Nunavut: The Inuit Culture In The Arctic Region

For thousands of years, stretching from the shores of the Chukchi Peninsula of Russia, east across Alaska and Canada, to the southeastern coast of Greenland, known as the Arctic, live people with epic tale in the history of human settlement and the endurance of culture, known as Inuit. Inuit culture in not monolithic culture, but rather varies from region-to-region, community-to-community, also even vary in practice. Inuit people are divided to groups based on environmental factors, language and certain cultural features.
Nunavut has an Inuit population of 30,000. It has been created on April 01st, 1999 and encompasses one-fifth of Canada’s landmass. The territorial capital, Iqaluit, is the largest community with a population of over 6,500
These dialects are: Inuvialuktun, spoken in the Inuvialuit region in the Northwest Territories; Inuinnaqtun (primarily in some communities in western Nunavut); Inuttitut (Eastern Nunavut); Inuttitut (Nunavik); and Inuttut (Nunatsiavut)” (Statistics Canada, 2009). “There are two different ways people in Nunavut write the Inuit language: Qaliujaaqpait (or Roman orthography) and Qaniujaaqpait (syllabics)” (Office of the Languages Commissioner of Nunavut, 2013). In 2008, the Inuit Language Protection Act and Official Languages Act were passed in Nunavut to ensure the preservation and revitalization of Inuit languages. This research also has demonstrated that Inuktitut, as the strongest language in the Arctic, one of the very few Aboriginal languages in the world that is not in danger of being lost (Norris, 2007). Government of Nunavut is also making Inuktitut as a daily working language. Eva Aariak, East Member of the Legislative Assembly stated, “ Language and culture is very important to us”
Culture is a dynamic lived process that is inclusive of beliefs, practices, and values. “Culture, however, is more than beliefs, practices and values that can be reduced to a list of personal characteristics” (Kleinman & Benson, 2006). “Cultural characteristics differ within the same ethnic or social group because of differences in age, gender, sexuality, life history, political association, class, religion, ethnicity, and even personality”(Aboriginal Nurses Association of Canada, 2009). The development of cultural awareness is the beginning step toward understanding that there is difference (Gregory,