"Eskimo" vs. "Inuit"

Qitsualik:  Is it 'Eskimo' or 'Inuit'?I answered a letter a while ago, from someone at a museum in Alaska. They wanted to know why Inuit (which I am of) dislike being called "Eskimos." After all, many Alaskans don't mind being called Eskimos, and even seem to dislike the term "Inuit" when southerners apply it them, however well-intentioned.

I am not surprised by the confusion. The ascendancy of Inuit culture, through good reportage and the establishment of Nuvavut, has conditioned southern folks to say "Inuit" instead of "Eskimo."

Southerners have complied beautifully, but at last they are running up against peoples, related to Inuit, who insist that they are Eskimos. The confusion derives from this sticky fact: Inuit are not Eskimos, and Eskimos are not Inuit.Eskimo--NomenclatureIn Canada and Greenland the term Eskimo is widely held to be pejorative and has fallen out of favor, largely supplanted by the term Inuit. However, while Inuit describes all of the Eskimo peoples in Canada and Greenland, that is not true in Alaska and Siberia. In Alaska the term Eskimo is commonly used, because it includes both Yupik and Inupiat, while Inuit is not accepted as a collective term or even specifically used for Inupiat (which technically is Inuit). No universal replacement term for Eskimo, inclusive of all Inuit and Yupik people, is accepted across the geographical area inhabited by the Inuit and Yupik peoples.

The primary reason that Eskimo is considered derogatory is the arguable perception that it means "eaters of raw meat." There are two different etymologies in scientific literature for the term Eskimo. The most well-known comes from Ives Goddard at the Smithsonian Institution, who says it means "Snowshoe netters." Quebec linguist Jose Mailhot, who speaks Innu-aimun (Montagnais) (which Mailhot and Goddard agree is the language from which the word originated), published a definitive study in 1978 stating that it means "people who speak a different language."

Since the 1970s in Canada and Greenland Eskimo has widely been considered offensive, owing to folklore and derogatory usage. In 1977 The Inuit Circumpolar Conference meeting in Barrow, Alaska, officially adopted Inuit as a designation for all circumpolar native peoples, regardless of their local view on an appropriate term. As a result the Canadian government usage has replaced the (locally) defunct term Eskimo with Inuit. The preferred term in Canada's Central Arctic is Inuinnaq, and in the eastern Canadian Arctic Inuit.Comment:  For more on the subject, see Eskimos:  The Ultimate Aborigines.