New study shows close genetic ties between all Inupiat, Inuit peoples

A new study genetically supports strong Inuit links across the North, as shown in this photo from the Inuit Circumpolar Council assembly in Nuuk in 2010: “We stand together now…let’s take our hands and be given strength… we are Inuit and we will always be there.” (FILE PHOTO)

All Inuit from Alaska, Canada and Greenland show close genetic relationships, a new study reveals.

The peopling of the eastern Arctic began in the North Slope of Alaska, in an eastward migration from Alaska to Greenland, suggests a new study published April 29 in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

“This is the first evidence that genetically ties all of the Inupiat and Inuit populations from Alaska, Canada and Greenland back to the Alaskan North Slope,” said Northwestern University’s M. Geoffrey Hayes, senior author of the new study, in a news release from the university.

Genetic testing of Inupiat currently living in Alaska’s North Slope helped scientists who worked on the study answer questions about links between the people who have populated the North American Arctic over the last 5,000 years.

And it also provided new evidence supporting the idea that there were two major migrations to the east from the North Slope at two different points in history.

One more surprise in this study: evidence of some migrations of Greenlandic Inuit back to the Alaska North Slope.

The scientists plan to explore this in the future, too.

In this study, DNA haplogroups, or genetic population groups of people who share a common ancestor, previously found in the ancient remains of Neo- (or new) and Paleo (Early) Eskimos and living Inuit peoples from across the North American Arctic were found within people living in North Slope villages.

“There has never been a clear biological link found in the DNA of the Paleo-Eskimos, the first people to spread from Alaska into the eastern North American arctic, and the DNA of Neo-Eskimos, a more technologically sophisticated group that later spread very quickly from Alaska and the Bering Strait region to Greenland and seemed to replace the Paleo-Eskimo,” Hayes said.

This suggests that the Alaskan North Slope serves as the homeland for both of those groups, during two different migrations. We found DNA haplogroups of both ancient Paleo-Eskimos and Neo-Eskimos in Iñupiat people living in the North Slope today,” Hayes said.

At the request of Inupiat elders from Barrow, Alaska, who are interested in using scientific methods to learn more about the history of their people, Hayes and a team of scientists extracted DNA from saliva samples given by 151 volunteers living in eight different North Slope communities — the first genetic study of modern-day Inupiat people.

Another haplogroup or group of genes that surfaced in this study was C4. This is typically only seen in Native Americans much farther south.

Its geographic distribution suggests that it might have been one of the haplogroups carried by the earliest peoples to enter the Americas.

The researchers think it it is seen in the North Slope either because of recent marriages between Athabaskan and Inupiat families, or because it is a remnant of a much more ancient contact between these groups.