Alaska Confidential: What is an Eskimo?

And how to not be racist, if you can help it.

A lot of my friends growing up were Eskimos. Or, maybe they weren’t. Maybe Eskimo is an offensive term. Outdated. Racist. I was just informed of this factoid, by someone who has never been to Alaska.

“Actually, they prefer to be called Inuits,” the guy told me, a Californian guy, a rich guy, a progressive guy raising his kids to be blowhards, a guy who has zero problem opining on things he knows nothing about.

Not even opining, actually. Correcting.

This development was news to me, as all of the people who are now called Inuits, according to Chad, usually referred to themselves as Eskimos when I was growing up with them in Alaska, often clarifying which distinct group of Eskimo they were, typically Yupiq or Inupiaq.

Now, I don’t know how many Inuits Chad has in his phone, I’d bet my life it’s zero, but I have a lot of Eskimos in mine, so I texted several of them and asked if they prefer to be called Inuits now.

They all said No, in no uncertain terms. One of them told me I owe him a hundred bucks for fantasy football last year, and, also, No, not a chance in hell, you douchebag.

I wanted to explain to them that they were wrong, and that they should really listen to Chad, but I refrained.

Still, while Chad was trying his best to present himself as not racist, he actually accomplished the opposite and should have to repent by apologizing for his existence to every person of color he encounters at Erewhon for the next week.

In fact, the most progressive thing he could do at this point, as a guilty white guy, would be to off himself.

The word Inuit is native to the languages of certain groups of Native peoples of Western Canada and Greenland which share a regional language and lexicon.

The word Inuit is most commonly translated as person. Yet, the Native groups of Alaska, the Yupiq and Inupiaq peoples, never had this word.

They had the word Eskimo.

So, as it turns out, Chad was committing the sin of mislabeling the ethnicity of an entire group of people. No different than calling all Hispanic people Mexicans, whether they are from Jalisco, Guatemala, or Paraguay.

I may not be as bright as Chad. I don’t routinely dictate to people what words they should be using. But, I’m pretty sure I understand why he is misinformed.

See, living in Los Angeles, I associate with a lot of people in the entertainment industry. A lot of productions are shot in Canada. People from Los Angeles routinely travel there for this reason. Greenland also, to a lesser degree.

They rarely go to Alaska.

While in Canada shooting their stupid ass cable TV filler bullshit, these overpaid crackers meet an Inuit. Later that night they google this word and learn that the Inuit are not Eskimos, and do not like to be called that. Because they are sheltered and obtuse, they then make the leap in logic to assuming that all Inuits are Eskimos, and all Eskimos are Inuits.

Interestingly enough, while the Eskimos I personally know tend to call themselves Eskimos, as far as the federal government in concerned, the term is in fact offensive.

In 2016, Barack Obama signed a measure which revised the language referring to ethnic groups in federal laws. It got rid of Negro. It axed Oriental. It froze out Eskimo.

They are now officially called Native Alaskan.

This designation groups together all of the peoples native to Alaska, which are vastly different in culture, in geographical region, in religion, in genetics.

Yet, while each tribe is itself distinct, Alaskans, Native or not, and native or not, as well as anthropologists and anyone who is vaguely familiar with the subject, have historically grouped them into two broader camps which share many similarities.

These are: Eskimo, and Indian.

Without devolving too far into the weeds, here is a very basic crash course, if you, like Chad, are uneducated on the subject.

Eskimos are from the far north of Alaska. It is universally assumed that they walked across the Bering Land Bridge thousands of years ago, which is why they tend to have a lot of Asian DNA and features. They tend to have pale skin, and stocky builds. Whaling was and remains a significant part of their culture.

Indians are from the interior of Alaska, far removed from the original Eskimo settlements. They have darker skin, and are often tall and rangy. They look like what you typically think of as a Native American, which they are. They are not genetically related to Eskimos any more than they are the Irish. Hunting moose, more so than whales, was, and is, central to their culture.

Maybe I’m old fashioned, I just figure that if you’re going to speak on a subject, you should at least have an inkling as to what you are talking about, but not in Los Angeles.

And, I one day hope to meet an Inuit. Based on what I’ve seen on cable, they appear to be wonderful people.