Eskimo, Inuit, Yup’ik, Siberian artifacts
The name Inuit (meaning "real men") designates a people that includes different ethnic groups of Eskimos. This is the term that the Eskimos themselves use to indicate themselves. In spite of the name “Eskimo”, deriving from the word of the Indians wabanaki eskimatsik which means “raw meat eaters”, in a word “savages”, the Inuit have an exasperated spirituality. It is expressed in a complicated cosmogony that includes a male version of the moon and a female version of the sun, in a paradisiacal conception of the afterlife, in which five skies inhabited by luminous beings of decreasing purity and the best game are distinguished.
The central figure of Inuit society is that of the shaman, who intercedes to ensure harmony between men, gods and animals. The mask allows him to travel to the afterlife to learn the causes of divine resentment.
Through the songs and masks worn by the shaman it is intended to evoke heroic deeds and hunting activities of a mythological matrix.
The Inuit masks were made of materials which consisted of spruce or cottonwood and were also carved with metal tools. In the Inuit culture, every mask was intricately fashioned and created always having an immense amount of meaning to the Inuit people, The masks of the Inuit have in fact a particular expressive power: from them shamanic energy and references to the phases of the moon are released. Among the most characteristic are the totem masks, the Man-of-the-Moon masks and other categories belonging to animals whose spirit must be enclosed in the masks themselves.
The Yup'ik tribes inhabit the southwestern territories of Alaska and while partly professing the Orthodox or Moravian Christian religion, still preserve aspects of their ancient shamanic culture and animist, especially as regards the art forms with which they express themselves today. A direct example of these beliefs can be found in the masks used by the shamans,
Masks are the result of multiple persons efforts, sometimes created by one in mind but physically created by another. It was in fact the “angalkuq” who explained to the carvers (who could also be women) how to make the masks. They were used during propitiatory rites and in gatherings where people used to sing, dance and tell stories. After the contact with the Christian evangelizing mission this custom waned but was not completely forgotten.
