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Beast of the sea!
Come and place yourself before me
In the dear early morning!
Beast of the plain!
Come and place yourself before me
In the dear early morning!
Igloolik Hunting Song, from The Arctic Imagination: Arctic Myth and Sculpture, by Seidelman and Turner (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1998)
This hunting song and the animal carvings you see here were created by the Inuit (IN-oo-it), Native Americans who live within and just below the Arctic Circle. In the past, the Inuit were called “Eskimos” by people outside their own culture. Roughly translated, Eskimo means “eaters of raw meat,” and the Inuit themselves generally consider it an insult. Today, many prefer being known by the name of their own band (such as Igloolik), the region where they live (the North Alaska Inuit), or the more general term Inuit, which means “the people.”
The ivory animals and the hunting song provide clues to the Inuit view of nature. The Inuit do not think of their carvings as art; in fact, there is no word for art in the Inuit language. They call such sculptures sananguagait, meaning “objects that are made” or “small replicas of real articles.”
Arctic region, Inuit, Figures, late 19th century, walrus ivory, pigment
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