I am Eskimo!!!

The other day I was criticized for my blog name “West Coast Eskimo”. The guy just assumed that I was not part of an Eskimo tribe and told me to go to hell, that I was racist and the term “Eskimo” was a cultural appropriation. So, I went and looked up the term “Eskimo” in the English dictionary. It turns out that “Eskimo” means “eater of raw meat”. The Oxford Dictionary defines Eskimo as “a member of an indigenous people inhabiting northern Canada, Alaska, Greenland, and eastern Siberia, and traditionally living by hunting seals and other Arctic animals and birds and by fishing.” 

In all honesty, my family and entire tribe DO eat raw meat. I am not offended by the term at all. My husband and daughter love dried black meat (oogruk aka bearded seal). We also love dried fish. My daughter goes crazy over muktuk (whale blubber, even when it is raw). Raw meat is good in some forms. Nothing wrong with it.

Eskimos are providers. Eskimos are leaders. We subsist for our families. Some of us are cut off from the rest of the world in our little communities in rural Alaska. Eskimos share with one another. They look out for their family, friends, neighbors, and all of the village kids. Eskimos survive harsh winters, but they are smart about it. They utilize what they have in their area to stay warm. They make parkas, mukluks, malaqis, mittens, and other clothing articles with furs of locally hunted animals. Eskimos feed their families local food (seal, seal oil, salmon, caribou, moose, crab, herring eggs, muktuk, etc) to offset the high costs of food from the store. 

I do not understand people who get offended for being called Eskimo. If someone called me an Inupiaq, I would feel just the same. I do not differentiate the two. The Canadian Eskimos prefer to be called Inuit. The Northern and Northwest Alaskan Eskimos are called Inupiat. Others are called Yupik. Really? We are all Eskimos. We are all related in one way or another. Get over it!

I will keep my blog name as West Coast Eskimo because I am proud to be Eskimo. I may only be half Eskimo, but I am Eskimo nonetheless. I will always be an Eskimo as long as I shall live. And my children will know that they are Eskimo as well and their children and their children’s children. So, for those that find offense to the term, Eskimo, so be it. Eskimo defines who I am: who my ancestors were. My ancestors did not find offense to it. Why should I? 

The cutest little Eskimo in the boat! :)