Talk:Eskimo

Genetics

This article needs a section on genetics.Andrewjlockley (talk) 22:31, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Racial Slur

The problem with the article’s title still has not been resolved. After reviewing the (tedious) discussion history, it is clear that the word eskimo is a rather strange anomaly. This is the only word I know of that is completely benign in American English, and unspeakably racist (literally) in Canadian English.

In Canada the casual use of this term has long disappeared (save for its fossilised presence in a certain CFL team). From the comments, it seems the Americans and Europeans don’t understand why this keeps being rehashed — but it’s because every time a Canadian stumbles across this page they’re forced to do a double-take; much as a speaker of any variety of English would at the Fuck, Cunt, Nigger, Pussy & Fag articles. Each of those pages attempts to account for the provocativeness of their subject matter.

The only mention of this in the lead is the paragraph claiming “[in Canada] the term eskimo has fallen out of favour”. That’s a gross understatement tantamount to deception. The word isn’t “out of favour” — Acid Wash is “out of favour”, “eskimo” is racist. Sugestions:

1. More clear description of the debate in the lead paragraph.
2. content relating to those peoples who prefer the term “inuit” be redirected to that page.

The concerns of American English- and Canadian English-speakers both take precedence over other varieties of English, because in this case we’re discussing a Canadian and American subject. Is anyone going to agree to this? — Mukapdia 7h33 25th March 2010

I think that item 1 could be improved but I'm not sure that there is much in the way of 2 that is left to be taken out. There is however a few errors with some of your comments. For example, "...unspeakably racist (literally) in Canadian English." and "In Canada the casual use of this term has long disappeared (save for its fossilised presence in a certain CFL team)." While the use of word Eskimo is, in Canada and Greenland, offensive, pejorative, has fallen out of favour (and usage), is considered by some to be racist and was without doubt used in a racist way, I really don't think that it's as racist as you make out. offensive, pejorative, pejorative, pejorative, racist, racist, used in a racist way. If there was such a racist connotation over Eskimo then I would have thought there would be more pressure to change the name of the Edmonton Eskimos, Eskimo Pass, Nunavut, Eskimo bowline (huh?), Eskimo Curlew (used by the Canadian Government), Eskimo Nebula, Canadian Eskimo Dog (probably on the way out). On top of that we have the following in Nunavut, Eskimo Point Lumber Supply and Airport Services (in Arviat, Nunavut but that is not an Inuit business), Paleajook Eskimo Co-operative Limited or Paleajook Co-operative Ltd (Taloyoak, Nunavut), Hall Beach Eskimo Co-operative (Hall Beach, Nunavut), West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative Limited (Cape Dorset, Nunavut) and Issatik Eskimo Co-op (Whale Cove, Nunavut). With the exception of the lumber and supply business the other are all in the Inuit Firm Registry Database meaning the meet the requirements set out in Article 24 of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement. While in the Inuvialuit region there is the Eskimo Lakes Holdings and Logistics (both in Tuktoyaktuk), Holman Eskimo Co-op Ltd (Ulukhaktok, Northwest Territories) and the Mackenzie Delta Hotel Group who own the Eskimo Inn (Inuvik, Northwest Territories). These are all listed at the IRC Business Listings (click on show all). I'm sure that if the word was perceived as being "unspeakably racist" then the Inuit owned companies would have changed their names.

Wow, great research. I’ll admit that’s a lot of examples, but how many of these were created within the last, let’s say 20 years? Also, the proliferation of names in a list like this is not necessarily a clear indication of how acceptable a word is socially -- an example that springs to mind is the Washington Redskins football team. Despite the team being popular, there’s no denying that you can’t use that term to describe anything except the team, and that calling a Native American a “redskin” to his face would be a grave insult. It’s my belief that “eskimo” in Canada is equally racist, and I admit I don’t have a lot of research to support this (but the fact it keeps getting brought up tells us there’s something to it). — Muckapedia (talk)

Agreed in Canada the word is not used anymore , that is why Canada made this article (that original was translated from the Polish Wikipedia i believe). The problem is that In Alaska, the term Eskimo is commonly used, because it includes both Yupik and Inupiat, while Inuit is not accepted as a collective term or even specifically used for Inupiat. No universal replacement term for Eskimo, inclusive of all Inuit and Yupik people, is accepted across the geographical area inhabited by the Inuit and Yupik peoples. Like normal the Americans are behind in there terminology ( like using the word Native that only the Americans still use). We have tried to solve this in the past, but have found great resistance in trying to merge the 2 articles Eskimo and Inuit (in fact the Eskimo and Inuit articles have been intermixing for some time and see here (and here ) ...What we came up with was Alaska Natives that should be called Indigenous peoples of Alaska, but for some odd reason that voted for the word Natives won...even though Wikipedia:WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America has decided to use the word Indigenous as the word Native mean something else to the rest of the world... That is it means Natural born citizen and/orNative-born citizen and not and Indigenous peoples. This is a long standing problem and until the Indigenous peoples of the North realize that the wording is out of date and they need to sit-down and find a term, there is noreal word for all Indigenous peoples of the North we can use....What would you suggest ? 1, 2, The most common solution is merging the 2 articles and calling it Indigenous peoples of the Circumpolar North..but this was not done as it was voted down, because the Russian Indigenous peoples have there own subdivisions and felt that this was a step backwards since they have very distinctive cultural separations..... i would love to finally resolves thsi, but i think until all the peoples of the Circumpolar North find command ground on this we are stuck with the divide..I would say merge all to Indigenous peoples of the Arctic..... Moxy (talk) 16:56, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

In the future, please keep your offensive and ignorant comments about Americans out of your discussions - this talk page is to improve the article, not to display the limits of your I.Q. HammerFilmFan (talk) 01:24, 28 February 2011 (UTC) HammerFilmFan

Muckapedia, don't give me too much credit for the research. It's easy to know how to find stuff about where you live and some of them I already knew. However, I think that I may have made the same mistake that I've noticed before with these two articles, Inuit and Eskimo. That is assuming what is true for one area of the Canadian Arctic is the same for others. The main example is the igloo, associated with all Inuit but really only used by some.

I decided to do some checking and see how people felt about being called Eskimo. Of course this is poorly done original research and can't be used in the article at all. What I got was a whole range of opinions from not caring, preferring that it not be used, really didn't want to be called an Eskimo, mildly offensive, very offensive and to the point of being racist. The people that had the strongest opposition to being called Eskimo were from the Eastern Arctic, Cape Dorset and Igloolik. That leads me to think that east of Cambridge Bay the word is much more offensive than it is here, and may well be thought of as racist. However, it does get complicated as I also asked my son, an Inuvialuit from Ulukhaktok, and my daughter-in-law, also an Inuvialuit, who is from the Western Arctic community of Paulatuk, Northwest Territories. My son didn't care about it but agreed with you that it's racist. My daughter-in-law said that being called an Eskimo was better than being called Inuit and most people from her home town felt the same. My son agreed and said that calling people in the Western Arctic, Inuit would be offensive, this would apply to the six communities in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region. The problem is one of translation. In the eastern Canadian Arctic languages/dialects Inuit, always capitalised, refers only to the people in the Inuit article. However, in the western Canadian Arctic languages/dialects inuit, never capitalised, simply means people. Oddly enough this was confirmed today when standing at the store with my son and daughter-in-law and a friend came up behind us and said "Hi inuit" in much the same way we would say "Hi folks".

According to the Inuit Circumpolar Council all the groups we are talking about are referred to as Inuit, including the people of Alaska and Russia (caution that last one wanted to install something on my computer). Unfortunately the two articles can't be merged into Indigenous peoples of the Circumpolar North or Indigenous peoples of the Arctic, see this map. Both of those would exclude the Inuit in Nunavik and Nunatsiavut and at the same time include the Sami people, the Gwich’in and possibly others, who are neither Inuit or Eskimo. What we appear to have is the following:

• Inuit as defined by the Inuit Circumpolar Council are the people living in Canada, Greenland, Russia and the United States formerly called Eskimo. The people of Russia and the United States do not self-identify as Inuit,
  • In Greenland the Inuit people are called Kalaallit, Avanersuarmiut and Tunumiit.
  • In Canada Inuit refers collectively to the people of the Northwest Territories Nunatsiavut, Nunavik and Nunavut. In the western part of Nunavut and the eastern Northwest Territories the people self-identify as Inuinnait or Inuinnaq. In the western Northwest Territories the people self-identify as Inuvialuit.
  • In Alaska the Inupiat, an Inuit people, may still refer to themselves as Eskimo.
• Eskimo is still used by the Yupik of Alaska, who also live in Russia.

Of course most of these groups can be broken down even further. something lame from CBW 09:47, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Moxy, I think it's offensive to claim that "like normal the Americans are behind in there(sic) terminology." The Canadians are the ones attempting to do the equivalent of "Don't call them Orientals, call them all Chinese." That would be certainly objected to by Koreans and Japanese, for example. Just because most of the people who speak an Eskimo language are Inuit doesn't mean that you can get away with describing the minority by a term that it doesn't want used.

I also don't see how the Inuit Circumpolar Council gets off saying that you can describe people as Inuit who, in the Council's own words, do not self-identify as Inuit. Surely the mark of an offensive term for a people is that the group does not self-identify with it. The problem is not just that Eskimo is pejorative and offensive in Canada; it's that using the accepted term in Canada for Alaskans and others to whom it does not apply is pejorative and offensive to Yupik.

And similarly, there are plenty of Indigenous peoples of the Circumpolar North who do not speak an Eskimo related language and who are even more culturally distinct from these group of people. Sometimes you want a word to describe collectively the speakers of these languages. You're being extremely offensive and culturally insensitive, at the same time as you're accusing others of the same offense. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.225.107.17 (talk) 15:38, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I'm going to start this comment of with a little context. I'm eastern Canadian, and when I got linked to this article from an article on a Canadian book, I had the same reaction as I did last time someone made a 'nigger' joke in my presence, and just barely stopped myself from flaming the page. Now, I'm not black or Inuit (etc.), but I grew up with friends from Nunatsiavut who considered the term 'Eskimo' to be very very offensive, which is why I reacted that way at first. That said, I now live on the west coast, and have met people from Alaska who have thought the opposite (as described above). In the end, because I am white, the only context I have to look at this, and this is something I think we should all try to do, is through words like '[[queer]', 'fag' and gay; the last of which is what I call myself, but I have been called all three in both anger and kindness, and it is important to know that all three mean different things to different people with surprising geographical variation. Where I come from, using the word 'queer' to refer to the LGBT... community would be considered a big insult by all but the most traveled or youngest community members, and I'm sure they would react poorly to how things are grouped on Wikipedia, but at least that controversy is mentioned in the article (to some extent). So, because I can understand that both 'simple' options (Eskimo and Inuit) are very loaded terms to at least some people, we really need to make that clear from the opening paragraphs of both articles. An even better solution, mentioned below by Muckapedia, would be to simply have a redirect page that lets each group have their own way on their own page.

Either way, I think we can all agree that whether we are trying to group people under the term 'Eskimo' or 'Inuit' or what have you, and these people are saying 'I find that offensive' then we are doing something mean for no reason. Even though the word 'Eskimo' makes me feel ill, because of what it is meant where I come from, I do not have the right to have it stripped from this article, because doing so would put someone else in the place I don't want to be. But ignoring the true weight of the controversy (even though in some places, such as now, it is people reacting on others' behalves) which I feel is done in this article as it is currently written, is just as wrong.naturalnumber (talk) 22:54, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

I echo the previous commentator. I live in Canada, and have known a number of Native North Americans. While I cannot speak as an ambassador or anything like that, I find that those who hail from Inuit descent feel very strongly about being called "Eskimos." They insist on being called "Inuit." Why? They're not Eskimos. They're Inuit. Similarly, we don't call the Ojibwa "Chee-Chees," or the Cree "red skins" out of respect for their culture. Calling them those racial slurs offends them in a similar way to how African-Americans would get upset about being called "niggers." I do not see any good reason why the "Eskimo" article exists. I am sure these groups that have been put under this categorization would appreciate being called their own name. After all, the British would likely not appreciate their page on "British People" being changed "Limey People." And if you called everybody from Germany, Sweden, Austria, the Netherlands, and Belgium all "those Germanic lads" they're attitudes would change to be a tad hostile towards you.

Redirect hierarchy

So why not this:

Eskimo becomes a disambiguation page, pointing to the following pages:

1.Inuit in Canada, containing sections/page links to:

Inuit, Inuvialuit

2.Eskimo in Alaska, containing sections/page links to:

Inupiat, Yupik, and a related group, the Aleut

3.Inuit in Greenland, containing sections/page links to:

Kalaallit, Avanersuamiut, Tunumiit

4.Eskimo in Russia (no page, just heading in redirect that links to same yupik page)

Yupik etc.

5.Although not eskimo, the term could be mistakenly applied to a number of other circumpolar peoples:

Saami

Gwich'in etc.

The copy for the Eskimo redirect could be: “Eskimo refers to a number of indigenous circumpolar peoples. In some dialects of English the term is neutral, while in others it is highly offensive. For this reason the relevant articles have been categorised into the following manner:” Obviously this is a rough draft, I’m not sure if Gwich'in is relevant, and there’s probably more groups we could mention under Russia. Basically this would be a list to articles of circumpolar people, specifically geared to anyone who was searching for Eskimo. Thoughts? — Muckapedia (talk) 1^e avr. 2010 13h11 (−4h)

I've been thinking as to how the material that is currently here and not found elsewhere could be merged and to where. I originally thought that it could go into the Inuit article but that's already large enough. So I wondered if something like this would work. Then the Indigenous peoples of the Arctic would contain all (and probably more) groups in the Arctic, like you show above, even if they are not Inuit/Eskimo. something lame from CBW 12:29, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Hygiene

If Eskimos live in the frozen North, do they bathe?Lestrade (talk) 19:43, 17 June 2010 (UTC)Lestrade

Of course. First of all the Arctic is not frozen all year round. Second almost all Inuit/Eskimo live in modern houses with all the conveniences, including running water/baths/showers, that would be found in southern parts of the countries that they live in. Enter CBW, waits for audience applause, not a sausage. 23:27, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Collective term

So, what is the alternative to using "Eskimo(s)"? The article suggests Inuit-Yupik, but this is arguably incorrect: According to Talk:Alutiiq#Yupik?, the Alutiiq don't consider themselves Yupik. The Siberian Eskimos might not all consider themselves Yupik, either (for example the Naukans; the Sireniki have been argued to be a separate branch, and Yupik may be paraphyletic as a linguistic group). The Inupiat do not accept the term "Inuit" for themselves, the Inuvialuit also have a distinct identity, and the Greenlanders (Kalaallit) don't seem to view themselves as Inuit, either (not to mention the Tunumiit and the Avanersuarmiut). Hence, to express the notion encapsulated in the word Eskimo, you need a compound like Inuit-Inupiat-Inuvialuit-Kalaallit-Yupik-Alutiiq-Yuit-Naukan-Sireniki-... with "Aleuts" added if you want to talk about the larger group. Don't you think that constantly talking about the Inuit-Inupiat-Inuvialuit-Kalaallit-Yupik-Alutiiq-Yuit-Naukan-Sireniki-...-Aleut languages would quickly become tedious for a specialist dealing with them regularly? There's a reason why shorthand collective or inclusive terms exist, such as "First Nations", "Alaska Natives", or "Native Americans", applied without respect to the views (and perceptions of identity) of the so designated. That's the nature of exonyms. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:29, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Inuit is accepted by all of the circumpolar peoples that are members of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference. Also we don't need to use selfidentifying terms, but the ones that are most common in the literature.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 23:34, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

There are conflicting statements throughout Wikipedia, though. Especially the Inupiat are said to resent the term Inuit applied to them, not to mention the so-called Yupik. Perhaps the Inuit Circumpolar Conference doesn't speak for all Eskimos. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:44, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Yupik and Inupit are members of the ICC. The ICC of course does not claim that all of the individuals in the groups that it represents identitfy as Inuit - but the fact that it exists and has memberships form the entire "Eskimo" group shows that Inuit is fine as a collective term for official usage. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 23:52, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Then, why does the article state that the term "Inuit" is not accepted in Alaska? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:03, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Sources not avalible

Sources 15 and 16 are no longer avalible. Can someone replace them? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.160.234.48 (talk) 00:12, 6 January 2012 (UTC)