Inuit Group Activities

Hunting

• Historically, Inuits have been nomadic hunters, though they are not a completely nomadic people -- settling in a base area for a portion of the year. Hunting is a group activity with groups comprising up to 50 people in pursuit of everything from caribou to moose, bear, fox, rabbit, sheep and fowl. The timing of hunting parties is dictated not directly by the season, but by the migration and availability of the animals.
  
  

Whale Hunting

• Whale hunting is perhaps the best-known and most iconic of the Inuits' hunting. International organizations such as Greenpeace, however, have lead the fight for increasing international protection of marine mammals, even for native people, according to the organization's website. Killing whales is now forbidden by Inuits who are U.S. citizens and is outlawed by the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972. Subsequently, whale hunting is heritage and no longer practice for Inuit people. Inuits tracked and hunted whale on open ocean from relatively small -- 25 feet or so -- open boats known as Umiaks, which remain a part of the Inuit culture. Umiaks were capable of carrying entire hunting parties and moving entire villages in migration, following whales. Twenty-five people or more have been known to fit in Umiaks, sometimes in a floatilla including kayaks, while moving camp. Whale hunting and the culture that surrounded it continue to celebrated in Inuit life.
  
  

Boat Building

• "'Eskimos' began the evolution of the boat that supplied the livelihood of the people of the Arctic..." says Nick Shade of Coast & Kayak Magazine. The making of the Umiaks -- a larger cousin of the Aleut and Greenland kayaks -- is a group activity just like hunting from them. Original Umiaks used long pieces of driftwood, lashed together by animal sinew, such as seal tendon. The frames were then covered in seal skin sealed with fat. The boats were essentially built like baskets and were surprisingly sea worthy.
  
  

Crafts

• Primarily a hunting culture, Inuit culture remains patriarchal, with women doing the majority of domestic work as well as engaging in a number of crafts and artwork. Some tasks such as clothes making may be elevated to an artistic endeavor with cultural adornments. Women-produced crafts would have been among items traded at summer markets with other native people, but formal trading ended as Inuit culture changed with hunting laws. The creation of such crafts would have been done in small groups as hunting was the primary and largest group activity.