Traditional Ways

A newly released survey of indigenous Arctic people indicates that an overwhelming majority of the region's native people think traditional pursuits such as hunting, boat-building and manufacturing crafts are important to their identity.

"Four decades ago, as wage work rapidly became more common in the north, scientists and policymakers assumed that indigenous people would take advantage of opportunities to participate in the cash economy, abandoning harvest and traditional food processing activities," researchers write in the survey report.

The survey results indicate that despite lifestyle changes that have swept into northern communities as non-natives move to remote areas, traditional values still are important to native peoples, and they are willing to use their earnings in the cash economy to support those ways of life. Despite historical efforts by national governments to assimilate native peoples and encourage them to give up native traditions in favor of wage labor, nine out of 10 Inuit continue to think traditional activities are important to their identity.

Researchers hope the study results will provide Native organizations and local governments across the Arctic with information to help make policy decisions.

"In Alaska, most products of hunting, fishing and gathering do not enter the market economy. Rather, subsistence products are directly consumed by the harvesting household, given away or exchanged," the report states. "Cash plays an important role in the Alaska mixed economy, however. Money buys snow machines, gas and ammunition."

---LiveScience Staff

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Credit: Narwhal Tusk Research and Glenn Williams, photographer