Inuit Women: Traditional Gender Roles
Inuit Women: Traditional and Modern Gender Roles
Kelsey Melanson (6489281)
Concordia University
First Peoples of Canada - FPST 203
Professor Kahente Horn-Miller
Submitted December 11, 2013
Table of Content
Introduction 3
Background on Traditional Women Roles 3
Post-European Contact and the affects on Inuit Women 5
The Decrease of Inuit Male roles Importance… 6
Traditional verses Modern Inuit Women Gender Roles 8
Combining the Roles 9
Conclusion 10
Introduction
The Inuit people have managed to maintain a strong unique culture throughout European colonial regime, but not without many remarkable altercations in their way of life. The Inuit women have experienced a great change …show more content…
However it has become more of a question to determine whether Inuit communities could successfully revive traditional gender roles in which benefited Inuit women, and could enrich/compliment their modern roles? The answer has become very clear – Inuit communities can, and have successfully revived traditional gender roles by integrating some elements of the role in collaboration with the modern role. The modern role is vital to current survival in Canadian society because a culture must adapt its surroundings to stay strong. This does not mean that there is no room for traditional role aspects to be intergraded back into modern culture. Creating opportunities for the traditional role to be present in modern days, like preparing food in traditional ways, using and following the kinship systems, establishing traditional workshops to teach skills like making clothing and learning the traditional language, and creating traditional recourses (example, abuse shelters) to help Inuit women with problems that arise from their modern roles, is the starting point in the integration of traditional roles into the modern role of the Inuit women. To further see the success of the traditional roles of Inuit Women be integrated with their modern role, it is important to see a change in their counterparts – Inuit men. A way this can be done is by maintaining the “culture-keeper” traditional role aspect of the Inuit women. This will allow them to pass down cultural knowledge to their sons, and teach about equality in the Inuit tradition and that patriarchy had no place in their lives until colonization. In closing, the combination of the positive aspects of both Traditional and Modern Inuit women roles is a step in the right direction to better the lives of both the women and the
Kelsey Melanson (6489281)
Concordia University
First Peoples of Canada - FPST 203
Professor Kahente Horn-Miller
Submitted December 11, 2013
Table of Content
Introduction 3
Background on Traditional Women Roles 3
Post-European Contact and the affects on Inuit Women 5
The Decrease of Inuit Male roles Importance… 6
Traditional verses Modern Inuit Women Gender Roles 8
Combining the Roles 9
Conclusion 10
Introduction
The Inuit people have managed to maintain a strong unique culture throughout European colonial regime, but not without many remarkable altercations in their way of life. The Inuit women have experienced a great change …show more content…
However it has become more of a question to determine whether Inuit communities could successfully revive traditional gender roles in which benefited Inuit women, and could enrich/compliment their modern roles? The answer has become very clear – Inuit communities can, and have successfully revived traditional gender roles by integrating some elements of the role in collaboration with the modern role. The modern role is vital to current survival in Canadian society because a culture must adapt its surroundings to stay strong. This does not mean that there is no room for traditional role aspects to be intergraded back into modern culture. Creating opportunities for the traditional role to be present in modern days, like preparing food in traditional ways, using and following the kinship systems, establishing traditional workshops to teach skills like making clothing and learning the traditional language, and creating traditional recourses (example, abuse shelters) to help Inuit women with problems that arise from their modern roles, is the starting point in the integration of traditional roles into the modern role of the Inuit women. To further see the success of the traditional roles of Inuit Women be integrated with their modern role, it is important to see a change in their counterparts – Inuit men. A way this can be done is by maintaining the “culture-keeper” traditional role aspect of the Inuit women. This will allow them to pass down cultural knowledge to their sons, and teach about equality in the Inuit tradition and that patriarchy had no place in their lives until colonization. In closing, the combination of the positive aspects of both Traditional and Modern Inuit women roles is a step in the right direction to better the lives of both the women and the