“It is the decree of heaven.” – ancient Mongol saying
“What will you do once you know?” – Inuit saying
Flip through an encyclopaedia of world mythology. You may notice an oddity if you do, in the fact that there is little said about Inuit mythology – especially in regard to deities. For other cultures, there are long descriptions of every kind of god or goddess imaginable: deities of the harvest, of death, animals, wisdom, rivers, childbirth, the hearth, crossroads, love, drinking or just about any other concept humanity can hold (even gods of writing, but I’m not relying on any as I put this down).
As the lens turns toward Inuit culture, one may note an awkward lack of Inuit gods. It used to be thought by scholars that this god-deficit was easily explained, Inuit seemingly having a primitive, simplistic culture. The thinking was that Inuit were not sophisticated enough to invent the concepts necessary for belief in deities or religions based around them.
Today, this view just doesn’t wash. Even scholars, who can be cloistered and difficult to convince of new ideas, have had to admit that Inuktitut ranks among the top four most complex languages existent – therefore conveying complex concepts. One of the benefits of being so heavily studied is that the world is coming to realize the sophistication of Inuit culture. A culture has to develop more than a few tricks if it is going to survive in the Arctic.
So with the eye of the world upon the Inuit, it can naturally be asked: Where are the Inuit religions? Where are the Inuit gods?
The Oxford Dictionary defines a god as a “superhuman being worshipped as having power over nature and human fortunes.” Superficially, this might seem to qualify several figures in Inuit lore as deities, but it has always been hard to make the label stick; mythologists usually default to classifying such well-known figures as Nuliajuk (or Sedna, a sort of hag who controls the sea-mammals), for example, as supernatural beings.
The trick lies in the concept of worship. You only know a deity by whether he or she is worshipped or not. This is not an unwarranted question, either. All over the world, throughout the ages, gods have increased or diminished in their respective roles based solely on the degree to which they are worshipped. A figure who was once a full-blown god in a given area can diminish to the status of a mere spirit or bogey as a result of tribal invasion or the gradual shift in a people’s lifestyle (usually the latter). For example, many of the figures existent today in European fairy lore were once gods in their own right – their former status now forgotten, their religions long since trampled in the march of time.
It is because of the worship qualifier that figures such as Nuliajuk, or the incestuous brother and sister Moon and Sun figures (an origin myth) are hard to regard as Inuit deities. Worship, after all, denotes both honor and respect for a figure. Excepting certain obscure shamanistic rites, Inuit held nothing resembling honor or respect for the Sun and Moon, who have always been referred to more in the context of a story, for the sake of etiology (the assignment of a cause, origin or reason for something) or amusement.
Nuliajuk was simply feared, and her propitiation was always considered a last resort – when hunts had failed and the specter of starvation loomed. And no one could be said to have a personal relationship with Nuliajuk. She was no one’s source of revelation. As a neurotic woman dwelling beneath the sea, her one power was the ability to hold captive the sea-mammals (which she herself had spawned), making it impossible to hunt them. This was always the result of one of her too-frequent tantrums. Only an angakoq (shaman) could visit Nuliajuk and cajole her into cheering up, releasing the sea-mammals.
Typically, the angakoq’s demand upon the people was their public confession of taboo-violations, which sped the process along. This may seem suspiciously alike to a religious ceremony, except that it is important to remember that shamans demanded such confession for almost any ceremony they conducted – regardless of whether Nuliajuk was involved or not. Besides, the intercession of the angakoq in Nuliajuk’s case lacked the key element of worship on the part of the people.
So where, then, are the Inuit religions? The answer lies in that concept which so defines the Inuit world-view: necessity.
Necessity is the key to the lack of gods in Inuit cosmology. Mythologically, any god or goddess is an elemental figure (not “elementary”); it represents a fundamental feature of the world, such as earth, water, or fire. Deities were always the figures that represented the orderly systems human beings observed in the world around them. When that order seemed upset, or when humanity feared such, the appropriate god was entreated to restore it. Crops failed, and a crop-deity was prayed to. War was afoot, and a war-god was prayed to.
In other words, gods ruled systems. They made recognizable models work, almost fulfilling the roles that scientific bodies of knowledge do today. Why try to propitiate some corn god when agricultural science will better secure the harvest?
Pre-colonial Inuit, however, did not live in a world of reliable systems. They were nomads, and even from the earliest days of the Thule (the most northerly region of the ancient habitable world) were pioneering new lands, their survivalist tendencies or sheer curiosity ranging them far and wide. Theirs was a never-ending Odyssey.
What most people forget is that the Arctic is varied. No single area is completely like another. The animals never settle for long, and each area has its seasonal population, ever shifting and changing, like a great biological tide. Early Inuit had to be able to adjust. In doing so, they developed a very fluid culture; ready for unexpected tricks the land might throw at them. There was nothing reliable enough to be identified as a constant system. So Inuit culture began to depend upon only one thing: that nothing could be depended upon. Their culture itself became the only reliable system.
This is linked to Nuliajuk’s (i.e., Sedna’s) superficial resemblance to a goddess. Over time, the closest thing to a predictable system that Inuit could identify was sea-mammal hunting, eventually necessitating the invention of a figure that commanded such animals – a figure that could be appealed to if necessary. This partly explains why Nuliajuk features most prominently in the lore of strongly seal-dependent Inuit groups, such as the Netsilingmiut.
Yet even seal hunting was not an entirely reliable lifestyle. Inuit were mobile opportunists, subsisting in any way they could, depending on what seasons and places offered them. Even Nuliajuk, therefore, was not a being that featured in their everyday lives. Factoring her into common existence was simply not practical, and so Nuliajuk never quite took on the status of a goddess.
Early Inuit were nevertheless deeply spiritual, inspired by the land and sense of mystical awe that it instilled in them. They generally regarded nature as permeated with a life of its own. They perceived will in it, though not always a conscious mind in the sense that man understands it. And they believed that this mysterious will – the very air an expression of its breath – regarded man with neither favor nor disfavor. All life, humanity included, drew life from this force (which was sometimes actually referred as the “sila,” the sky); but there was no way to relate to it mind-to-mind.
This sort of cosmology even resembles those of nomadic peoples genetically similar to Inuit. The Mongols, for example, believed in a sky god called “Tengri” – a word that has been recorded as meaning “heaven,” “god,” and “sky.” Early Mongols referred to the Tengri in a way akin to which many pre-colonial Inuit referred to the Sila. After their conquest of China, the Mongols eventually dropped belief in the Tengri, instead adopting Chinese deities, which better suited their new city existence. Their needs had changed.
This makes sense. It is the state-dweller’s way to rely upon systems, the nomad’s way to rely upon the self. This is why few pre-colonial Inuit believed that there was any point in exploring relationships with nebulous forces. Inuit were concerned with whatever gave them a practical edge, practicing a humanistic, even somewhat scientific, observation of nature. Their preoccupation was mastery, not propitiation, of their environment.
Pre-colonial Inuit have been haphazardly labeled “animistic” in the past, mainly under the assumption that all “primitive” peoples worship spirits inhabiting rocks, plants, etc. But Inuit not only did not worship spirits; they did not even worship gods. Comically, early Inuit cosmology more closely resembles the rationalistic religious movements of 17th and 18th century Europe.
If anything, Inuit relied upon only one, simple philosophy: What will you do once you know?
Pijariiqpunga. Pijariiqpunga. (That is all I have to say.)
Rachel Attituq Qitsualik was born into a traditional Igloolik Inuit lifestyle. She has worked in Inuit sociopolitical issues for the last 25 years, and witnessed the full transition of her culture into the modern world. She is a columnist for Indian Country Today.