Current Developments
During a period of five thousand years, the Eskimo groups have grown apart ethnically. However, the increasing integration into nations foreign to them that were extending into the Arctic made them realize after World War II that they could maintain their cultural identity only if they appeared united at the international level. Therefore the Eskimo groups of Canada united with their relatives in Alaska and Greenland (after the dissolution of the Soviet Union also with the Siberian Chukchi) to the "Pan-Eskimo Movement". This Movement is supported by the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, that was founded in 1977 after a lead time of four years and to which its protagonist Eben Hopson (North Slope Borough, Alaska) was invited with his vision of constituting a unified, independent Eskimo nation.
During the 1980s and 1990s a nationalistic trend could indeed be felt, and there was no lack of wishful thinking to achieve the dream of circumpolar unity. But in the reality of daily life, rational and last but not least fiscal thinking prevailed.
Read more about this topic: Inuit Culture
Famous quotes containing the words current and/or developments:
“A man is a little thing whilst he works by and for himself, but, when he gives voice to the rules of love and justice, is godlike, his word is current in all countries; and all men, though his enemies are made his friends and obey it as their own.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I don’t wanna live in a city where the only cultural advantage is that you can make a right turn on a red light.
Freedom from labor itself is not new; it once belonged among the most firmly established privileges of the few. In this instance, it seems as though scientific progress and technical developments had been only taken advantage of to achieve something about which all former ages dreamed but which none had been able to realize.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)