Religion

The traditional Inuit practised shamanistic animism. There were no gods, but a multitude of souls filled the cosmos: human souls, spirit souls, animal souls, inanimate souls. The shaman (angakkuq), because of his/her disposition and training (generally under another shaman), was the only one who knew how to bridge the gap between the various categories of beings and communicate with all of them, thereby transcending the boundaries normally separating the visible from the invisible, the human from the animal, or the male from the female.

During public seances, the shaman entered into a trance and his/her soul travelled to the moon (where the protector of hunters lived), to Sedna’s submarine abode, or to meetings with various supranatural beings. He/ she was helped in this task by one or several auxiliary spirits. When encountering invisible beings, the shaman tried to obtain from them information on why things were going wrong. Illness or bad weather were often due to the fact that some of the numerous taboos to which the Inuit were subjected had not been observed. In such a case, the shaman asked people to confess their wrongs in order to restore harmony. If sea mammals were scarce, he/she could cajole Sedna into sending them back to the surface of the sea by carefully combing her long entangled hair.

The shaman also presided over collective rituals – at the winter solstice for instance – where masks were often worn. At a more basic level, he or she was frequently asked to chant over the sick in order to heal them, or to practise divination by tying a string around somebody’s head and lifting it (if the answer was negative, the head became too heavy to be lifted).

Human beings possessed three souls. One of them, the breath (anirniq), died with the body. The second, the name (atiq), was transmitted to newborn babies. As for the third soul (tarniq), its fate depended on the kind of death of its owner. Those who died violently (this included dying in childbirth) went to a pleasant place where food was plentiful and where the dead spent most of their time playing football with walrus skulls. By contrast, those who died from illness or old age were thought to go to a rather cold abode, without much food nor distractions.

From 1771 in Labrador and the late nineteenth century elsewhere, traditional beliefs and practices started being challenged by the Christian missionaries. Despite some resistance on the part of the shamans, the Inuit converted quite rapidly, perhaps partly because they perceived some degree of similarity between the two religions. Both creeds stressed the importance of mutual help and charity, the observance of taboos (the Christian taboo forbidding any activity on Sunday is still scrupulously observed by many Inuit), the power of prayer, and the omnipresence of spirits (the missionaries convinced people that the shaman’s auxiliary spirits, the tuurngait, were actually devils). By the late 1930s, most Canadian Inuit had already been baptized, but, until the 1950s, several syncretic religious movements combining traditional and Christian beliefs sporadically appeared all over the Arctic.

The missionaries belonged to three different denominations: Moravian, Anglican, and Roman Catholic. The Moravians confined themselves to Labrador, while the Anglicans entered the Arctic both from the east and from the west, progressively converting a majority of the Inuit. As for the Catholics, the last to arrive, their principal field of apostolate was the central and western Arctic, where they converted a majority or a sizeable minority of the population in a dozen locations. The Inuit country was divided into dioceses, one Anglican (the Diocese of the Arctic, with Iqaluit and Aklavik as episcopal co-seats) and two Catholic (Churchill-Hudson Bay and Fort Smith-Mackenzie).

The former missions have now become regular parishes; among the Anglicans and Moravians, the majority of ministers are Inuit, while, in the case of the Catholics, non-Inuit priests are assisted by married Inuit couples acting as catechists. Since the 1970s, the original churches have been competing with several new religious movements, generally attached to the Pentecostal tradition. In the early 1990s, these movements accounted for almost half of the population of several Arctic communities. Their success is due to four factors: they are totally controlled by the Inuit; they propose a style of life (without alcohol, drugs, and gambling) that appeals to those who suffer from personal problems; they promote “modern” values such as cleanliness, hard work, and respect for money; and some of their practices (possession by the Holy Spirit, the public confession of sins) are similar to traditional rituals. Currently, however, all religions, including the Pentecostal tradition, are losing support among young people, who tend to become religiously indifferent or, in some cases, wish to learn more about their ancestors’ shamanistic beliefs.