On Sat, 02 Apr 2005 18:23:32 -0500, Paul Schilter
""paulschilter\"@comcast dot net" wrote:

Jim,
Didn't know that. Where does the term Eskimos come from? I take it they
wish to be called "Inuit"?

From http://www.alaskan.com/docs/eskimo.html

Eskimo
The Eskimo are the native inhabitants of the seacoasts of the Arctic
and sub-Arctic regions of North America and the northeastern tip of
Siberia. Their habitation area extends over four countries: the United
States, Canada, the USSR, and Greenland. Of the more than 90,000
Eskimo in this region, the greater part live south of the Arctic
Circle, with approximately 28,000 on the Aleutian Islands and in
Alaska; 17,000 in Canada; 1,500 in Siberia; and 45,000 in Greenland.

The word Eskimo is not an Eskimo word. It means "eaters of raw meat"
and was used by the Algonquin Indians of eastern Canada for these
hardy neighbors who wore animal-skin clothing and were adept hunters.
The name became commonly employed by European explorers and now is
generally used, even by Eskimo. Their own term for themselves is Inuit
(the Yupik variant is Yuit), which means the "real people."

The Eskimo inhabit one of the most inclement regions of the world.
Their land is mostly tundra--low, flat, treeless plains where the
ground remains permanently frozen except for a few inches of the
surface during the brief summer season. Although some groups are
settled on rivers and depend on fishing, and others follow inland
caribou herds, most Eskimo traditionally have lived primarily as
hunters of maritime mammals (seals, walrus, and whales), and the
structure and ethos of their culture have always been fundamentally
oriented to the sea.

One of the most striking aspects of traditional Eskimo culture is its
relative homogeneity across more than 8,000 km (5,000 mi) of the vast
expanses of the Arctic. The main institutional and psychological
patterns of the culture--religious, social, and economic--are much the
same. There are some differences in traditional kinship systems,
however, especially in the western regions, and the language is
divided into two major dialectical groups, the Inupik speakers
(Greenland to western Alaska) and the Yupik speakers (southwestern
Alaska and Siberia)

Later,

Tom