Talk:Shamanism among Eskimo peoples/Examples of using term shamanism among Eskimos in recent scientific literature/General Observations about the Religion of the Eskimos
General Observations about the Religion of the Eskimos edit
Animals, on the land and in the sea formed the basis of the Eskimos' existence and so took on a crucial inportance in their religion. These animals belonged to the extensive category of humanoid beings which were more or less alien, according to the extent to which they differed from inuviit in species, habit or appearance. Inuviit, the plural of inuvik,means proper or true human beings, and was the term used by the Eskimos to designate themselves in contrast to other men and humanoid beings, Proper human beings were normal, that is, resembled men inshape and physiognamy: more important still, they lived in families and communities like the Eskimos themselves, with all their -time-honoured cultural habits.
The alien, on the other hand, might be a recluse; or someone unmarried and living with a sigle close relative; or lived in society but had an odd shape. So most aliens were abnormal if judged by human inuit standards. They might be giants, dwarfs, have physical defects and oddities, or be of many different shapes. But asstated all these creatures were also humanoid. Every sigle animal, every possible species of fauna, as well as mountains, streams, the sea, the air, the land under the earth, under the beach, and so on, had its own inua: man, owner or lord. Even psychic conditions and concepts like sleep and laughter could take on an independent existence and a human quality as an inua.
The mentality of the Eskimos in this respect was no different from that of most human beings living in small autonomous communities without any appreciable contact with other, larger societies. The creatures living and imagined in the surrounding natural world are all humanoid, but differ according to the centre of imagination: the society and cultural patterns of the observer himself. Ethnocentricity always stands the best chances in small-case societies, wher a close personal acquaintance consists among all the members normally associating with each other. Against this background the various forms of life and qualities in the surroundng world, existing outside the society of proper human beings, can hardly be covnceived on any but a personal level. They obtain the characteristics of persons both resembling and differing from proper human beings.
Relations with the alien. The Eskimos had various rules for consorting with the different types of alien creatures. These types fall roughly into five categories: 1. animals on which they subsisted; 2. the dead; 3. the animal or dead human that had turned into a particularly alien creature because of abreach of tabu; 4. the so-called deities; and 5. the numerous imagined creatures in nature, as also the real species of fauna of no material use to the Eskimos
Page 6 of Kleivan, I. and Sonne, B.: Eskimos / Greenland and Canada. (Series: Iconography of religions, section VIII /Artic Peoples/, fascicle 2). Institute of Religious Iconography • State University Groningen. E.J. Brill, Leiden (The Netherland), 1985. ISBN: 90 04 07160 1.
My emphasis added Physis 23:01, 6 April 2007 (UTC)