Inuit Culture Quotes

There isn't an Eskimo who doesn't love 'Columbo.'

I am told that there is a proverbial phrase among the Inuit: 'A long time ago, in the future.' Let the children see our history, and maybe it will help to shape the future.

I love the fact that Inuit poetry may resonate with me as much as Irish.

Look at Inuit clothing. Their stuff still works better than Cabela's. I've made my own parkas, mukluks, footgear, and it is good to 60 degrees below zero. All I did was copy the patterns that came down from the Inuits.

That was another incredible thing: the opportunity to be in Greenland, a place I had read about in NatGeo a decade before. Suddenly I was staying there and hiking there, and we took a mini iceberg out of the water and chipped it up and used it as ice cubes and made cocktails with it. It's surreal.

The Inuit say that the stars are holes in heaven. And every time we see the people we loved shining through, we know they're happy.

I've worked in the Inuit hamlets of the west coast of Hudson Bay since 1994. Over that time I've been very moved by both the pace of social change there - the loss of traditional ways of seeing the world, the affinity for and comfort with the land - and by the social disarray that change of this pace produces.

Before we left, Grandmother talked a lot about the arctic night we would fly through. 'Isn't it a mystical word, "arctic"? Pure and quite hard. And meridians. Isn't that pretty? We're going to fly along them, faster than the light can follow us... Time won't be able to catch us.

I've been very influenced by Inuit art especially some drawings and watercolors I've seen.

Marriage is simply an economic necessity, and so there are no elaborate courtship displays or marriage celebrations among the Eskimo.

Everything is on a reduced scale here in the Polar regions; we can't afford to be extravagant.

An Eskimo shaman said, Life's greatest danger lies in the fact that man's food consists entirely of souls.

The English have loudly and openly told the world that skis and dogs are unusable in these regions and that fur clothes are rubbish. We shall see — we shall see.

Greenland is a wonderful country.

According to Inuit culture in Greenland, a person possesses six or seven souls. The souls take the form of tiny people scattered throughout the body.

People travel and hunt on the sea ice - in Alaska, they hunt in skin boats for bowhead whales; in Greenland, they hunt with dogsleds. The ice is their highway. The ice is also the ecosystem in which marine mammals and terrestrial animals such as polar bears exist.

Were I laid on Greenland's Coast, And in my Arms embrac'd my Lass; Warm amidst eternal Frost, Too soon the Half Year's Night would pass.

One of the most beautiful objects I have ever seen was a Yupik wolf mask, made in Nunivak in around 1890.

At the extreme north, the voyagers are obliged to dance and act plays for employment.

The seal hunt has made me ashamed to be a Canadian.

I come from way north. We'd listen to radio shows all the time. I think I was the last generation, or pretty close to the last one, that grew up without TV.

Winnipeg has the largest collection of Inuit art in the world, I believe. They can be quite simple in a great way and often have sparse backgrounds and isolated characters. They often have a really great look to them.

I have always admired the Esquimaux (Eskimos). One fine day a delicious meal is cooked for dear old mother, and then she goes walking away over the ice, and doesn't come back.

There's an Inuit myth about the origin of the human race. There were two brothers, and the younger brother eventually gets changed into a woman. And that's how humans reproduced. And I thought, 'How could I really understand that?'