Inuit community is recognized around certain social principles and relations of kinship, cooperation and sharing. Hunting activities are organized cooperatively and based on the need of the community as a whole.
The Inuit divided the year into three hunting seasons, each revolving around a single animal: seal, the caribou and the whale.
Understanding the seasonal migratory patterns of animal is central to the Inuit’s subsistence strategy.
Inuit culture is a hunting culture and hunting marine mammals was likely one of the most importance factors in the development and, long-term success of Inuit communities. Marine mammals, such as whales, seals and walruses, provide reliable food security and the fat was a valuable fuel used for heating.
Inuit hunters waited patently sometimes for hours, for a seal to surface and be killed. Seal meat was first shared through reciprocal exchanges within kinship line and then among others in the community to ensure that no one went hungry.
In fall time caribou are hunted for meat for skins to be used as mattresses and for their sinew, which will be used for sewing the bearded sealskin covers on the umiat.
Despite the radical changes to Inuit life over the past century, reliance on Arctic animals remains strong. And in modern Arctic craftsman, women transform caribous antlers, and walrus and narwhal tusk, into carving and jewelry that are sold door to door or in southern Canadian or US stores specializing in ‘native art’.
Seal and caribou skins are also used by women to make wall-hangings depicting scenes of Inuit and these are also sold for income.
Inuit hunting culture
