NUUK, Greenland (AP) — Sitting on the pelt of a polar bear hunted by her household, Aviaja Rakel Sanimuinaq says she’s proud to be a part of a motion of Greenlanders reclaiming their Inuit traditions and spirituality.
NUUK, Greenland (AP) — Sitting on the pelt of a polar bear hunted by her household, Aviaja Rakel Sanimuinaq says she’s proud to be a part of a motion of Greenlanders reclaiming their Inuit traditions and spirituality.
The shaman, who has Inuit facial tattoos, works with religious therapeutic practices to assist folks join with their ancestors and heal generational trauma. An indication exterior her studio within the Greenland capital of Nuuk conveys her function: “Historic information in a contemporary world.”
Lately, Greenlanders like her have been embracing pre-Christian Inuit traditions, together with drum dancing and Inuit tattoos. For some, it is a option to proudly reclaim their ancestral roots. It is also a option to reject the legacy of European Christian missionaries who colonized Greenland within the 18th century and suppressed their traditions, labeling them as pagan.
“The sacredness of Christianity remains to be sacred in my eyes. However so is Buddhism, so is Hinduism, and so is my work,” Sanimuinaq mentioned in her studio, surrounded by skulls of seals, raven feathers and medicinal herbs. They assist the “angakkoq,” or shaman, talk with “silam aappaa” or the opposite world — the religious world.
“That’s the place I stand – that the arising of our tradition, and us as a folks, can be to get the equality inside our tradition, to acknowledge that our tradition is legit; that it has to have an area right here.”
The Inuit have survived and thrived for generations in some of the distant, huge and rugged places on Earth, attempting to find seals, whales and polar bears. Their conventional faith is animist.
Inuit imagine that “each animal and fowl, each stone and each piece of earth, the rain and the snow all have a spirit and a proper to be revered,” authors Gill and Alistair Campbell write of their journey e-book, “Greenland.”
About 90% of the 57,000 Greenlanders determine as Inuit and the vast majority belong to the Lutheran Church. A Danish missionary brought that branch of Christianity to the world’s largest island greater than 300 years in the past.
Greenland is now a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, and Greenlanders more and more favor getting full independence — an important situation in a latest parliamentary election.
Some say Greenland’s independence motion obtained a lift after U.S. President Donald Trump pushed their Arctic homeland into the spotlight by threatening to take it over.
“We don’t must stroll silenced anymore,” Sanimuinaq mentioned. “That’s the change we see — that the voice we get out on the planet has been forbidden even inside our nation. Now that we’re opening, we’ve got extra freedom.”
The religious and social worth of Tunniit — the normal Inuit tattoos
The suppression of Inuit drums and facial tattoos have been a part of a broader effort to Christianize and assimilate Inuit into the European lifestyle, mentioned Asta Mønsted, a professor on the College of California, Berkeley. She researches Inuit oral historical past and its connections to Greenland’s archaeology.
“Drum songs and drum duels have been central to Inuit religious and social life, however the missionaries considered them as pagan practices and superstitions that wanted to get replaced with Christian hymns and prayers,” she mentioned. “Drums have been confiscated or destroyed in an effort to break the connection to the pre-Christian beliefs.”
In some components of Greenland, although, the drum songs and information of drum-making have been preserved with out the church’s information.
“Tattoos have been additionally linked to Inuit cosmology and rites, however missionaries labeled them as pagan and particularly considered the facial tattoos as a defilement of God’s creation,” mentioned Mønsted. “They promoted the European supreme, the place the human physique ought to stay unmarked.”
“Tunniit,” the normal Inuit tattoos, have been etched by poking sod from soapstone lamps onto the pores and skin with a needle or by dragging a sod-covered sinew thread beneath the pores and skin.
Girls usually bought tattoos as they skilled menstruation and childbirth, viewing them as safety in opposition to sickness and malevolent spirits, Mønsted mentioned.
However resistance to Inuit tattoos deterred many Greenlanders throughout generations from getting them; some who had tattoos hid them, fearing repercussions.
Rising up, Therecie Sanimuinaq Pedersen recalled how her grandmother lined her facial tattoos in soot as a result of she didn’t need to be alienated from her group.
Therecie solely bought the tattoos that now cowl her face — the way in which she remembered her grandmother’s — after her daughter, Aviaja, bought them lately.
“The tattoos I’ve goes from mom to daughter for 1000’s of years,” Therecie mentioned in Greenlandic, translated by her daughter. “I’ve the identical as my grandmother — that’s my heritage.”
Nowadays, when she’s out on Nuuk’s streets and encounters others displaying Inuit tattoos, she feels inspired, particularly when she sees them on younger Greenlanders.
“After I see them, it’s like we’ve got a connection,” she mentioned. “With out realizing them, and them realizing me, we are saying hello. Some come, give a hug, and say thanks.”
Inuit drum for battle decision and restoring delight in ancestral custom
For the Inuit, the “qilaat” performed an important function in battle decision by drum duels.
The drum, Mønsted mentioned, had three important capabilities: for leisure and socializing, as a instrument for the shaman throughout their seances, and as a part of a pre-colonial juridical system.
“Within the drum duels, opponents used songs, insults, and exaggerated physique actions to argue their case earlier than the group, which might stand in a circle ar ound them,” Mønsted mentioned.
She mentioned the gang’s collective laughter typically decided the winner with out the necessity for a proper ruling.
Whereas some duels helped ease tensions, others resulted in public humiliation, typically forcing the shedding social gathering to go away the group and turn into a “qivittoq” — an individual residing in nature exterior of society. This exile may very well be tantamount to a loss of life sentence within the frigid Arctic atmosphere.
Greenland was a colony under Denmark’s crown till 1953, when it turned a province within the Scandinavian nation. In 1979, the island was granted house rule, and 30 years in the past turned a self-governing entity. However Denmark retains management over international and protection affairs.
The previous colonial ruler is accused of committing abuses in opposition to Greenland’s Inuit, together with eradicating youngsters from their households within the Nineteen Fifties with the excuse of integrating them into Danish society and fitting women with intrauterine contraceptive devices within the Sixties and Nineteen Seventies — allegedly to restrict inhabitants development.
Some Greenlanders imagine the latest international consideration on their mineral-rich nation and a unified name for independence from Denmark has allowed them to talk extra overtly about abuses dedicated by their former colonial ruler. Some have grown nearer to their wealthy pre-Christian Indigenous tradition.
“Our tradition could be very religious … I need to convey that again,” mentioned Naja Parnuuna, an award-winning singer-songwriter.
“I need to be in that wave with my fellow younger folks… I really feel like we’ve been seemed down for therefore lengthy, and we actually haven’t had a voice for a very long time.”
Rising up, she mentioned she felt that it was “cooler to be a Dane, or to talk Danish, and was ashamed to be Greenlandic and comply with Inuit traditions. “Possibly not embarrassing,” she mentioned, “but it surely was taboo or bizarre to do the drums or be Inuk.”
Her father, Markus Olsen, is a former Lutheran pastor who was dismissed from his church place in 2022 after he allowed drum dancing throughout a Nationwide Day service on the Nuuk Cathedral. He knew that was dangerous however did it as a result of he believes the quilaat, the Inuit conventional drum, must be reinstated into its valued place in non secular companies and different features of Greenlandic life.
Olsen, who wears a collar with a small qilaat and a crucifix, takes inspiration from the Latin American Liberation Theology motion, which holds that the teachings of Jesus require followers to combat for financial and social justice. He additionally takes inspiration from the Rastafari legend Bob Marley, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights activist Malcolm X.
Parnuuna feels impressed by her father. She started to embrace her roots by her music, which inspires Greenlanders to worth their Inuit tradition and historical past.
“The extra I practiced my artwork, singing and writing songs, I started to comprehend how vital it’s to simply accept … my roots, to have extra self-respect, to have increased shallowness and in that method have a more healthy way of life and a extra optimistic view of the world,” she mentioned.
“It’s vital to convey that again, in order that we will love ourselves once more.”
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Related Press faith protection receives help by the AP’s collaboration with The Dialog US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely chargeable for this content material.
Luis Andres Henao, The Related Press
