The Arctic and Subarctic regions of the western hemisphere have been populated with Native North American inhabitants since before European contact in the 1500s. The Arctic and Subarctic regions comprise a vast amount of land, and varying topography and environmental conditions that influence the socio-cultural organization and daily lives of the region’s inhabitants. The Native American groups that occupy these regions live in close conjunction with their environment. Additionally, these peoples’ ontological perspective is affected by their environment and thus mediates their perception of the world around them. Over the course of this paper I will discuss the way the inhabitant’s environments and ontological perspectives shape subsistence
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The Arctic’s tundra environment creates harsh living conditions for the Netsilik peoples who form their lifestyle around the condition of their environment throughout the year, which effects most all aspects of their lives, especially subsistence. To have success with subsistence mean that the people of the Arctic have to be flexible and opportunistic, as the environment changes seasonally, four times, throughout the year. The season change means different resources are available at different times. During Midwinter Netsilik hunt for seal and polar bears: seal hunting takes place on the ice. The Netsilik scour over the ice trying to find holes in the ice that seals use to surface for air, when a seal surfaces a hunter spears them. Seal hunting can take hours of patiently waiting and potentially getting no return. In the late spring, hunters abandon the sea ice, as it starts to warm and melt, and hunt seals on the coastline. Summer, provides the best opportunity for the Netsilik to take the most advantage of their environment since it offers the most resources; this is a time where hunting for land animals, sea mammals, fishing and gathering takes place. In the late fall, hunting primarily is centered on tracking caribou migrations for both meat and skins (Sage 2016). As the …show more content…
During the winter the biomass and resources are low, the Netsilik need to have a surplus of food, so they do not starve (Sage 2016). Thus, during the winter seal hunts, extended family units join in efforts to increase their subsistence. However, despite the need to bolster subsistence patterns for survival, the Netsilik are limited by their distinct gender roles, men hunt and women stay at home to raise children and prepare meals, forage, and sometimes help with seal hunts in the late spring and therefore decrease the number of people who could help bring home more food. The Netsilik population is disproportionately balanced between males and females, with fewer females who were needed to reproduce; it was common thought that women were not fit for the dangers and potential death that hunting might cause. Asen Balikci (1970) comments, “men’s high death rate is caused by the natural hazards of hunting to which men were subjected such as, drowning in kayaks or river crossings, starving, freezing to death, and committing suicide from the pressure of being the provider” (153). The Netsilik society view women’s life as more valuable since they are the ones that produce the future hunters, without women the Netsilik society would
The Arctic’s tundra environment creates harsh living conditions for the Netsilik peoples who form their lifestyle around the condition of their environment throughout the year, which effects most all aspects of their lives, especially subsistence. To have success with subsistence mean that the people of the Arctic have to be flexible and opportunistic, as the environment changes seasonally, four times, throughout the year. The season change means different resources are available at different times. During Midwinter Netsilik hunt for seal and polar bears: seal hunting takes place on the ice. The Netsilik scour over the ice trying to find holes in the ice that seals use to surface for air, when a seal surfaces a hunter spears them. Seal hunting can take hours of patiently waiting and potentially getting no return. In the late spring, hunters abandon the sea ice, as it starts to warm and melt, and hunt seals on the coastline. Summer, provides the best opportunity for the Netsilik to take the most advantage of their environment since it offers the most resources; this is a time where hunting for land animals, sea mammals, fishing and gathering takes place. In the late fall, hunting primarily is centered on tracking caribou migrations for both meat and skins (Sage 2016). As the …show more content…
During the winter the biomass and resources are low, the Netsilik need to have a surplus of food, so they do not starve (Sage 2016). Thus, during the winter seal hunts, extended family units join in efforts to increase their subsistence. However, despite the need to bolster subsistence patterns for survival, the Netsilik are limited by their distinct gender roles, men hunt and women stay at home to raise children and prepare meals, forage, and sometimes help with seal hunts in the late spring and therefore decrease the number of people who could help bring home more food. The Netsilik population is disproportionately balanced between males and females, with fewer females who were needed to reproduce; it was common thought that women were not fit for the dangers and potential death that hunting might cause. Asen Balikci (1970) comments, “men’s high death rate is caused by the natural hazards of hunting to which men were subjected such as, drowning in kayaks or river crossings, starving, freezing to death, and committing suicide from the pressure of being the provider” (153). The Netsilik society view women’s life as more valuable since they are the ones that produce the future hunters, without women the Netsilik society would