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Vikings - or perhaps other Europeans - may have set up housekeeping and traded with Inuit 1,000 years ago near today's community of Kimmirut. That's the picture of the past emerging from ancient artifacts found near Kimmirut, where someone collected Arctic hare fur and spun the fur into yarn and someone else carved notches into a wooden stick to record trading transactions. Dorset Inuit probably didn't make the yarn and tally sticks because yarn and wood weren't part of Inuit culture at that time, said Patricia Sutherland, an archeologist with the Canadian Museum of Civilization. Other artifacts from the area,...

Patricia Sutherland, a Canadian archaeologist, announced that she had found a 10 foot strand of ancient yarn in a collection of Dorset artifacts from Northern Baffin Island that were lying uncataloged here at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, where she is a curator. Since the Dorset, forerunners of today's Inuit inhabitants of northern Canada, at the time dressed only in cut and stitched skins, the yarn implied contact with the Norse. Now, as she studies of Canadian collections of native artifacts, she says, "I am finding new Norse materials every couple of weeks. It suggests there was a significant...

Fish-rich diet linked to reduction in markers of chronic disease risk in overweight/obese peopleSEATTLE – A study of Yup'ik Eskimos in Alaska, who on average consume 20 times more omega-3 fats from fish than people in the lower 48 states, suggests that a high intake of these fats helps prevent obesity-related chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. The study, led by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and conducted in collaboration with the Center for Alaska Native Health Research at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, was published online March 23 in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. "Because...

One of Canada's top archeologists argues in a new book that the prehistoric ancestors of this country's 55,000 Inuit probably migrated rapidly from Alaska clear across the Canadian North in just a few years -- not gradually over centuries as traditionally assumed -- after they learned about a rich supply of iron from a massive meteorite strike on Greenland's west coast. The startling theory, tentatively floated two decades ago by Canadian Museum of Civilization curator emeritus Robert McGhee, has been bolstered by recent research indicating a later and faster migration of the ancient Thule Inuit across North America's polar frontier...

PANGNIRTUNG, Nunavut — The fish changed colour. New bird species were spotted. Two bridges were wiped out by a once-in-a-lifetime flood that forced villagers to dump sewage into their pristine waters. The locals say strange things happened last year in this snow-peaked, sapphire-watered hamlet by the Arctic circle. And they have a message for city-dwellers who might normally be indifferent to the bizarre weather in an Inuit village 1,000 kilometres north of Labrador: This is what climate change looks like. "Climate change is real," says Ron Mongeau, the town manager of Pangnirtung, a postcard-pretty spot girded by mountains and glacial...

Editor’s note: This is the second of two parts. There are many stories of “Qalunaat,” white-skinned strangers who were encountered in Inuit occupied lands in times of old. Much of the traditional life had changed by the 1840s when Hinrich Johannes Rink went to Greenland to study geology and later became the governor of Greenland. Johannes was soon drawn to a new interest in the Inuit language and folklore, which he viewed as national treasures. He published old stories collected in 1866 “Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo” in which he included some early contact stories with the Qalunaat. In...

There are many stories of ‘Qavlunaat,’ white-skinned strangers who were encountered in Inuit-occupied lands in times of old. Stories of contact between these foreign people and Inuit were passed down the generations and used mostly to scare children to behave “or the Qavlunaat will get them.” This sparked my curiosity to explore both sides of the encounters from written records and Inuit oral legends to see if some of these events can be correlated. One must recall that these legends were passed down orally in the Inupiaq language. Inuit myths and legends of contact with other people were passed from...

Shaped by glacial temperatures, stark landscapes, and protracted winters, the traditional Eskimo diet had little in the way of plant food, no agricultural or dairy products, and was unusually low in carbohydrates. Mostly people subsisted on what they hunted and fished. Inland dwellers took advantage of caribou feeding on tundra mosses, lichens, and plants too tough for humans to stomach (though predigested vegetation in the animals' paunches became dinner as well). Coastal people exploited the sea. The main nutritional challenge was avoiding starvation in late winter if primary meat sources became too scarce or lean. These foods hardly make up...

Greenlanders driven out of their homes due to racist assaults. Residents’ Board is powerless when it comes to young, violent Arabs assaulting tenants. Many Greenlanders living in Gjellerup Park ...are fed up. After several years of racist persecution and harassment by Arab and Somali tenants, they’ve now chosen to abandon the place. “I couldn’t stand being their target. It was a psychological stress. But I’m angry that we were the ones to leave. After all, they were the ones to attack us,” says Johanne Christiansen. Together with the others she got the municipality’s help to move out. Greenlanders in Gjellerup...

Inuit oral stories could solve mystery of Franklin expedition Randy Boswell, Canwest News Service Published: Wednesday, June 25 More than 150 years after the disappearance of the Erebus and Terror - the famously ill-fated ships of the lost Franklin Expedition - fresh clues have emerged that could help solve Canadian history's most enduring mystery. A Montreal writer set to publish a book on Inuit oral chronicles from the era of Arctic exploration says she's gathered a "hitherto unreported" account of a British ship wintering in 1850 in the Royal Geographical Society Islands - a significant distance west of the search...

LONDON. A possible solution to the Parthenon Marbles dispute between the British Museum and the Greek government has come from a most unlikely source — a gathering in Greenland. Meeting in the depths of the Arctic winter, museum professionals and representatives of indigenous peoples recently assembled in the tiny capital of Nuuk (formerly Godthab) to discuss global strategies on repatriation of cultural heritage. The Greeks had originally decided to send Minister of Culture Georgios Voulgarakis, but when his officials examined the flight schedule, they realised that he would have to leave Athens for a whole week, missing too much government...

A high school science teacher vowed yesterday to continue telling his Inuit students about Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, despite complaints from parents in the northern Quebec community of Salluit. Science teacher Alexandre April was given a written reprimand last month by his principal at Ikusik High School for discussing evolution in class. Parents in the village 1,860 kilometres north of Montreal complained their children had been told they came from apes. "I am a biologist. ... This is what I'm passionate about," said April, who teaches Grades 7 and 8. "It interests the students. It gets them asking questions....

A 73-year-old Inuit woman was referred for a barium enema after an incomplete colonoscopy. A preliminary abdominal radiograph showed that the appendix was completely full of lead shot, with the contour of the appendix easily visualized. The natives of northern and western Alaska hunt waterfowl in the spring and fall and often inadvertently swallow some of the lead shot embedded in the meat. Although most of the metal undoubtedly passes through the intestine over time, buckshot in the appendix is commonly seen in Alaskan natives (but usually not to the extent pictured here). Decades of ingestion probably resulted in this...

...After nearly a decade of research, teams of scientists said yesterday that they had re-created the historic influenza virus that by some estimates killed 50 million people world-wide in 1918 and 1919. The scientists concluded that the virus originated as an avian bug and then adapted and spread in humans by undergoing much simpler changes than many experts had previously thought were needed for a pandemic. Some mutations of the 1918 virus have been detected in the current avian-flu virus, suggesting the bug "might be going down a similar path that led to 1918,".... The studies, published yesterday in the...

OSLO (Reuters) - Inuit hunters threatened by a melting of the Arctic ice plan to file a petition accusing Washington of violating their human rights by fueling global warming, an Inuit leader said Wednesday. Sheila Watt-Cloutier, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), also said Washington was hindering work to follow up a 2004 report by 250 scientists that said the thaw could make the Arctic Ocean ice-free in summer by 2100. Watt-Cloutier, in Oslo to receive an environmental prize, said the Inuits' planned petition to the 34-member Organization of American States (OAS) could put pressure on the United States...

KUUJJUAQ, Nunavik - ''I have nothing, I have nothing,'' Johnny Munick cried out, remembering the day in 1960 when his team of sled dogs, in their harnesses and ready for a hunting trip, was shot by government authorities. The incident was part of an extermination of Inuit huskies - and, as a result, the abrupt end of their owners' ability to provide for their families - that took place from the mid-1950s until the late 1960s. Arms flung wide, an anguished figure in a heavy black parka, the elderly Inuk was standing on the auditorium stage following the Jan. 19...

An Inuit group says that climate change is jeopardizing its people's livelihood--and that U.S. gas emissions are to blame. Feb. 3 - The Inuit living in some of the world’s iciest regions are feeling the effects of global warming. The ice caps where they hunt are thawing earlier every year; polar bears are hunting in unfamiliar places; non-indigenous species are being seen in the Arctic and last summer local inhabitants saw their first wasp on Canada’s Baffin Island. None of this is news to global-climate experts, who are meeting this week in Exeter, England, to discuss the scope and rate...

OSLO (Reuters) - World temperatures could surge in just two decades to a threshold likely to trigger dangerous disruptions to the earth's climate, the WWF environmental group said on Sunday. It said the Arctic region was warming fastest, threatening the livelihoods of indigenous hunters by thawing the polar ice-cap and driving species like polar bears toward extinction by the end of the century. "If nothing is done, the earth will have warmed by 2.0 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels by some time between 2026 and 2060," the WWF said in a report. Few scientists have estimated such an early...

The Maori Party is already driving a larger and considerably more dangerous wedge into the New Zealand Left than anything so far inserted by the National Party. As it grows in strength and consolidates its already powerful grip on the Maori imagination, the Maori Party has the potential to split Labour into two hostile camps, aggravate racial sensitivities within the trade union movement, and push the Greens below the all-important 5% MMP threshold. The Left's vulnerability to the Maori Party is entirely of its own making. From the early-1980s, the critical "sites of struggle" for most progressive political activists shifted...

Inuit 'Poisoned from Afar' Due to Climate Change 2 hours, 1 minute ago By Amran Abocar TORONTO (Reuters) - The Inuit living in the Arctic region are being "poisoned from afar" as climate change takes its toll on the area and threatens their existence, the head of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference said on Wednesday. Sheila Watt-Cloutier, chairwoman of the group that represents about 155,000 Inuit in the Arctic regions of Canada, Russia, Greenland and the United States, said Inuit were paying dearly for the actions of people elsewhere. "The Inuit have now become the net recipients of toxins coming from...

DNA tests debunk blond Inuit legend Last Updated Tue, 28 Oct 2003 11:36:10 CAMBRIDGE BAY, NUNAVUT - Two Icelandic scientists have shot holes in the theory of the missing Norse tribes of the Arctic. Agnar Helgason and Gisli Palsson say their DNA tests have failed to find any evidence that Europeans mingled genetically with Inuit half a millennium ago. Agnar Helgason The scientists made the statement after a visit to Cambridge Bay last week. Rumours of blue-eyed, blond-haired Inuit have circulated through the Arctic since the turn of the century. They were thought to possibly descend from a group of...

DNA study to settle ancient mystery about mingling of Inuit, Vikings By BOB WEBER (CP) - A centuries-old Arctic mystery may be weeks away from resolution as an Icelandic anthropologist prepares to release his findings on the so-called "Blond Eskimos" of the Canadian North. "It's an old story," says Gisli Palsson of the University of Iceland in Reykjavik. "We want to try to throw new light on the history of the Inuit." Stories about Inuit with distinct European features - blue eyes, fair hair, beards - living in the central Arctic have their roots in ancient tales of Norse settlements...

The Inuit are warning the federal government that allowing gays and lesbians to marry would conflict with a traditional way of life that is based on survival and procreation. In the Baffin Island community of Iqaluit, population 6,000, Inuit leaders gathered in a local hotel yesterday to make presentations to the House of Commons justice committee as it wrapped up cross-country hearings with a rare trip to the north. Speaking through an interpreter in her native language of Inuktitut, Kanayuk Salomonie said homosexuality is very much in the closet around the Nunavut capital, and that's where it should stay. "We...