Category Archives: Arctic Cultures

ESKIMO OF CUMBERLAND SOUND

#7 Man’s Two Souls: The Afterlife
     (Franz Boas, 1883-84)

The Eskimo believe that man has two souls. One of these stays with the body, and may enter temporarily the body of a child which is given the name of the departed. The other soul goes to one of the lands of the souls. Of these there are several. There are three heavens, one above another, of which the highest is the brightest and best. Those who die by violence go to the lowest heaven. Those who die by disease go to Sedna’s house first, where they stay for a year. Sedna restores their souls to full health, and then she sends them up to the second heaven. They become inhabitants of Omiktu, in which place there are many whales. It is not quite certain that the second heaven and Omiktu are the same, as it is also stated that only the lighter souls that leave Sedna’s house ascend to the second heaven. Those who die by drowning go to the third heaven. Their souls are very strong and healthy. People who commit suicide go to a place in which it is always dark, called “Kumetoon,” and where they go about with their tongues lolling. Women who have had premature births go to Sedna’s abode, and stay in Alipā’q, the lowest world, which is under the sea, and not far from Sedna’s house. It is said that some souls go to Tukeychwen, a place of which no full description is given.

[#7] Franz Boas, “The Eskimo of Baffin Land and Hudson Bay,” Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. XV, 1907): 130.

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COPPER ESKIMO

#6 Suicide as Rare
     (Diamond Jenness, 1913-18)

The majority of the natives are extremely curious, although a few of them keep this feeling fairly under control. They like to pick up and examine everything, to turn a thing over and see what is inside. . . .Just as among Europeans, however, there were very many different types. Some were very timid and alarmed by anything they could not understand, such as the phonograph or the magnetic needle, others were bold and inquisitive, or sly and cunning, and a few, a very few, frank and straightforward. The majority were cheerful and light-hearted, inclined to be talkative and, in some cases, even garrulous. Their gay and care-free natures make suicide an extremely rare occurrence; in fact I do not remember hearing of more than one case, and that was due not to any morbid weariness of life, but to terror of the revenge that might be exacted for a crime that the man had committed.

[#6] D. Jenness, Report of the Canadian Arctic Expedition 1913-18, vol XII: The Life of the Copper Eskimos (Ottawa: F.A. Acland, 1922): 233.

 

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COPPER ESKIMO

Death Taboos
     (Knud Rasmussen, 1921-24)

People who desire to put an end to their life should do so while others are looking on. Consequently it often happens that they get one of their relatives to strangle them. The cause may either be sorrow or sickness. People who wish to take their life in secret must themselves make a thong fast to the roof of the snow hut by means of a hole and a bar placed across it on the outside, and then seek death by hanging.

Nothing is known as to whether people who take their own life meet with any special fate after death: it is believed that they go where they would otherwise have gone.

If the death taboo is not observed the soul becomes… an evil spirit.

[#5] Knud Rasmussen, Intellectual Culture of the Copper Eskimos (Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921-24) (Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag, 1932): 46-47.

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INGALIK

#4 Suicide as Shameful or Insane
     (Cornelius Osgood, 1937)

Another cause of death is suicide. To kill oneself is considered a shameful act, but it may be done nonetheless. The corpse of such a person receives special treatment. There is no regular funeral and the body is put on top of some other grave. Even the spirit is destined for a distinctive afterworld.

A woman who has decided to take her own life ideally bathes and puts on new clothes. Females apparently prefer to die by hanging. The girl may use her inside belt, another line of babiche, or one of braided willow bark. No knot is required if the inner belt is chosen since one end will be simply inserted through the slit in the other. Otherwise, a slip knot serves. The girl, perhaps crazy from frustrated love, goes into the woods, climbs up in some willows, puts the cord around her neck, and fastens the end to a fork in the branches. After she jumps off she may kick around for a long time and consequently may be cut down before she is dead. Saving her life is said to be useless, however, for she will probably be successful on a second attempt.

Sometimes an old man will strangle himself with a line, but men who are not old more often drive a knife or arrow into the heart. A man would not drown himself, as most rationalize that this method is painful. For whatever reason and however it is done, suicide is considered a form of insanity.

The Ingalik take an unfavorable view of the abandonment of individuals where such an act leads inevitably to their death. As previously mentioned, in the desperate times of starvation, abandonment does take place, but then no choice is considered to be involved. Also old people are occasionally left behind in a winter village if they have no one to look after them. Such unfortunates may strangle themselves. However, should healthy, active members of a family remove to their summer camp leaving relatives helpless, they would gain a very bad reputation for doing so. Ingalik claim that when traveling they will not abandon living people for any reason. If they did so, others would laugh at them and simply say that they had killed the individuals that they had left.

[#4] Cornelius Osgood, Ingalik Social Culture. Yale University Publications in Anthropology, no. 53. Field date 1937. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958): 148.

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ST. LAWRENCE ESKIMO

#3 Notes on Eskimo Patterns of Suicide
     (Alexander H. Leighton and Charles C. Hughes, 1940)

Three methods of ritual suicide were mentioned [by Yuit informant] as having existed on St. Lawrence: hanging, shooting with a rifle, and stabbing with spear or knife. Hanging was the most, and stabbing the least, common. The victim himself apparently had his choice.. . .

…The general procedure for suicide was the same, no matter whether the blow was self-administered or given by someone else. Once having decided to do away with himself, the individual initiated the process by asking his relatives to kill him or at least help in the suicide. As a rule they would not consent at first, but rather tried to dissuade him from his intentions. One of the St. Lawrence informants said that among their ethnic counterparts at Indian Point (Siberia) the custom was for the prospective suicide to ask three times for someone to help him, the third request being one that could not be refused. There was no indication of limits to the number of requests at Gambell.

The requirement that the prospective suicide warn his relatives of his intentions is one of the most significant aspects of the pattern, for it is here that the group involvement begins to emerge. Unfortunately, however, there are as yet no adequate data on whether an individual could ever “legitimately” commit suicide by himself without first warning his relatives of his plans; or whether he always had to implicate the wider social group in his demise. Probably it was the latter, however, for an informant questioned on this point by CCH on a visit to the island in 1954 said that it simply never happened that a person would go off and kill himself all alone—“always lots of people around.”

…If the prospective suicide continued to ask among his relatives for death they finally had to agree. He would then dress himself in his house as one already dead, i.e., with his clothing turned inside out. Presently a group of relatives would arrive and carry him seated on a reindeer skin to the “Destroying Place.” This was the spot where in any regular funeral some of the deceased’s property was broken. There were two such places on the edge of Gambell village. Sometimes, particularly if the man were sacrificing himself to save someone else, he would walk to his death. This was considered an especially praiseworthy act.

Before his death at the Destroying Place, the prospective suicide commonly addressed his relatives, giving them advice about life, and his reflections upon parting from this world. Informants describe this speech somewhat as follows: “Sometimes he say ‘You big enough. You know what you can do. Older people must teach younger ones. And after me you won’t need me any more. You can defend you self.’ Because our custom is: anything when we couldn’t think clear, we had to come to older people.” And another excerpt: “He says ‘My time is up, so I couldn’t tell you anything more to what to do. So you be think you selves and you almost grown man now.’ ”

. . .Once the decision and arrangements for the death had been made by an individual, retraction was very difficult. The consequences of such action were not specified by an informant, but among the neighboring Chukchee it was believed that all forms of bad fortune would ensue unless the retractor made a heavy sacrifice to the “Outer Being,” an important deity in the Chukchee supernatural hierarchy. It was, however, mentioned on St. Lawrence Island that in at least two cases dogs were killed after a suicide vow had been retracted, presumably in the attempt to have them substitute for the human being.

The treatment accorded the relative who acted as executioner is particularly interesting as illustrating a case in which the necessary violation of a basic and deeply held value is followed by ritual activities which seem to constitute both symbolic punishment and exorcism of any evil that might arise from the killing. The prevailing attitude seems to have been, as one informant expressed it, “No one likes to kill anyone; people usually kill themselves when they want death.” This informant himself put forward the suggestion that the treatment of the killer was some form of punishment.

The executioner was confined to his or her house for a period of twenty days. During this time he was not allowed to go outside for fresh air; he could not change his clothes; and he could not do any sort of work in the house. He always wore his clothes with the hair turned inward, and his head and eyebrows were shaved without water. A small net made of baleen was placed over his head or parka hood. He could not wash himself nor use his fingernails for scratching, though he was allowed to use a stick or comb for the latter purpose. For picking up meat he had to use a pointed knife rather than his fingers. After this initial twenty-day confinement, he was free to go outside, but still could not engage in constructive labor for another (unspecified) period of time…

…When death was by hanging, several relatives participated in holding the post, and in raising and lowering the deerskin. It was apparently felt that in such an operation no single individual was responsible for the death and as a result none had to undergo the severe treatment accorded a person who alone caused a death. It is likely that they nevertheless had to carry out some ritual limitations of activity, similar to those described above for ordinary mourning. Adequate information on this point is unfortunately lacking.

The commonest reason given for suicide was suffering due to physical sickness. A second cause was prolonged grief over the death of a loved one; another was pervasive despondency without apparent cause. The latter, as described by the informants, seemed to be very similar to the clinical depressions known in our culture. ..

The above motives are found in other Eskimo groups. On St. Lawrence there was one additional reason not found in these groups nor in the Chukchee culture, as far as the evidence at hand indicates. This was the belief that a man, by giving his own life, could thereby save the life of an ill son or grandson. …In the words of one informant, “My own parents, father and brother (sic), they been hang. I know my own father very well that time. We was both sick, myself and my father same time. Maybe my father was think ‘If I die myself maybe he (son) get well.’” And a similar case at Indian Point was related: “Seems to me he wasn’t very sick. He shot because he want to save son who was sick. Shot by own son (other son). …He was talking aloud before shot him. Say, ‘I want to be shot because I want my son to live so I take his place to die.’ ”…

…Usually it was old men who committed suicide, but occasionally elderly women and people in the prime of life did so too. No clear-cut information on patterns of abandoning the aged (which, if practiced, might have increased the prevalence of suicides, especially among old women) is available, although the practice probably did exist. When it was a case of saving somebody else, it was often the able-bodied men in their most productive years who sacrificed themselves. Those who committed suicide were thought very brave and courageous; they, along with people who were murdered, were said to go to heaven—to a “place where they would be happier.” It was particularly proper, according to one of the early ethnographers, for what the St. Lawrence Islanders termed an “athletic man” (i.e., the strong, able, aggressive individual who dominated his fellows) to kill himself rather than die a natural death. One reason for this may be, as Margaret Lantis has suggested, that the prestige and high social evaluation accorded a good hunter in this culture was greatly enhanced by this ultimate act of killing—the killing of oneself. Thus, rather than suffer the social decline concomitant with waning physical powers, the athletic man and hunter often chose to destroy himself while still enjoying a large measure of prestige.

[#3] Alexander H. Leighton and Charles C. Hughes, “Notes on Eskimo Patterns of Suicide,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 11(4): 327-335 (Winter 1955), with data collected from Yuit informants on St. Lawrence Island, Summer 1940.

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ALEUT

#2 Are the Aleut Prone to Commit Suicide?
     (I. E. P Veniaminov, 1840)

The best proof of this [their love for children] is their former custom (not general, however) of taking one’s life from grief over the death of a beloved son or nephew. For example, if a son or nephew fell from a cliff, the father or uncle would also throw himself from the cliff. If the former drowned, the latter also hurled themselves into the sea, and so forth…

This cannot be considered suicide. Otherwise any sacrifice performed out of love for another person may be given that name…

 …The Athin Aleuts, as savages, did not know the value of their lives. When emotionally excited they willingly deprived themselves of life. For example, they committed suicide in an excess of grief or pity over the death of their relatives – of a son, nephew, husband, wife, etc. But children never took their lives out of grief for their dead parents no matter how greatly they may have loved them. Evidently this was their law. Sometimes the suicide was committed from disappointment at the failure of an undertaking. However, it was never done out of fear or cowardice except in cases where they saw that capture by an enemy was inevitable. Then they preferred death to slavery among their enemies or to being tortured to death by them…

Those who were most devoted to the deceased, if they did not take their lives in the first explosion of grief, fasted to the point of exhaustion.

[#2] I. E. P Veniaminov, Notes on the Islands of the Unalaska District. St. Petersburg: Russian-American Company, 1840: 28-29, 32-33.

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ESKIMO OF DIOMEDE ISLAND

#1 Father and Son
     (Weyer, 1932)

A hunter living on the Diomede Islands related to the writer how he killed his own father, at the latter’s request. The old Eskimo was failing, he could no longer contribute what he thought should be his share as a member of the group; so he asked his son, then a lad about twelve years old, to sharpen the big hunting knife. Then he indicated the vulnerable spot over his heart where his son should stab him. The boy plunged the knife deep, but the stroke failed to take effect. The old father suggested with dignity and resignation, “Try it a little higher, my son.” The second stab was effective, and the patriarch passed into the realm of the ancestral shades.

Women as well as men were sometimes killed. Strangling or hanging might take the place of stabbing. Always a member of the family would perform the act, in order to avoid any intimation of a blood feud.

The Eskimo has an abiding confidence that at death he will go to live in another sphere, which, although it may not be a happy hunting ground, may easily be fraught with less hardship than his earthly home. So when he commits suicide he has the composure and assurance of a civilized man who purchases a railroad ticket to another city. He meets death with sober resignation. When a crew of Diomede Islanders in a skin boat are confronted with death by drowning, the captain goes around and slashes all the men’s throats with his knife and finishes the job by cutting his own. The author, upon questioning an Eskimo hunter who was sick as to whether he wanted to die, received the reply, “Um?… Not just now; no wood in village for make coffin.”

[#1] Edward Moffat Weyer, The Eskimos: Their Environment and Folkways (Archon Books 1969, copyright Yale University Press, 1932): 138, 248-49.

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ARCTIC INDIGENOUS CULTURES
(documented 1840-1940)

Eskimo of Diomede Island:

  1. Father and Son
    (Edward Moffat Weyer, 1932)

Aleut:

  1. Are the Aleut Prone to Commit Suicide?
    (Veniaminov, 1840)

St. Lawrence Eskimo:

  1. Notes on Eskimo Patterns of Suicide
    (Leighton and Hughes, 1940)

Ingalik:

  1. Suicide as Shameful or Insane
    (Osgood, 1937)

Copper Eskimo:

  1. Death Taboos
    (Rasmussen, 1921-24)
  2. Suicide as Rare
    (Jenness, 1913-18)

Eskimo of Cumberland Sound:

  1. Man’s Two Souls: The Afterlife
    (Boas, 1883-84)

Caribou Eskimo:

  1. Moral Rights, Social Obligations
    (Birket-Smith, 1921-24)

Netsilik Eskimo:

  1. Famine; On the Treatment of the Aged
    (Rasmussen, 1921-24)

Iglulik Eskimo:

  1. The Moon Spirit
    (Rasmussen, 1921-24)
  2. Death, and Life in the Land of the Dead
    (Rasmussen, 1921-24)
  3. Those Who Were Left Behind
    (Rasmussen, 1921-24)

Hudson Bay Inuit:

  1. Desertion of Old Women
    (Turner, 1882-84, 1889-90)

Eskimo of Baffin Island:

  1. Theological Questions
    (Hall, 1860-62)
  2. Tribal Life
    (Bilby 1923)

Labrador Eskimo:

  1. Respect for the Aged
    (Hawkes, 1914)

Greenland Eskimo:

  1. The Old Woman and the Cliff
    (Nansen, 1893)

The native inhabitants of Arctic and sub-Arctic North America and the tip of northeastern Siberia include a wide range of groups, often loosely referred to as the Eskimo or the Inuit. Generally, these peoples had no name for themselves as a group, and terms for the complete population were given by outsiders. The word “Eskimo,” a name sometimes said to mean “eaters of raw meat,” is now often regarded as derogatory; more plausible etymologies trace the name from Montagnais, an Algonquian language, as “snowshoe netters” or “people who speak a different language.” The terms “Inuit” or “Yuit” (meaning “people” or “real people”) and “Inupiaq” are also frequently used. There is no universal term accepted in all regions: the terms “Eskimo” and “Alaska Native” are more frequently used in Alaska; “Inuit” and “Inuinnaq” in Canada; and “Kalaallit” or “Greenlanders” in Greenland. Names used in the sources presented here follow the original in each case.

Arctic groups are speakers of languages within two principal branches, the Aleut and the Eskimoan, which include among others the languages Yupik, Yuit, and Inuit. While there is ongoing disagreement about precise dates, most specialists believe that all Eskimo-Aleut groups moved across the Bering land bridge several millennia ago; after reaching Alaska, they first separated into Aleut and Eskimoan, and then the latter group separated into Yupik and Inuit; some Yupik groups then migrated back across the Bering at a later date. They are all primarily coastal groups. Arctic cultures spread from Siberia in the west, across Alaska and Canada, to Greenland in the east; the selections provided here are presented in approximately this geographical order. At the westernmost extent of Arctic habitation are the Siberian Eskimo and the Eskimo of the Bering Strait, a grouping that includes the inhabitants of the St. Lawrence and Diomede Islands, as well as the Aleutian Islands. Moving east and north, Eskimo groups are found in western, northern, and southern Alaska, as well as the Mackenzie Eskimo near the Canadian border. In north-central Canada, there are several groups including the Netsilik and Iglulik, along with the Caribou and Copper Inuit. Toward the east, there are the Labrador Eskimo and the Eskimo of Baffin Island. Finally, the Inuit of Greenland inhabit the easternmost portion of the western-hemisphere Arctic world. Many of the religious, social, psychological, and economic patterns of culture are relatively constant across these various groups, although important differences do exist.

Arctic peoples have persisted despite harsh climatic conditions. Winter temperatures across the areas inhabited average minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit; snow blankets the ground from September until June. Most groups live in coastal regions and have traditionally subsisted by hunting marine mammals, including seal and whale, as well as by fishing and hunting some land animals, like caribou.

It is believed that the first contact between Europeans and Arctic peoples occurred in southern Greenland around the 12th century A.D. as the Eskimo migrating south and east came into contact with Norse settlers (including Erik the Red). Friendly relations apparently deteriorated and conflict raged until the early 1400s, when the Norse disappeared somewhat mysteriously; the poor relations with the Inuit, climate changes, and trade difficulties all might have contributed to the demise of the Scandinavians in Greenland. Also, some have speculated that the Norse were assimilated by the native inhabitants (see, e.g., Nansen, 1911, and Oleson, 1963). The similarities that exist between the Viking and the Greenlandic conception of death by violence might serve to support this theory, or they may indicate some other sort of exchange of ideas and cultural values between the two groups.

In the 17th and early 18th centuries, Arctic peoples first came into enduring contact with Europeans. The Jesuits began missionizing in 1605; whaling ships and other vessels used routes along the coast; Henry Hudson arrived in 1610; and Hudson’s Bay Company opened its first trading station in Labrador in 1749. Europeans began fishing intensively off the coast in the late 1770s. Such contact initiated a cultural revolution among the Eskimo that continues today. Widespread interaction with Europeans began in the 18th and 19th centuries, and several American and European expeditions were sent to study Eskimo ethnology and archaeology during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These include the famous Fifth Thule Expedition (1921–24) led by Knud Rasmussen, a Danish explorer and ethnologist born in Greenland who was himself half Inuit and spoke Greenland Inuit, as well as several Canadian dialects, and the Canadian Arctic Expedition (1913–18) led by Diamond Jenness. Since the Eskimo were not a people who kept written records, the accounts of these early expeditions are the only way to access original Inuit beliefs; however, it must be remembered that these accounts are filtered through the lenses of outside observers who bring with them their own sets of assumptions and biases.

The Selections

A review of these early accounts indicates that suicide was a common practice among many Arctic groups, though Veniaminov (selection #2) voices skepticism about claims that the Aleut are prone to commit suicide and Jenness’s account of the Copper Eskimo (selection #6) argues that suicide is extremely rare. In some or many groups, individuals who were near the end of life, when they perceived their utility to the group as minimal, would seek suicide as a way to relieve their fellows of the burden of having to care for them. Examples of this seemingly altruistic type of suicide include Ernest W. Hawkes’s 1914 report on the Labrador Eskimo (selection #16), Kaj Birket-Smith’s description of the Caribou Eskimo, documented in 1921–24 (selection #8), and Julian Bilby’s 1923 observations of the Inuit of Baffin Island (selection #15). If these reports are accurate (though like all reports of oral cultures by outside observers, they may well be distorted by outside values and suppositions), this practice was probably linked to other Inuit activities, such as infanticide and abandonment of the elderly: under the inexorable conditions of the Arctic tundra, those who could not contribute were undesirable. The more unproductive members of the group understood this, it is said, and thus often participated in their own demise. Suicide, according to Foulks, was also believed to be able to save the life of another, often that of a sick child. Sometimes it is true, however, that death was forced upon a sick or aged individual—see, for example, the observations of Lucian M. Turner in 1882–84 (selection #13) and Rasmussen’s report on the Netsilik (selection #12).

It was commonly reported that family members assisted in the death of their relatives; sometimes this participation became highly ritualized and subject to taboo regulation—the St. Lawrence account of Leighton and Hughes (selection #3), who did pioneering fieldwork in ethnopsychiatry in the 1940s, exemplifies this tendency. The Diomede Islander who, according to Weyer’s 1928 report (selection #1), aided in the stabbing of his father demonstrates that in other Inuit groups, there was also a community and familial involvement, although at a less formalized level. Thus, among many groups, suicide possessed a strong public flavor. In many groups, hanging was the favored method, although regional variations did exist, including throwing oneself into the frigid seawater or exposing oneself to the cold.

Inuit conceptions of the afterlife may also have contributed to a readiness to commit suicide. Most Inuit groups are said to have believed in a continuance of the soul in an afterlife and in the existence of multiple destinations that a soul could achieve after death. Broadly speaking, the Inuit thought that the conditions of the soul after death depended, at least in part, on how the person died—whether by starvation, in childbirth, by sickness, or by accidental or intended violence. Violence was often seen as having a purifying effect on those that experienced it; therefore, death by violence—including suicide—often led to a placement in the better regions of the afterlife, as for instance in Hall’s report of the Baffin Islanders, 1860–62 (selection #14) and Hawkes’s 1914 report on the Labrador Inuit (selection #16). Turner’s field study (selection #13) and Boas’s report from the early 1880s (selection #7), however, demonstrate different beliefs for other Inuit groups. If, as certain Inuit groups asserted, how one dies is largely beyond one’s control, the lot of the soul is largely determined by accidents of chance. Suicide, however, would be one way a person could exert more control over his or her future state, and might, therefore, present an attractive alternative.

Rasmussen’s account of the intellectual culture of Iglulik Eskimo, documented during the Fifth Thule Expedition of 1921–24, contains a more detailed account of these religious influences (selection #10). The Moon Spirit, protector of all those who die violently and commit suicide, beckons the Inuit soul: “Come, come to me! It is not painful to die. It is only a brief moment of dizziness. It does not hurt to kill yourself.” The Moon Spirit, for this Inuit group, was a benevolent deity, offering to the Eskimo the hope of a pleasant afterlife. It should be noted that in this system, the honored souls go up, while in other groups, the preferred direction is down to warmer regions.

Although most writers suspect that suicide practices among Arctic peoples are of ancient origin, some disagree. Asen Balikci (1970) has argued that the suicides reported by the early explorers among the Netsilik Eskimo were largely (but not entirely) a product of greater societal upheavals during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, exacerbated by increases in emigration and the introduction of new technologies like firearms (and later intrusions such as radar stations) that disrupted traditional hunting schemes. As with accounts of all oral cultures, descriptions of native beliefs and practices are filtered through the often disapproving eyes of outside observers, although the early accounts of the Inuit are clearly not as distorted by the ideologies of colonizers and missionaries as, say, those of the Aztec, Maya, and Inca, or of various African groups. And some practices are dramatically altered in more recent times, presumably in response to European influences; see Osgood on the Ingalik, 1937 (selection #4), for responses to practices concerning abandonment of the elderly. In any case, caution is important in trying to determine the content and antiquity of beliefs and practices concerning suicide in Arctic cultures.

In contemporary times, suicide rates are high in many Inuit groups. Alcohol, unemployment, and the stress and social upheaval associated with loss of traditional cultural patterns and the challenges of adaptation to modern Alaskan and Canadian life are often blamed, though some researchers have suggested that the high suicide rate is due at least in part to cultural traditions in pre-contact times that accepted altruistic self-destruction—as, according to Leighton and Hughes (selection #3), apparently was the case among all Eskimo from Alaska to Greenland.

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