Religion is hardly an appropriate word for the Eskimo system of belief—there is no worship of God.
It was commercial interests that first turned European eyes toward the white wilderness of the Canadian Arctic. The trade routes between Europe and Asia, which took ships around the southern tips of the African and American continents, were long and hazardous. If a Northwest Passage above Canada could be found, it would almost halve the distance. After the failures of Christopher Columbus in 1492 and of John Cabot in 1497, a whole series of further expeditions was launched.
Now in the latter part of the twentieth century the possible commercial use of the Northwest Passage is again being canvassed. It was the discovery of oil in Alaska that led to the conversion of the Manhattan into a giant ice-breaking tanker of 150,000 tons, fitted with highly sophisticated, computerized equipment. The huge costs of construction and of antipollution insurance have led at present to pipelines as an alternative means of transporting oil and gas to the south. But we may yet hear more of the Northwest Passage before the century ends.
Nevertheless, Christian interest in the Arctic focuses less on fossil fuels and mineral deposits than on the people who for centuries have maintained their brave struggle for survival against cold and starvation. We tend to call them “Eskimos” (a corruption of a contemptuous Indian term meaning “raw flesh eaters”), but they call themselves “Inuit,” signifying just “the people,” the plural of “inuk,” a “person.” Although they are divided into numerous subcultures, speak different dialects and refer to themselves and each other by picturesque expressions like “people of the muskox,” “people of the rich fishing grounds,” and even “people of the back of the earth,” yet they are one people. Most scholars seem to agree that their ancestors came from northern China, some migrating northwest through Mongolia to Siberia and Lapland, and others northeast across the Bering Strait to Alaska, Arctic Canada, and Greenland. There are thought to be about 85,000 Eskimos living today, 40,000 in Greenland, 25,000 in Alaska, 18,000 in Canada, and the remaining 2,000 in Siberia.
The traditional religion of Eskimos has been a form of animism. Although, according to Roger P. Buliard, a Roman Catholic missionary among them for 15 years, in their ancient faith “God was regarded as primary,” he was remote and uninterested in human affairs, “leaving mundane matters entirely in the hands of lesser authorities,” i.e., the spirits (Inuk, 1950, p. 273). “Religion” is hardly an appropriate word to use for their system of beliefs and practices, however, for it contains no worship of God—only the appeasement of spirits. These spirits are thought to be in control of everything. They inhabit birds, beasts, and fish; they animate inanimate objects like rocks and ice; they direct the weather, and they influence the whole of human life, especially birth and death. Moreover, they are mostly malicious.
Hence, they have a felt need for an angakuk (medicine man or shaman). Indeed, Eskimo animism is really a combination of shamanism (placating the spirits by magic) and fetishism (gaining protection by wearing amulets or charms), together with a set of social taboos. Yet all this elaborate procedure for gaining power over the spirits leaves the Inuk ultimately powerless. He “simply accepts things as they are,” explains Raymond de Coccola, another Roman Catholic missionary, “and lets them go at that. If they do not work out for him, he will dismiss misfortune with one word: Ayorama, “that’s destiny, that’s life, there isn’t anything I can do about it.’ ”
The earliest expression of Christian concern for the Eskimos that I have come across was Pope Gregory’s instruction in A.D. 835 that the Greenlanders be evangelized. Norse missions began soon afterwards, and in A.D. 999 Leif, the son of Eric the Red, arrived in Greenland, preached the gospel, and baptized the king and other leaders. The first bishop was consecrated in the year 1121. Hans Egede, a Danish Lutheran pastor, came to Greenland in 1718, and the Moravian Brethren came in 1733.
Anglican involvement in the Arctic may be traced back to August 1578 when Robert Wolfall, Chaplain to Admiral Sir Martin Frobisher’s third expedition, administered the Lord’s Supper on Baffin Island. The 400th anniversary of this first Anglican Communion on the North American continent was celebrated last year by a special synod of the Diocese of the Artic. The first Anglican missionary, however, was the first chaplain to the Hudson’s Bay Company (1820), John West, a convert of John Wesley. In 1876 the Rev. E. J. Peck, often called “the Apostle to the Eskimos,” arrived from England to pioneer for 48 years the Christian mission in the eastern Arctic around Hudson Bay. He believed in indigenous principles, and encouraged the Eskimo churches to become self-reliant and self-propagating. Today the Anglican Diocese of the Arctic, which stretches some 2000 miles from Inuvik at the Mackenzie River Delta to Northern Quebec, has about 30 clergy, of whom 12 are Inuit.
I myself have now had the opportunity on four occasions to travel north of the Arctic Circle, and in particular to visit Bathurst Inlet, whose lodge at the mouth of the Burnside River has been created by the enterprise of former R.C.M.P. Glenn Warner and his wife Trish. Only after my arrival did I learn to my surprise that the small Inuit community, who call themselves the kringaunmiut or “people of the nose mountain” (from the shape of the rocky peak behind their camp), were all Anglicans! Since this discovery, having been appointed their “Honorary Chaplain,” I have had the privilege of seeking to minister the gospel to them by word and sacrament. This last July I was there again. Since my previous visit in 1976 there were two more healthy Eskimo babies to baptize, and there was another marriage to bless.
Pray that God will bless these fine Inuit people, and enable them to fight under Christ’s banner against sin, the world, and the devil as manfully as they fight against the rigors of the Arctic winter.
John R. W. Stott is rector emeritus of All Souls Church, London, England.
