The Inuit are special people. The old name for Inuit was Eskimo.

Eskimo means “eater of meat”. In 1977, the Eskimos changed their name to Inuit. Inuit means “the people”, in their language. They live in very cold places, Siberia, Alaska, Canada and Greenland.

These are the coldest parts of the world. There are about 120,000 Inuit in the world, today. Canada has 20,000 Inuit. Some live very close to the North Pole. The Inuit were the first people of Canada.

In the past, the Inuit hunted for all their foods. The men traveled in the snow on sleds. About ten dogs pulled a sled. The men killed fishes and other animals then they went home and shared their foods with other families. The Inuit used every part of the animal for food and clothes. They, usually, ate the fish raw. The women made clothes from the animal skins. They made shoes from the skin too. The Inuit had an old custom; the women chewed their husbands’ shoe, at night then the shoes were soft in the morning.

The Inuit life was hard. They lived in houses made of snow. They moved from time to time to hunt animals. Sometime the Inuit needed money. Other Canadians needed animals’ skins. The Inuit sold animals’ skins to these Canadians. Today, in Canada, the Inuit lives are very different. Most Inuit live in villages. The villages have from 300 to 15,000 people. The houses are made of wood. The Inuit don’t travel in sleds. They ride snowmobiles. They buy food and clothes from the store.

The Inuit keep in touch with the rest of the world. They use the telephone, television and the internet. They go on airplanes to the cities in the south of Canada. Inuit boys and girls go to school and have Inuit teachers. They learn about the world. At the same time, the Inuit want to remember their language and pass their traditions to their children.

In the 1970s, the Inuit, in Canada, wanted to control their land. In 1999, the Canadian government agreed. The government gave the Inuit a piece of land in the north of Canada.

The name of the Inuit new land is Nunavut. It means “our land”, in their language.