Nunani: Deity (Part one of two)

RACHEL QITSUALIK

“It is the decree of heaven.”
—ancient Mongol saying

“What will you do once you know?”
—Inuit saying

Flip through an encyclopedia of world mythology. You may notice an oddity if you do, the fact that there is little said about Inuit mythology — especially in regard to deities.

For other cultures, there are long descriptions of every kind of god or goddess imaginable: deities of the harvest, death, animals, wisdom, rivers, childbirth, the hearth, crossroads, love, drinking, or just about any other concept humanity can hold (even gods of writing, but I’m not relying on any as I put this down).

As the lens turns toward Inuit culture, one may note an awkward lack of Inuit gods. It used to be thought by scholars that this god-deficit was easily explained, Inuit seemingly having a primitive, simplistic culture. The thinking was that Inuit were not sophisticated enough to invent the concepts necessary for belief in deities or religions based around them.

Today, this view just doesn’t wash. Even scholars, who can be cloistered and difficult to persuade of new ideas, have had to admit that Inuktitut ranks among the top four most complex languages existent — therefore conveying complex concepts. One of the benefits of being so heavily studied is that the world is coming to realize the sophistication of Inuit culture. A culture has to develop more than a few tricks if it is going to survive in the Arctic.

So with the eye of the world upon Inuit, one naturally asks: Where are the Inuit religions? Where are the Inuit gods?

The Oxford Dictionary defines a god as “a superhuman being worshipped as having power over nature and human fortunes.” Superficially, this might seem to qualify several figures in Inuit lore as deities, but it has always been hard to make the label stick; mythologists usually default to classifying such well-known figures as Nuliajuk (or Sedna), for example, as supernatural beings.

The trick lies in the concept of worship. You only know a deity by whether he or she is worshipped. This is not an unwarranted question, either. All over the world, throughout the ages, gods have increased or diminished in their respective roles based solely on the degree to which they are worshipped. A figure who was once a full-blown god in a given area can diminish to the status of a mere spirit or bogeyman as a result of tribal invasion or the gradual shift in a people’s lifestyle (usually the latter).

For example, many of the figures existent today in European faerie lore were once gods in their own right — their former status now forgotten, their religions long since trampled in the march of time.

It is because of the worship qualifier that figures such as Nuliajuk, or the incestuous brother and sister Moon and Sun figures, are hard to regard as Inuit deities. Worship, after all, denotes both honour and respect for a figure. Excepting certain obscure shamanistic rites, Inuit held nothing resembling honour or respect for the Sun and Moon, who have always been referred to more in the context of a story, for the sake of aetiology or amusement.

Nuliajuk was simply feared, and her propitiation was always considered a last resort — when hunts had failed and the spectre of starvation loomed. And no one could be said to have a personal relationship with Nuliajuk. She was no one’s source of revelation.

As a neurotic woman dwelling beneath the sea, her one power was the ability to hold captive the sea mammals (which she herself had spawned), making it impossible to hunt them. This was always the result of one of her too-frequent tantrums. Only an angakoq (shaman) could visit Nuliajuk and cajole her into cheering up, releasing the sea mammals.

Typically, the angakoq’s demand upon the people was their public confession of taboo-violations, which sped the process along. This may seem suspiciously like a religious ceremony, except that it is important to remember that shamans demanded such confession for almost any ceremony they conducted — regardless of whether Nuliajuk was involved. Besides, the intercession of the angakoq in Nuliajuk’s case lacked the key element of worship on the part of the people.

So where, then, are the Inuit religions? The answer lies in that concept which so defines the Inuit world-view: necessity.