Native American Unit Home - Regalia
Inuits
live in most parts of North America. They sometimes live in Canada and Greenland
and Alaska. Sometimes they call themselves Eskimos which means raw meat eaters.
They are medium height, have black eyes, straight black hair and high cheek
bones. They came from Asia across the Bering Strait 8, 000 year ago.
The native language is Inuktitut. These are some of the Inuktitut words: Aalu, a dipping sauce for meat, and aglus, a seal hole.
Inuits made igloos. Also, they used sod, drift wood, stone and skin to make other houses. They made summer tents that are seal skins stretched over a frame and anchored to the ground by stones. Their igloos were from snow blocks, the smallest at the top and the biggest at the bottom. The Inuits also made houses from caribous skins stretched over a frame.
For winter transportation they used sledges and snow shoes. For summer and spring transportation used kayaks and they traveled on foot.
The Inuits hunted seal and walrus that came up to breathe. They ate polar bears. Some Inuits trapped foxes and other small animals. Most of the time, the women and the children trapped the animals. When the boy was thirteen he would catch his first seal. The men made the tools. Fathers carved wooden games for the children, and they carved bone.
For their clothes they mostly used seal, fox furs, caribou and bear skin. The skins were sometimes chewed to soften them up. Shoes were called kamiks. They were made out of caribou, seal and reindeer.
My
regalia is modeled after an Inuit shaman. It is made out of fake seal skin and
caribou skin, which are the skins it would be made out of. There are several
pieces to my regalia. There is a coat, a vest and a bag. There are no beads
since traders did not have them. There are hand shapes on shaman coats, so that
the evil spirits don't make them sick. The bags were sometimes made out of caribou
skin and seal skin. But that is the end of the report. I really hope you learned
a lot.
Bibliography
Editors, Time-Life Books. People of the Ice and Snow. Richmond, Virginia: Time Life Inc., 1994.
Rowley, Susan; Parezo, Nancy: Langellier, John; Wyatt, Victoria; Tober, Natalie; Taylor, Colin; Sturtevant, William C. The Native Americans. London: Salamander Books, 1989.