Nunani: Deity (Part two)

RACHEL QITSUALIK

Necessity is the key to the lack of gods in Inuit cosmology.

Mythologically, any god or goddess is an elemental figure; it represents a fundamental feature of the world, such as earth, water or fire. Deities were always the figures that represented the orderly systems human beings observed in the world around them. When that order was upset, or when humanity feared it might be, the appropriate god was entreated to restore it. Crops failed, and a crop deity was prayed to. War was afoot, and a war god was prayed to.

In other words, gods ruled systems. They made recognizable models work, almost fulfilling the roles that scientific bodies of knowledge do today. Why try to propitiate some corn god when agricultural science will better secure the harvest?

Pre-colonial Inuit, however, did not live in a world of reliable systems. They were nomads, and even from the earliest days of the Thule, were pioneering new lands, their survivalist tendencies or sheer curiosity ranging them far and wide. Theirs was a never-ending odyssey.

What most people forget is that the Arctic is varied. No single area is completely like another. The animals never settle for long, and each area has its seasonal population, ever shifting and changing, like a great biological tide. Early Inuit had to be able to adjust. In doing so, they developed a very fluid culture, ready for unexpected tricks the land might throw at them. There was nothing reliable enough to be identified as a constant system. So Inuit culture began to depend upon only one thing: that nothing could be depended upon. Their culture itself became the only reliable system.

This is linked to Nuliajuk’s (ie. Sedna’s) superficial resemblance to a goddess. Over time, the closest thing to a predictable system that Inuit could identify was sea-mammal hunting, eventually necessitating the invention of a figure that commanded such animals — a figure that could be appealed to if necessary. This partly explains why Nuliajuk features most prominently in the lore of strongly seal-dependent Inuit groups, such as the Netsilingmiut.

Yet even seal hunting was not an entirely reliable lifestyle. Inuit were mobile opportunists, subsisting in any way they could, depending on what seasons and places offered them. Even Nuliajuk, therefore, was not a being that featured in their everyday lives. Factoring her into common existence was simply not practical, and so Nuliajuk never quite took on the status of a goddess.

Early Inuit were nevertheless deeply spiritual, inspired by the land and sense of mystical awe that it instilled in them. They generally regarded nature as permeated with a life of its own. They perceived will in it, though not always a conscious mind in the sense that man understands it. And they believed that this mysterious will — the very air an expression of its breath — regarded man with neither favour nor disfavour. All life, humanity included, drew life from this force (which was sometimes actually referred as the “sila,” or the sky); but there was no way to relate to it mind-to-mind.

This sort of cosmology even resembles those of nomadic peoples genetically similar to Inuit. The Mongols, for example, believed in a sky god called “tengri” — a word that has been recorded as meaning “heaven,” “god,” and “sky.” Early Mongols referred to the tengri in a way akin to which many pre-colonial Inuit referred to the sila. After their conquest of China, the Mongols eventually dropped belief in the tengri, instead adopting Chinese deities, which better suited their new city existence. Their needs had changed.

This makes sense. It is the state-dweller’s way to rely upon systems, the nomad’s way to rely upon the self. This is why few pre-colonial Inuit believed that there was any point in exploring relationships with nebulous forces. Inuit were concerned with whatever gave them a practical edge, practising a humanistic, even somewhat scientific, observation of nature. Their preoccupation was mastery, not propitiation, of their environment.

Pre-colonial Inuit have been haphazardly labelled “animistic” in the past, mainly under the assumption that all “primitive” peoples worship spirits inhabiting rocks, plants, etc. But Inuit not only did not worship spirits, they did not even worship gods. Comically, early Inuit cosmology more closely resembles the rationalistic religious movements of 17th- and 18th-century Europe.

If anything, Inuit relied upon only one, simple philosophy:

What will you do once you know?

Pijariiqpunga.