For every civilization, religion plays a very critical role in shaping up the culture and rituals to be followed by the people. But for the Inuit, their sole purpose in life was survival. They lived in so harsh conditions that while the rest of world was busy creating a structured religion, the Inuit were busy searching for food. The Inuit also lived in nomadic lifestyle, so they could not form a proper religion and hence, had only some rituals that they followed.
The Inuit, traditionally, followed the Animism religion, which means that they believed that along with humans, all the animals, trees, ocean, Earth and all other natural elements, are imbued by a soul or spirit. They also followed Shamanism, where a shaman (angakkuq) was the medium between the humans and the spirits.
For the coastal Inuit, the ocean was the only source of food and thus life. They worshipped the goddess Sedna who was believed to be inhabited in the ocean. She was the source of life of all creatures living in the ocean. While for the caribou Inuit worshipped the goddess Sila, who was the creator of living animals on the land. They believed that they could communicate with the spirits through Shamanism. They also believed in life after death and for them hell did not exist.
But after the Inuit came into contact with the Europeans, things began to change. The Moravian Missionaries, a protestant church based in Germany started converting the Inuit into Christianity, with the help of the British settlers. At the beginning, the Inuit resisted to converting and abandoning their traditional rituals and beliefs. But, in 1804, a widespread religious movement, called as the Great Awakening, promoted peaceful relations between the Inuit and the missionaries and helped Christianity to be adopted by the Inuit.
Although the missionaries banned the Inuit from performing their rituals and ceremonies for almost a century, since last 25-30 years the Inuit have revived their traditional ceremonies and customs.
