The Inuit are the northernmost inhabitants of North America. The name INUIT and Eskimo is given to the population of the Arctic region and the region from eastern Siberia to Greenland. The Inuit have been called "Eskimo" but they really do prefer to be called Inuit. The word Inuit means, "people who are alive at this time". Inuit also refers to the group of people of "Eskimoid" ancestry, which live in northern Canada. The word "Eskimo" means "eaters of raw meat" - and in today's time it is insulting to use the term. "Eskimo" is a word that comes from the CREE. It is a term that honors the ability of this group of people to survive in a harsh climate, living on the products of the hunt alone. There were several different "Eskimoid" cultures that came to the Canadian Arctic at different times. Some of the names for the early culture were the Paleo-Eskimo, Arctic Small-Tool Tradition (which included the Independence I, Pre-Dorset, Denbigh Flint Complex - which was from Alaska), and Saqqaq (which were from Greenland). By 1700 BC, the Pre-Dorset Inuit were established in Northern Hudson Bay, the Hudson Strait, and Fox Basin. They used snow houses, and soapstone lamps, bows, toggling harpoon heads, and fish and bird spears. The Pre-Dorset Inuit used dogs for packing and hunting. The Inuit at this time did not use them for pulling sleds.The Dorset Inuit had to change their techniques of a way of life based on seal and mammal hunting because around 1800 BC the climate in the Arctic became colder. The Inuit of the eastern Arctic have long known these people as the Tuint. From the early days of the Pre-Dorset and Dorset people who moved across the Arctic in the first millennium BC have left a record of their art. They made beautiful ivory carvings out of walrus tusks and whale-bones.Around the time of 1000 AD a warming trend allowed the bowhead whales to migrate along the Arctic coast. A new group, were following the whales and...
