The region known as the Far North area extends more than 5,000 miles, all the way from the Aleutian Islands in Alaska to Labrador in Canada. Although most of it lies in northern Alaska and northern Canada, the culture area also includes territory in Siberia (part of Russia) to the west, as will as in Greenland (part of the kingdom of Denmark) to the east. The Arctic Culture Area touches upon three oceans-the Pacific, the Arctic and the Atlantic.
The climate of the Far North is fierce. Winters are long and bitterly cold, with few hours of sunlight. In the northernmost latitudes of the Arctic beyond the Arctic Circle, the sun never rises above the horizon for part of the winter, resulting in the phenomenon known as the midnight sun. Likewise, for part of the summer, the sun never sets below the horizon.
During the long winter, the land is covered by ice. The subsoil never thaws, remaining frozen all year in a state known as permafrost. When the surface ice thaws during the short summer, the water does not drain, but forms numerous lakes and ponds along with mud and rising fog.
The Arctic Ocean freezes over in the winter, and then breaks up into drift ice during the summer thaw. The cold Arctic has little precipitation. It is actually a frozen desert. Arctic blizzards are not characterized by huge amounts of snowfall. Rather, gale-force winds stir up what surface snow already exists, forming snowdrifts.
The Far North land environment is called tundra. Because of the cold climate and permafrost, the tundra is treeless. Little vegetation grows other than mosses, lichens and stunted shrubs. Most of the tundra consists of rolling plains. In the western part, there are some mountains, the northern reaches of the Rockies.
Wildlife in the Far North includes sea mammals, such as whales, walruses, seals and seal lions; saltwater and freshwater fish; seagulls and other birds; polar bears; and caribou. These along with other game that appear in certain locations on the tundra in summertime, such as rabbits, rodents and owls, provided subsistence for Far North peoples, who of course could not practice farming on the cold and barren tundra. Arctic peoples migrated when necessary to obtain food.
The inhabitants of the Far North came later to North America than did other native peoples. They came from Siberia in boats, starting about 3,000 B.C., whereas the other native peoples traveled over the Bering Strait land bridge. The Far North peoples are generally shorter and broader than other Native North Americans, with rounder faces, lighter skin and epicanthic eye folds, the small fold of skin covering inner corner of the eyes that is typical of Asian peoples. As a result, Far North peoples are not generally referred to as Indians.
They prefer to be called by their native name, Inuit, which means "the people," rather than Eskimo, which was originally applied to the by Algonquian Indians and which means "eaters of raw meat."
Source: Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes by Carl Waldman
NATIVE AMERICAN RHYMES
