From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Aboriginals: Inuit/
For most contemporary Inuit, family relations, childbirth, and the transmission of names retain the importance they had in traditional times.
Inuit kinship is bilateral, that is, relatives on both the father’s and mother’s side are equally recognized as belonging to one’s own kin group. Terminological details may vary from one dialect to another but, on the whole, the kinship system is similar throughout Inuit nunaat . In Arctic Quebec, for instance, the individual makes a distinction between his or her father ( ataata ) and mother ( anaana ); grandfather ( ataatatsiaq , “good father”) and grandmother ( anaanatsiaq ); father’s brother ( akka ) and sister ( atsa ); mother’s brother ( angak ) and sister ( ajak ); and so on. He or she also distinguishes various categories of siblings: angajuk (elder sibling of the same sex as oneself), nukaq (younger sibling of the same sex), ani (brother, for a woman), and naja (sister, for a man). One’s spouse is called aippaq (“one of a pair”), while a child is termed qiturngaq , whether it be a son ( irniq ) or daughter ( panik ). Assorted terms also exist for grandchildren, cousins, nephews/nieces, and in-laws.
Social solidarities are primarily embedded within family and kinship groups. Most households consist of a nuclear family, whether it be complete (the two parents and their children) or not (one parent with his or, more frequently, her children). Some households include the widowed father or mother of one of the spouses or, more rarely, an unmarried adult sibling. This type of household has replaced the patrilocal extended family of father and married sons with their spouses, which was formerly normative through most of Inuit nunaat .
Generally speaking, each household is related by kinship to a certain number of other households established in the same village. It is principally within these groups of related families that game is shared, visiting occurs, and various domestic services are rendered. Many people prefer to associate with relatives, and indeed it is common for some to describe members of their own kin group as their best friends.
Such groups are not completely inward-looking, however. People mix readily with non-relatives, and one major institution, marriage, entails the establishment of broader relations, since spouses must normally be chosen from outside one’s own kin group. Most Inuit still marry other Inuit, although interethnic unions, especially those involving an Inuk woman and a non-Inuk man, are increasing rapidly. Also on the increase are separations and divorces, almost unknown two decades ago.
The position of women in traditional Inuit society has given rise to much debate among anthropologists. Some contend that both genders were practically equal, while others point out that myths and stories reveal the dominance of men (some of whom practised polygyny and female infanticide, though in a limited way). Whatever the case, women play a major economic and political role in contemporary Inuit society. They dominate many salaried occupations (in the field of education, for instance), and several of them have headed – or are still heading – major aboriginal organizations (including the international Inuit Circumpolar Conference). Some men resent the fact that they no longer are the principal providers and decision makers, and violence against women, often triggered by alcohol abuse, constitutes a problem in many communities.
Such changes in the respective roles of men and women have not modified both genders’ attitude towards children. Children are numerous (individuals under 15 years of age account for about 40 percent of all Canadian Inuit) and generally loved. Births out of wedlock, a common occurrence, are not frowned upon, although elderly people point out that they were not so frequent when they themselves were young. A first child is often adopted by its grandparents, and, generally speaking, adoption constitutes an efficient way for sharing surplus – or unwanted – children with prospective parents. It frequently occurs that such parents are older people, widowed or not, whose offspring are starting to marry and/or move into another household and who need young children to enliven the home and, later on, help them with domestic tasks. Adopted children possess the same status as biological offspring, and in most communities they account for about 30 percent of all children.
In addition to their biological or adoptive parents’ family name (surnames are in use since the 1960s), newborns generally receive from two to ten personal appellations. Most of these, whether traditional (that is, pre-Christian) or Christian, are transmitted from persons (the eponyms), deceased or not, who bore the same names and had received them at birth from somebody else. In a way, the eponyms revive in the newborn child, who must be addressed as his or her eponyms were. For instance, a boy named after his paternal grandmother (names are genderless in Inuktitut) is called “mommy” by his father, whom he must address as “son.” In locations such as Igloolik (Baffin region), children whose biological sex differs from that of their principal eponym are disguised and raised till puberty as if they were belonging to this eponym’s gender.
Although the Inuit communities are now formally organized in the same way as their southern Canadian counterparts, with municipal administrations, government agencies, public schools, and so on, their most fundamental structure remains based on kinship and the family. Groups of related households may be found in every village. They generally constitute informal networks of families among which the density of kinship relations and the level of social interaction (sharing, visiting, and so on) are particularly high.
These networks are often called “clans” by the northern Euro-Canadian residents, but the term is misleading. Clans are generally defined as closed unilateral corporate units, while the Inuit kin groups are flexible, bilateral (they include people related through both their father’s and mother’s side), and open-ended (one may enter them by marriage or adoption). It is thus preferable to call such networks “kindreds,” which is the closest approximation to their Inuit appellation of ilagiit (“group of relatives”).
Present-day kindreds often stem from traditional bands, those nomadic or semi-nomadic groups of relatives and in-laws who lived in seasonal hunting camps until the 1960s. When the bands became sedentary, they preserved their social role, even if their residential and economic functions rapidly disappeared. Since each of the newly settled communities generally comprised two or more bands, the villages became quite naturally subdivided into social units – the kindreds – in direct continuation with these bands.
In traditional times, the bands were usually led by their oldest able-bodied male member, who often possessed an umiaq (sealskin boat) and might enlist the support of a shaman. After the traders and missionaries came, the typical band leader owned an inboard motor boat and acted as catechist (or lay reader) for his extended family. In modern communities, leadership takes many forms. The kindreds may compete between themselves to have one of their leading members elected as village mayor, or they may try to take control of the local school, cooperative, or other administrative organizations. Whatever their nature, however, the leadership positions are now shared between men and women.
The presence of kindreds may partly explain why social classes or castes have not yet developed within Inuit society. Despite the fact that major occupational and income differences may now be found in the north, every individual still belongs first and foremost to his or her family and kindred, where he/she stands on an equal footing with everybody else. Kinship relations thus act as equalizers that efficiently counterbalance incipient social stratification.
