Inuit Societal Values – Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit

The Government of Nunavut uses the principles of Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ) and Inuit Societal Values as guiding principles in delivering services. Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit represents the accumulated knowledge of Inuit interrelationships with family, the land, and community. These principles highlight the values that shape the well-being and culture of Inuit society.

Core Principles of Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ) & Inuit Societal Values (ISV):

  1. Inuuqatigiitsiarniq – Being respectful of all people.
  2. Pijitsirniq – Serving family and community.
  3. Pilimmaksarniq/Pijariuqsarniq – Learning through observing.
  4. Piliriqatigiinniq/Ikajuqtigiinniq – Working together towards a common cause.
  5. Tunnganariq – Being open, welcoming, and inclusive.
  6. Aajiiqatigiinniq – Making decisions through group discussions and consensus.
  7. Qanuqtuurniq – Being innovative and resourceful.
  8. Avatittinnik Kamatatsiarniq – Respect and care for the land, animals, and environment.

For more information on Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ), please visit Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit | Government of Nunavut.

Inuit Culture: A Brief Introduction for Health Professionals

Understanding Inuit culture is crucial for health professionals working in Nunavut and other Arctic regions. This very brief and introductory guide explores the core cultural values, social structures, and unique characteristics that shape Inuit community life and interactions. To really learn about Inuit culture, visit and learn from Inuit in your community. Variations in terminology, stories, and practices exist all across the 2.2 million square kilometres of Nunavut. Learn about the best ways to support your patients by engaging with community members, as well as reading more of the recommended resources, below. 

Inuit communities are renowned for extraordinary hospitality and warmth. The Inuit value Tunnganarniq – to be welcoming – is taught to all of us at a young age. This cultural practice goes beyond simple politeness—it’s a fundamental survival strategy developed over thousands of years in the complex Arctic environment. Visitors, including health professionals, are often welcomed with genuine openness and generosity. Key aspects of this welcoming culture include:

  • Sharing resources and food
  • Offering shelter to travelers
  • Practicing extensive community cooperation
  • Maintaining a non-confrontational communication style

When outsiders come to our community, they need to understand something important about how we live. Our generosity isn’t something to take lightly or simply say “thank you” for. When we welcome you, share our food, open our homes, and care for you, we’re doing more than being kind—we’re offering a piece of ourselves.

Reciprocity isn’t about paying back exactly what you receive. It’s about showing you truly see us. It means listening deeply, respecting our ways, and finding meaningful ways to contribute. Maybe you’ll help teach our children, support our local programs, or truly listen to our elders’ wisdom. It’s about building real relationships, not just temporary transactions.

A visitor who understands reciprocity doesn’t just take—they become part of our community, even if just for a moment. They recognize that our generosity comes from generations of survival, of caring for each other in the harshest conditions. When you receive our kindness, you carry a responsibility. It’s not about feeling indebted, but about understanding the deep connections that keep us strong.

Our hospitality is an invitation—to understand, to connect, to be part of something greater than yourself. Respect that invitation with your whole heart.

Inuit diet and food practices represent far more than nutrition—they embody cultural identity, survival skills, and deep ecological knowledge (1-4). Inuit hunting and food-sharing practices remain critical components of Inuit social structure today.

Important food-related cultural elements:

  • Communal hunting and sharing of country food (traditional wild-caught meat)
  • Respect for animal life and sustainable harvesting
  • Intricate knowledge of animal migration and hunting techniques
  • Preservation methods like sun-drying and fermentation
  • Nutritional significance of traditional foods like seal, caribou, and fish

Country food isn’t just what we eat—it’s who we are. When a young hunter/huntress brings home their first seal or caribou, they give it all away and the whole community celebrates. This isn’t about food; it’s about connection. Each animal is a gift, not a resource to be bought or sold. We share what we catch, ensuring no one goes hungry. A successful hunt means everyone eats—elders, children, families. The animal provides everything: meat for nutrition, skin for clothing, bones for tools. Before outsiders came, we never counted or calculated our harvests. Our relationship with the land and animals was sacred, a continuous cycle of respect and survival. Every catch is a story, every meal a celebration of our connection to this place.

Today, the values of food sharing continue in many different ways, through those same values related to harvesting, but also through community gatherings, food bags for expecting mothers, drop offs for Elders, the collection of freshwater and river ice for community members, and the list goes on. There are many ways to acknowledge and participate in these activities and to support their continuation in our communities. 

Our people don’t follow the calendar you might know. We live in relation to the land, by the movements of animals, by the changing light and ice. Our 6 seasons follow the migration of birds, the rhythm of darkness and light, and the conditions of ice, snow, and water and water throughout the year:

  • Ukiaqsaaq (Early Fall): It gets dark at night. This is the season of the caribou hunt and ripening berries. The geese are flying south. Some berries like paurngaq (crowberries) and Kigutanrgait (blueberries) are ready for picking. The fish are going back up the river after feeding in the ocean all summer.
  • Ukiaq (Fall): The caribou are nice and fat now, with plush fur. This is a good time to harvest caribou if you intend to use the fur for a mattress in a tent. It’s dark at night and the first snow fall comes. It’s also the gale season along the coast. Big winds and storms at this time of year. Kimm
    irnait     (mountain/arctic cranberries or lingonberries) are ready for picking after the first frost. Sea ice starts to form
  • Ukiuq (Winter): Deep cold surrounds us. The sun barely touches the horizon. This is the time of the iglu (snow house) and the nanuq (polar bear). The sea ice has formed. Daylight is short and temperatures are coldest.
  • Upirngaqsaaq (Early Spring): The light returns – you can feel the days are longer. It is still very cold. The seal pups are born. So many families love to be out this time of year. It’s great fun to go ice fishing or seal hunting. Or go inland and find ptarmigan.
  • Upirngaq (Spring): The land awakens. It doesn’t really get dark any more. Ptarmigan move from inland toward the coast. The birds are migrating back – first the songbirds, then the big birds. Tundra swans come before the geese. We can camp in tents comfortably.
  • Aujaq (Summer): Midnight sun fills our world with light. The fish are running from the rivers to the ocean to feed. It’s time to go boating, egg-picking, and tenting. It’s the time to catch fish and make pitsi (dried fish). Flowers and tundra plants bloom. It’s also the time of the mosquito, so bring your bug spray! The caribou come down from the hills to lick salt at the low tide mark and cool off in the afternoons.

Learn more about the Inuit seasons and their variation across all 2.2 million square kilometres of Nunavut in the book Uqalutrait: An Oral History of Nunavut by Bennett and Rowley (5).

Family in Inuit culture extends beyond nuclear or immediate family structures (6). It represents a complex, interconnected network of relationships – through extended family, naming practices,dwives, and more – that provide social support, knowledge transmission, and collective survival (7-11).

Family dynamics include:

  • Multigenerational households
  • Extensive kinship networks
  • Collective child-rearing practices
  • Respect for and engagement of Elders as knowledge keepers
  • Emphasis on oral storytelling and Inuit knowledge transfer

Kinship is at the heart of who we are as Inuit. It shapes how we live, how we care for one another, and how we understand our place in the world. Everyone is connected—through blood, adoption, naming, or shared experiences (12). You are never alone; there is always someone who will step in, whether you need help, guidance, or just company. Our way of raising children is based on this—Inunnguiniq—where aunties, uncles, grandparents, and neighbours all have a role. It’s not just about family in the Western sense; it’s about a deep responsibility to each other. We take care of people because that’s what we’ve always done. Kinship extends to the land and animals too—our relationships with them are full of respect. When you live with this kind of connection, you move through the world differently. It’s a strength, a comfort, and a way of being that keeps our communities strong.

There are great resources about Inunnguiniq and families available including the book Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit: What Inuit Have always known to be true (13), Ilaginniq (10), and the Nunavut Arctic College Interviewing Inuit Elders Series (14). There are also videos about Inunnguiniq and resources available on the Qaujigiartiit Health Research Centre Website, including Inunnguiniq pamphlets on the stages of child development from pregnancy to 18 years of age.

Inuit culture celebrates creativity as a vital survival mechanism and emotional expression. Humor serves as a powerful coping strategy in challenging environmental conditions. Manifestations of creativity include:

  • Intricate artistic traditions (soapstone carving, textile arts)
  • Storytelling and oral histories
  • Musical expressions
  • Visual arts reflecting Arctic life
  • Using humor as a communication and stress-relief tool

Humour is a powerful, trauma-informed practice in Inuit communities. It’s more than just laughing—it’s a way of healing, connecting, and making space for difficult emotions. Our Elders often say that humour can help us carry hard things. When someone is hurting, a well-timed joke or a funny story can ease tension and remind us we’re not alone. Humour creates safety. It helps people feel at ease, especially when talking about heavy topics like grief, violence, or hardship. It allows us to speak truths that might otherwise be too painful to say out loud. The neuroscience behind humour and emotional regulation supports what Inuit have long known through lived experience: laughter and humour help us survive and thrive, especially in the face of hardship. When we laugh, our brains release a cascade of feel-good chemicals—dopamine, endorphins, and oxytocin. These neurochemicals reduce stress, increase feelings of connection, and promote trust between people. Dopamine is especially important for motivation and reward—it gives us a boost of positive energy, which can help shift us out of a fear or stress response.

Humour also engages the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for higher-order thinking, including self-awareness, empathy, and decision-making. This helps with emotional regulation—our ability to notice and manage strong feelings without becoming overwhelmed. When someone is dysregulated due to trauma or stress, humour can be a gentle way to re-engage their thinking brain and help them feel safe again. Importantly, humour can also interrupt patterns of rumination or hypervigilance—common in people who’ve experienced trauma. It allows a moment of relief, a break in the heaviness, which can reset the nervous system. So while laughter may seem lighthearted, it’s actually doing deep work—bringing the brain and body back into balance.

Inuit humour is quick, clever, and full of life. It brings people together across generations and helps build trust (15). It teaches resilience, especially to children, by showing them that joy can still live alongside sorrow (16). For those who have experienced trauma, laughter can be a grounding tool—it brings us back to the present, softens fear, and opens the heart. Humour does not erase pain, but it helps carry it in a lighter way and keeps our spirits strong.

Love in Inuit culture is holistic, encompassing familial, communal, and spiritual dimensions. It’s expressed through actions, support, and deep interpersonal connections rather than solely romantic interpretations.

Expressions of love include:

  • Community support during challenges
  • Caring for elders
  • Sharing resources
  • Maintaining strong interpersonal bonds
  • Respecting individual and collective well-being

Love Beyond Boundaries: Raising Children in Our Community

Love in our culture isn’t a soft, abstract concept—it’s a powerful, active force that flows through every aspect of community life, especially in how we raise our children. Our children belong to everyone, not just their biological parents. Every elder, every aunt, every community member takes responsibility for nurturing, teaching, and protecting our young ones. When a child is born, they are welcomed into a web of relationships so intricate that the concept of “parenting” looks very different from what outsiders might understand. Grandparents are not just occasional visitors but daily teachers. Aunts and uncles are not distant relatives but active guardians. A child learns survival skills, Inuit knowledge, and emotional intelligence through this collective embrace.

Our love is demonstrated through patience, storytelling, and practical teaching (17). We show love by teaching a child how to read animal tracks, by sharing the old stories, by ensuring they understand their place in the complex ecosystem of our community and land (18). A child is taught respect for elders, for animals, for the environment—these are expressions of love.

Discipline comes from guidance, not punishment. In the Inunnguiniq philosophy of child development, children are inherently good and always learning, so our approach is about gentle redirection, about showing rather than telling. An elder might spend hours teaching a child how to prepare a seal skin, and in those hours, love is transmitted—love of skill, of old teachings, of survival, of the youngest members of our community (13).

In our society, no child should ever truly be or feel alone. If parents are struggling, the community is meant to step in. This approach to childrearing, which is embedded in the system of Inunnguiniq, was significantly impacted by colonialism, residential schools, systemic power imbalances in the social service system, and TB evacuations(19-21). Those policies and events resulted in families being separated and broke the transmission of Inunnguiniq between generations. Many families continue to struggle to reconnect with that knowledge today. Many organizations in Nunavut have undertaken significant project and massive efforts to help families recover from those traumas and the intergenerational impacts of on-going colonial attitudes toward Inuit and Inuit practices. 

If a child needed extra care or guidance, someone would always be ready. This wasn’t charity—this was and is the fundamental understanding that our survival has always depended on collective care. We continue to strive to bring this concept back to the forefront of our ways of being in today’s communities and context. 

Love in our culture is about survival, about continuity, about ensuring that our children not only survive but thrive with a deep understanding of who they are and where they come from. It’s a love that connects past, present, and future—a love that is as vast and enduring as the Arctic landscape itself.

Love on the Radio: Cultural Communication

Love is expressed in many ways—through care for family, commitment to community, and connection to the land. Acts of love may look quiet but run deep, such as feeding others, sewing warm clothing, or teaching a skill to a child.

Radio has historically been a crucial communication medium in remote Arctic communities, serving not just as an information source but as a cultural connection point. Community radio stations often broadcast personal messages, community announcements, and support local languages.

Every day at lunch hour on the CBC Nunavut radio station, at 12:50 pm, they air birthday greetings from people from across Nunavut. Anyone can call in and record a birthday greeting which is played in this time segment. For 10 minutes every week day, generous outpourings of love and celebration are shared over the radio for everyone in every community to hear in English and Inuktitut. It is a celebration of love across land and languages. If you are ever having a difficult day, listen to this radio segment. Your afternoon can’t help but improve as a result!

Recommended Resources for Deeper Understanding

  1. Caughey AB, Sargeant JM, Møller H, Harper SL. Inuit country food and health during pregnancy and early childhood in the circumpolar north: A scoping review.  . International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2021;18(5):1-16.
  2. Ready E. Sharing-based social capital associated with harvest production and wealth in the Canadian Arctic. PloS one. 2018;13(3):e0193759.
  3. NFSC NFSC. Six Priorities for Food Security in Nunavut Iqaluit: Government of Nunavut and Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.; 2016 [Available from: https://www.nunavutfoodsecurity.ca/Country_Food.
  4. Rudolph KR, McLachlan, S.M. Seeking Indigenous Food SOvereignty: Origins of and responsoses to the food crisis in northern Manitoba, Canada. Local Environment. 2013;18(9):1079-98.
  5. Bennet J, Rowley S. Introduction. In: Bennet J, Rowley S, editors. Uqalurait: An Oral History of Nunavut

. Montreal, PQ: McGill Queen’s University Press; 2004.

  1. Healey GK. (Re)Settlement, displacement, and family separation: Understanding the historical events which contribute to health inequality in Nunavut. . Northern Review. 2016.
  2. Rand J. Inuit women’s stories of strength: informing Inuit community-based HIV and STI prevention and sexual health promotion programming. International Journal of Circumpolar Health. 2016;75(1).
  3. Montgomery-Andersen R, Borup I, Nordiska m, Nordic School of Public Health NHV. Family support and the child as health promoting agent in the Arctic – “the Inuit way”. Rural and remote health. 2012;12(2):1977.
  4. Pudlat Q. Ilagiinniq: Interviews on Inuit Family Values from the Qikiqtani Region. Iqaluit, NU: Niutaq Cultural Institute and Qikiqtani Inuit Association. 2011:73-87.
  5. Institute NC, Association QI. Ilaginniq: Interviews on Inuit Family Values from the Qikiqtani Region. Canada: Inhabit Media Inc.; 2011. 127 p.
  6. Pauktuutit. Research report: applying inuit cultural approaches in the prevention of family violence and abuse, Nuluaq Project: National Inuit Strategy for Abuse Prevention. 2005.
  7. Suluk D. the Family. In: Bennet J, Rowley S, editors. Uqalurait: An Oral History of Nunavut. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press; 2004.
  8. Karetak J, Tagalik S, Tester FJ. Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit: What Inuit have always known to be true. Winnipeg: Fernwood; 2017.
  9. Ootoova I, Atagutsiak T, Ijjangiaq T, Pitseolak J, Joamie A, Joamie A, et al. Perspectives on Traditional Health. Iqaluit: Nunavut Arctic College; 2000.
  10. Dart C. ‘Make me laugh’: The North of North co-creators try to figure out the ‘Inuit sense of humour’. CBC Lite. 2025.
  11. Williamson-Bathory L. Aqausiit: Can You Hear How Much Love You Evoke In Me?! Native Studies Review. 2011;20(2):1-29.
  12. Williamson-Bathory L. Aqausiit: Can You Hear How Much Love You Evoke In Me?! Native Studies Review. 2011;20(2).
  13. Tagalik S. Inuit knowledge systems, Elders, and determinants of health: Harmony, balance, and the role of holistic thinking.  Determinants of Indigenous Peoples’ Health: Beyond the Social2018. p. 93.
  14. Tester FJ, Kulchyski, P. Tammarniit (Mistakes): Inuit relocation in the Eastern Arctic 1939-63. 1994.
  15. RCAP RCoAP. Highlightts from the Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Ottawa, Canada: Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples; 1996.
  16. QIA QIA. Qikiqtani Truth Commission Final Report: Achieving Saimaqatigiingniq. 2012

Inunnguiniq - The Making of a Human Being

Inunnguiniq is the philosophy of becoming a capable, skilled, and contributing individual within the community. Rooted in Inuit tradition, it emphasizes personal growth, resilience, and responsibility. By following these principles, individuals develop the habits, skills, and character to lead fulfilling and meaningful lives, all while fostering strong relationships with family and community.

The 6 principles of Inunnguiniq

Our elders say that there are 6 core principles at the heart of being a healthy, happy, skilled, contributing member of the community. Inunnguiniq is the philosophy of becoming a capable and skilled individual:

  • Finish what you start and persevere.
  • Continually plan ahead and be well-organized.
  • Take care of your belongings.
  • Develop strong skills and continually learn.
  • Listen to the teachings you are given and apply them.
  • Be adaptable and focus on the future.
  • Be capable so that others will have confidence in you.
  • Identify your needs and focus on fulfilling them.
  • Apply knowledge to experiences.
  • Seek understanding of the things around you.
  • Show humanity through kindness and empathy.
  • Behave ethically and with integrity.
  • Be self-reliant and take responsibility for your actions.
  • Show respect, be responsible, and be accountable.
  • Anticipate and meet the needs of the others.
  • Serve willingly and with love.
  • Foster relationships that enable and uplift others.
  • Communicate openly and discuss things honestly.
  • Set high expectations for children and loved ones.
  • Focus on strengths and build on them.
  • Be present and involved in your community.
  • Start by sowing the seeds of how to do something.
  • Begin where the person or child is currently at.
  • Expect progress and foster growth.
  • Show how to do something and expect the person/child to do what is shown.
  • Never give up on the person/child you are teaching.
A group of women gathered around a table

The Impact of Settlement on Societal Values

During the time of settlement, several events took place which has compromised our ability to uphold some of these values. Parents and children were separated for medical treatment or residential school and reunited many years later – and sometimes not at all.

In the late 1960s, 75% of the children in our communities were in residential schools. They were not allowed to speak our language or learn or celebrate our values. As a result, much of this knowledge was lost to many many children. Only through reclamation processes is it being recovered and shared again.

Many of the mental, emotional and spiritual challenges that we face in our communities today originate from that time period. There is a long and continuing healing journey ahead of us, and it will take all of our collaborative and supportive efforts to bring our people to a place that makes everyone feel well, happy, safe, and loved.

Learn More