Community at Play. Social and Religeous Dynamics in the Modern Inuit Community of Qikiqtarjuaq

This study shows, by examining ways of social and religious life in a modern Inuit community and the annually ten days of Christmas festival, that after more than 100 years of being Christians and about 50 years after moving from nomadic hunting camps to modern settlements, Inuit still perceive themselves as a hunting society and formulate their self-perceptions in cosmological terms emphasizing relations to God, land, and animals. To Inuit the community does not represent a corporate unit encompassing and transcending the participants, it represents much more a potential for cooperation. The performance of communal games, a major element of the Christmas festival, has a marked position in this respect because relations to humans and transcendental agencies are fragile and can only be fully realized in play.