When the traditional way of life no longer suffices, people have to think of other ways to make a living. The Inuit, the inhabitants of the northern polar region, made the transition to art. Today, they make creative sculptures, paintings and… chess games.
Thousands of years ago, the ancestors of the Inuit crossed the Bering isthmus and arrived in the North American polar region. Nowadays there are about 100.000 Inuit living in Siberia, Alaska, Greenland and Canada. The inhabitants of these inhospitable areas haven’t had a lot contact with other cultures until recently. Incidentally, European explorers would make it to the Inuit areas on the coast, but they never stayed for long because of the rough living conditions. The region is situated above the tree line and covered in a thick layer of ice and snow the whole year long. There are no trees to build houses with and agriculture is impossible.
For centuries, the Inuit lived off hunting polar animals and they followed these animals during their migration. Not only their meat was used: tools were made out of the bones, lamps burned on walrus fat and skins were processed and made into clothing, tents and even boats. This hard knock life did not appeal to the European fortune hunters and they did not possess the sublime skills to survive in these territories. Viking Eric the Red was an exception. He was probably the first explorer to come into contact with the Inuit and in 983 he founded a settlement in Greenland.
Change means prosperity?
In 1890, life as the Inuit knew it ended. Americans and Europeans arrived to the North to hunt wales. They brought alcohol and unknown diseases with them and the Inuit were no match for them. The combination of alcohol and disease was a fatal one for many of the original polar residents. The high demand for fur caused another migration of westerners to the polar zone. Life and Inuit culture changed even more drastically after 1950. Caribous were nearly extinct and fur trade dwindled. Traditional survival on what the land offered to the Inuit got more and more difficult. The Canadian government wanted to improve the circumstances of these people. The country convinced the Inuit to give up their nomadic existence and live in their settlements permanently. The Inuit got access to homes with hot running water, electricity and heating and furthermore, western supplies, schools and medicine. Snowmobiles replaced the traditional dog sleds and the motorboat was the substitute of the kayak. The children that were born in these new settlements grew up without the traditional skills and Inuit lifestyle. Hunting was no longer a source of income and so it was necessary to create employment for this new generation. The government helped the youngsters to set up commercial fishing activities and creative trading partnerships.
Art to the rescue
Missionaries followed into the footsteps of the tradesmen and whale hunters quickly. They quite successfully tried to convert the heathen Inuit to Christianity. They also influenced other aspects of life. Reverend Steinmann was the first to try and make the Inuit make a living through art. In 1958 he convinced his flock in Povungnituk (Quebec, Canada) to turn their local myths into art.
The Inuit themselves do not have a word for art. They consider their work ‘sananquang’, which literally means ‘the making of an equal image’. Their favorite subjects are animals and people, and who better to turn these topics into art than the people who have studied their prey carefully and respectfully for ages. Animals and human beings are also the favorite themes of chess games. The museum owns a faience chess game, made by a Greenlandic Inuit woman from Montreal.
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