What is your impression of the Inuit, or the Eskimos, eating raw meat, living in igloos, or the surprising traditions of "renting a wife" and "treating a wife"?
Are these yellow people who have lived in extremely cold areas of minus 50 degrees Celsius for a long time really live the same way as we imagined? Are they about to disappear?
From the Chukotka Peninsula in North Asia to the Yukon Territory in mainland North America to Greenland further north, the Inuit may seem like a wide range of places, but they are all the hardest places on the planet.
As a result, today, when the population of other ethnic groups is in the hundreds of millions, the total population of the Inuit is less than 200,000. The harsh living environment makes the life of the Inuit people always reveal one word - adapt to local conditions.
Special fishing methods
On the North American continent, the weather can get colder and colder along the Mackenzie River to the north, despite the stunning scenery along the way. Especially from autumn onwards, there are no signs of human activity except for the occasional Inuit fishing in the river.
Fish is one of the staple foods of the Inuit people. Traditionally, Inuit fishing materials have been locally sourced. Beginning in the spring, as the snow melts, the Inuit begin to accumulate materials for weaving fishing nets.
Caught seals, peeled skin is one of the materials. The beard of the beluga whale, collected one by one, is the same. When the weather warms briefly in the summer, they also collect willow bark. In this way, the material gradually changed from less to more.
In the winter, when the snow is heavy, the women begin to weave fishing nets from the materials they have gathered. Although these materials are poor, not as fine as those used in other fishing nets, in this cold north, the nets woven from seal skins bring the most to the Inuit harvest.
At the beginning of summer, the Inuit along the Mackenziah River began to get busy. In shallow waters, men usually drop their nets into the water all at once, forming a huge circle, and each time they drag the nets up, there is a big catch.
If kayaked to deeper waters, the Inuit would also use gillnets to catch fish. In short, every time you go out, you will not go home empty-handed.
In addition to fishing nets, the Inuit would also set up a fence in the lower reaches of the river, and in the enclosed area, a fishing basket with a mouth in the shape of a funnel with a large outside and a small inside.
The fish can swim into the basket smoothly, but it can't come out again. With this method, they will also harvest a lot in a day.
But as the weather gets colder and the river freezes, the methods of casting nets and putting baskets will fail. At this point, the Inuit would chisel gillnets under the ice.
The net goes down into the water, and it will quickly freeze again. Every day or two, the Inuit would chisel the ice and remove the nets, which were usually hung with fish.
Another method of fishing is fishing, and the Inuit have a unique fishing tool. Fishing line made of seal skin, hooks made of walrus ivory, and fishing rods made of heavy wood. Bait is a variety of meat caught by hunters. In the way of fishing, the Inuit occasionally catch something.
If it's at the mouth of the Mackenzie River, closer to the north, the Inuit here also fish at sea. Whether it is river fish or sea fish, the Inuit eat it raw.
Raw meat as hard as a stone can be swallowed
In Canada's northern regions, a small number of Inuit villages are scattered along the coast. Raw meat is the main food of the locals, and it is not even processed at all.
In this regard, another name for the Inuit is Eskimo, which means one who eats raw meat. It is said that the name was originally given by the Indians, meaning that they were barbarians who drank blood. So behind the name, there is also a derogatory connotation.
Thereafter, they called themselves Inuit in order to distinguish themselves from another name. The Inuit, on the other hand, means the owner of the land.
This theory is widely circulated, but from outside observations, the Inuit have never concealed their Xi of eating raw meat. On the contrary, they feel that it is a great pity that outsiders cannot share the food with them.
However, this regret is not a blessing even for Japanese people who often eat sashimi, and even for Europeans and Americans who often eat half-cooked meat.
There was once an out-of-towner visiting an Inuit home, just in time for the village to catch a beluga whale, and it was the food for the night. Before the guests came, they had also heard of the Inuit Xi of eating raw meat, and imagined that they would put some condiments in the same way as eating raw fish.
However, when I arrived at the owner's house, I found that this was not the case at all. The most traditional way of eating for the Inuit is that they don't even have to prepare a bowl, and each person has a whine knife, a special knife in the shape of a fan, which is their cutlery.
At dinner that evening, the hostess skillfully cut off a piece of beluga meat and handed it to the guests first. Faced with this posture of really eating raw meat, the guests were a little overwhelmed, and could only signal the host to cut the meat into smaller pieces.
With intense curiosity, the guest then stuffed the meat into his mouth. I thought that the meat of the fish would be soft to chew, but I didn't expect the flesh of this beluga whale to be as hard as a stone. Coupled with the fishy smell of raw meat, the guests almost vomited all the overnight meals.
On the other hand, the Inuit people, from adults to children, can easily eat raw meat. When the guests then visited the village, they found the men slaughtering a beluga whale. Not only can they lick and eat the blood on the knife, but the raw meat that is still warm has a strong fishy smell, and they can easily eat it.
A special source of nutrients
The Inuit lived in the polar regions 10,000 years ago. In addition to the fish in the water, there are a small number of reindeer and other animals on land.
If you want to survive in an extreme environment, but you can't make a fire, you can only eat it raw. Over time, over time, this group has become Xi to eating raw meat.
Even in modern society, the Inuit have begun to come into contact with people from other regions, and all kinds of modern foods have also entered the polar regions. But for the Inuit, it seems that their traditional food is more delicious. Fish, reindeer and seals are the most common traditional foods eaten by the Inuit.
In extremely cold areas, because there are no vegetables and fruits, the human body has no way to supplement vitamins. And people who do not supplement vitamins for a long time will suffer from scurvy.
Scurvy was common when Europeans went to sea during the Age of Discovery, and due to limited food preservation techniques, the crew could not eat vegetables for several months. The Inuit avoid this risk by eating raw meat.
Meat also contains vitamins, but if they are cooked and eaten, they are lost, and eating them raw is a good way to avoid this.
In addition, raw meat is digested more slowly than cooked food, so that the Inuit have more time to conserve heat in cold weather.
In particular, men go out hunting and eat a lot of raw meat, which can help them maintain their physical fitness for a long time. In the northern part of Canada, some hunters hunt and often eat their prey in the wild without having to take it home.
Of course, under the influence of modern society, the Inuit people eat other foods such as bread and grilled sausages in addition to meat. If it is one of these foods, they usually eat it as a cooked food as well.
But as long as it's traditional fish or reindeer meat, it's all eaten raw. If the prey caught cannot be eaten, the Inuit will also store it in a special way.
The first method is smoking, which allows the meat to be preserved for a longer period of time. Another option is to bury the meat directly into the ground. The frozen ground keeps the meat from rotting, and when the weather warms up and melts, the meat is fully fermented.
This kind of meat is dug up again the next year, and it looks like carrion. Outsiders don't want to eat it, just smelling that smell will make them nauseous. The Inuit, on the other hand, treat this traditional food as a delicacy.
In terms of eating raw meat, this is also due to the environment of the Inuit people for a long time. Also in harmony with the environment are traditional Inuit houses and costumes.
Igloos and hides
It is said that the Inuit lived in the Far North because of the war with the Indians after moving to the North American continent.
Outnumbered by the Indians, the Inuit retreated further north. In the middle of winter, the Indians gave up the pursuit, believing that they would surely freeze to death on the moor. However, who would have thought that the Inuit would live very well in this extremely cold place.
Because the weather was too cold for the ice to melt, the early Inuit learned to build houses out of ice. The hewn ice blocks make up the house, and the cold will freeze it into a single piece.
The captured seals are skinned and covered with the outer layer of the igloo, and the whole house made of ice is airtight.
As for clothing, the early Inuit also used local materials, from reindeer to polar bears, from foxes to seals, the fur of these animals was their excellent warm clothing.
It can be said that in extreme climatic environments, the Inuit did not succumb to nature. They have adapted to the environment of the Arctic region and are constantly creating their own lives according to local conditions.
In modern times, with the further integration and exchange of the world, even the Inuit people living in extremely cold regions have gradually integrated their lifestyles with the modern world.
Electric boats, wooden cabins, 9-to-5
On the Mackenzie River in Canada, the Inuit who now fish are no longer using kayaks, as they used in the past, but using electric boats.
As for the traditional igloo, it is no longer their house either. In Greenland, for example, a large number of Inuit began to settle down, and houses were reduced to wooden buildings.
These wooden houses are usually two-storey, and the Inuit paint the exterior walls of the houses yellow, red, blue, and white according to traditional Xi customs. Yellow symbolizes the earth, blue and white symbolizes the sky, snow and ice, and red symbolizes the sun. These houses of different colors are like a fairy tale in the light of snow and ice.
In addition to settlement, the Inuit people of Greenland no longer live a traditional hunting life. The vast majority of people have abandoned their old hunting lives to pursue regular fishing, construction and service trades. Work 8 hours a day and receive a monthly salary.
It can be said that under the impact of modern society, the life of the traditional Inuit people is also being changed little by little.
Conclusion: Will the Inuit disappear
According to a United Nations survey report in March this year, the Inuit people in Greenland face many problems. Greenland is a dominion of Denmark, so the Inuit are Danish in terms of nationality.
The United Nations investigation found that some Danish health care providers implanted IUDs in Inuit women without their knowledge. Some of them are even 12-year-olds.
In addition, the Inuit in Greenland no longer believed in their original religion and gradually converted to Lutheran Protestantism.
If this trend is not changed, the Inuit culture may disappear in the future, and even the race itself may disappear into the vast snowfield.
Therefore, it is a wonderful irony that the Inuit have not been frozen to death in the polar world for thousands of years, but that after entering the so-called civilized world, all the marks of their race have degraded and disappeared.
Resources:
"Experience Inuit Fishing," Tonight, October 6, 2003
"Human rights expert calls on Denmark and Greenland to step up their efforts to create inclusive societies," UN.com, 10 February 2023