SELECTED THESES ON THE CIRCUMPOLAR ARCTIC

The Inuit were communal when they came into contact with EuroAmerican society, but in the years that followed they were subjected to domination by this society and, losing their communal lifestyle, became a subordinate minority. Seemingly passive recipients of externally introduced change for over a century their culture and very way of life was threatened. But in the 1970s the Inuit became mobilised as a nationalist group. They sought and continue to seek self-determination to overcome their minority status and thus to maintain and protect their identity as a separate and unique people. The Inuit are therefore not simply an 'ethnic group', whose philosophy is equal rights for minority group members within the 'mainstream' society, but a nation, whose philosophy is the right of self-determination for the group as a whole. A nation in the modern world requires a defined territory in which it can exercise some degree of independence in decision-making.