s, the establishment of a new administrative order, one increasingly under Inuit control, led to the sudden appearance of hundreds of new jobs in the fields of education, health and social services, management, public administration, transport and communications, trade, and so on. The percentage of full-time hunters and trappers decreased drastically within a few years, even if the new native administrations tried to provide aid to those interested in traditional economic pursuits.
Today, wage work within public services constitutes the mainstay of Inuit economy. Yet this is not to say that everybody holds a job. On the contrary, widespread unemployment plagues the northern communities, and plans for sustainable development are badly needed. Hunting, fishing, gathering, and trapping cannot any longer provide a viable economic basis for modern villages whose standard of living approximates that of southern Canada. Even if traditional activities still provide the Inuit with an appreciable quantity and variety of fresh food, the symbolic value of these activities now appears as more important than their actual economic impact.
