Do Eskimos ever leave Alaska for very long?
I recently went to Fairbanks Alaska and didn't think I would meet so many Eskimos (they were fun). Ive lived in CA all my life, and literally never met 1 Eskimo ever! So I was just curious if many leave their homeland or not.
Comments
Actually in Alaska you met :
* Athabascan
* Yup'ik & Cup'ik
* Inupiaq & St. Lawrence Island Yupik
* Unangax & Alutiiq (Sugpiaq)
* Eyak, Tlingit, Haida & Tsimshian
http://www.alaskanative.net/en/main_nav/education/...
Eskimo is a white mans word that incorrectly lumps together and labels a set of unique individual cultural groups.
" Goddard writes: "In the 1970s in Canada the name Inuit all but
replaced Eskimo in governmental and scientific publication and the
mass media, largely in response to demands from Eskimo political
associations. The erroneous belief that Eskimo was a pejorative
term meaning 'eater of raw flesh' had a major influence on this
shift. The Inuit Circumpolar Conference meeting in Barrow, Alaska,
in 1977 officially adopted Inuit as a designation for all Eskimos,
regardless of their local usages [...]."
http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxeskimo.htm...
Sorry to correct you but I have many friends who are Native Alaskan and they have explained to me that this is an important distinction.
As to do they leave, I imagine that the rate of Alaska Natives moving away vs. staying at home might be slightly lower then other places in the US becuase of our remote location. But i think it is a big mistake to assume that becauseyou had never met one before that they aren't out there.