Netsilik Eskimo Summary

Ethnographic Critique of Netsilik Eskimo by Asen Balikci The book did a decent job of explaining the general environment the Netsilik would be in like in the winter they would be typically in a frozen wasteland living igloos or if there was not enough snow they would live in ice houses if there was not enough snow by taking the ice from the sea. During the summer, they would live farther south in smaller camps in more temporary tents. The Netsilik’s subsistence was primarily nomadic, hunting gathering type of community. Their nomadic movements were predictable and was not random. The Netsilik were aware of animal’s migratory patterns like the caribou and salmon. The caribou in the summer would leave the local area and the Netsilik would move
But I did not see a specific section for language. Giving me sort of an idea of how language was used in every day Netsilik life, was it primarily used during work, did they have books or was it just word of mouth, like myths, or am I being nitpicky because it was spread out throughout the book? Age the book mentions when you were at an early age you pretty much stayed with your mother, until your old enough to start training hunting with their father or making fur coats or seal butchering with the mother. Labor was partially divided by gender with hunting and fishing was primarily done by the men while seal and caribou butchering and creating clothes roles were primarily filled by women unless if there was some sort of labor shortage then the other gender would step in and pick up the slack Fusion and fission in the summer everyone was more spread out but would come together to either build the dam or when they return north where everyone is more bunched together, which allows better social cohesion, you got more people operating a larger community together and better labor distribution in the