Inuit–Qimmiit Kinship: Co-Travel in Life and Afterlife

Abstract

This article considers traditional Inuit beliefs and practices as expressed through human–animal relationality, examining the physical and spiritual significance of qimmiit (sled dogs), and how qimmiit functioned as co-travellers with humans across physical and spiritual realms of existence. Drawing on ethnographic and missionary narrative sources, it explores Inuit–Qimmiit relationality as central to survival in the pre-modern period. Consulted sources include the writings of explorer–ethnographer Knud Rasmussen, Church of England missionary Edmund James Peck, anthropologist Franz Boas, explorer–author Peter Freuchen, and Oblate missionary Pierre Henry (Kajualuk). These accounts, despite Euro-centric and Christian biases, provide distinct yet overlapping experiences with sled dogs and understandings of Inuit traditions and worldviews. Read comparatively, these ethnographic texts reveal how qimmiit were essential to mobility and spiritual–social order. The article draws on the Qikiqtani Truth Commission to contextualize the harm and suffering caused by the loss of qimmiit during the dog killings of the 1950s to 1970s. The song “Travel Without Me,” from the Animal Kinship Project and written to commemorate qimmiit in the aftermath of the sled dog slaughter, provides a narrative framework structured around kinship and travel, foregrounding Inuit understandings of shared journeys across human and canine existence and framing Inuit–Qimmiit relations as enduring bonds that traverse both physical life and afterlife. Within Inuit religious cosmologies, relationships between humans and qimmiit extend beyond practical cooperation to encompass shared spiritual existence, relational obligation, and continuity of soul across physical and metaphysical worlds. Ethnographic accounts recorded by Rasmussen, Peck, Boas, Freuchen and Henry describe dogs not merely as working animals but as ensouled beings who participate in travel, naming practices, shamanic mediation, cosmogonic and afterlife narratives. Read through a religious studies lens, these sources reveal a cosmological framework in which mobility and survival are embedded within sacred relational structures linking human and animal life. This article examines Inuit–Qimmiit kinship as a form of physical–spiritual relationality, arguing that dogs function as co-travellers whose relational position across embodied and cosmological domains illuminates Inuit understandings of personhood, cosmological balance, and the continuity of life beyond death.

1. Qimmiit, Inuit Relational Ontology, and Reconciliation

Human–animal relationality between humans and dogs, particularly within North American popular culture, is a persistent theme in storytelling. Western literary and cinematic traditions have long framed canine loyalty through narratives of recognition, sacrifice, and endurance, from Argos recognizing Odysseus after twenty years of absence in The Odyssey, through domestic stories such as Lassie, Old Yeller, and Marley & Me, to Arctic-set narratives like Jack London’s White Fang and the films Togo and Alpha, which situate human-canine bonds forged in harsh living conditions of the north. Together, these stories reflect the phenomenon of canine loyalty as it is experienced and witnessed by humans through travel, separation, and survival. While canine-centred novels and films typically foreground loyalty and companionship over metaphysical concerns, All Dogs Go to Heaven stands apart by drawing on a near-death narrative to suggest that dogs possess souls and participate in an afterlife. And while popular literary and cinematic portrayals often attribute personhood to dogs through sentiment and moral projection, Inuit understandings of qimmiit emerge instead from a relational ontology grounded in body, soul(s), and spirit. Qimmiit are represented in origin stories and in accounts of daily life, where the mythic1 and the mundane are not separated but understood as interconnected.

This article advances existing scholarship on Inuit spirituality and human–animal relationality by foregrounding qimmiit as co-participants in a shared ontological and spiritual order extending across life and afterlife, offering an understanding of Inuit spirituality as relational, embodied, and cosmologically grounded practice. While Canicide and Healing (Laugrand and Oosten 2002) explored the social identity of dogs as integral members of Inuit society and drew attention to the killing of Inuit sled dogs in the 1950s and 1960s, they also documented Inuit elders’ framing of these events as an assault on both animals and the community itself. The destruction of sled dogs constituted a rupture in Inuit–Qimmiit kinship and a fracturing of a shared physical and spiritual world, remembered as qimmiijaqtauniq, the killing of name-soul beings, unfolding within broader processes of colonial intervention that disrupted mobility, subsistence, and ways of life. Laugrand and Oosten further highlighted the call for a formal apology articulated by Makivik Corporation president Pita Aatami, situating Inuit testimony within ongoing processes of recognition and healing. Building on this foundation, the present study draws on anthropological and missiological sources to expand the study of qimmiit beyond social identity into cosmology, spiritual co-travel, relational ontology, and intergenerational memory. The realized federal apology in 2024 creates a window of opportunity for reconciliation discourse grounded in Inuit relational and spiritual traditions. In response to the 2024 apology, Pita Aatami, re-elected as President of Makivvik, stated, “For decades, the Inuit of Nunavik have fought tirelessly for this acknowledgment and apology. While we cannot undo the pain and loss caused by these actions, the funding announced today is a step toward healing for our communities. These resources will help us address the deep traumas of the past and ensure the Canadian government takes its rightful place as a partner in the healing process, a role Makivvik has shouldered alone for far too long” (Government of Canada 2024). This renewed context opens space for scholarly and public engagement with the religious significance of Inuit–Qimmiit kinship.

2. The Inuit

Inuit2 are one of the three constitutionally recognized Indigenous Peoples of Canada, alongside First Nations and Métis, often referred to collectively as FNMI. Distinct from First Nations and Métis in language, history, and geography, Inuit are the Indigenous peoples of the Arctic regions of Canada. According to Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), the national representational organization for Inuit, most Inuit today live in 51 communities distributed across four regions: the Inuvialuit Settlement Region (Northwest Territories), Nunavut, Nunavik (northern Quebec), and Nunatsiavut (northern Labrador). Inuit collectively refer to this homeland as Inuit Nunangat, a vast circumpolar region that encompasses approximately 40% of Canada’s landmass and 72% of its coastline. Inuit Nunangat is not only a geographic designation, but a cultural and spiritual landscape shaped by Arctic ecologies, seasonal mobility, and enduring relationships among humans, animals, ice, and sea, (Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami 2026).

There are roughly 165,000 Inuit living in Canada, Greenland, the Russian Federation, and in the State of Alaska in the United States of America. Inuit are one people divided by what are considered to be artificial boundaries created by the old European colonial system (Eegeesiak 2017). Situating Inuit spirituality and human–animal relationality within this distinct territorial and political context is essential for avoiding pan-Indigenous generalizations and for understanding the specificity of Inuit cosmologies, lifeways, and religious traditions.

For millennia, Indigenous people have lived around the Arctic Circle, living off the land and preserving it for generation after generation. The Inuit were here long before the artificial demarcations known as international borders were put into place.3 The longevity and care of Inuit stewardship of animals, lands, and waters, has allowed the countries that now encompass these territories to have a claim to vast and important regions. Knowledge of these relationships has been transmitted not only through practice, but through oral traditions that encode ecological, moral, and spiritual understanding.

Storytelling occupies a central epistemological role within Inuit oral traditions, functioning as a means through which lived experience, ancestral knowledge, and cosmological truth are conveyed across generations. As recorded by Knud Rasmussen in The People of the Polar North, the Inuit narrator Osarqaq emphasizes that storytelling is grounded in experience rather than embellishment:

Our tales are men’s experiences, and the things one hears of are not always lovely things. But one cannot deck a tale to make it pleasant, if at the same time it shall be true. The tongue must be the echo of the event and cannot adapt itself to taste or caprice. To the words of the newly born none give much credence, but the experience of older generations contains truth. When I narrate legends, it is not I who speak, it is the wisdom of our forefathers, speaking through me.

(Rasmussen 1908, p. 97)

This understanding positions storytelling as an epistemological practice through which relational accountability, ethical instruction, and human participation in cosmological order are transmitted, with dogs occupying a relational place in origin narratives and legends grounded in ancestral knowledge and experience. In keeping with methodological commitments to relational specificity and contextual integrity, precautions against pan-Inuit generalization are essential; accordingly, the primary sources referenced in this paper are engaged according to the geographic region identified in each source, situating stories and accounts within their own relational and cultural contexts.

3. Qimmiit

The terms dog, dogs and sled dogs will be used below, given their usage in the English ethnographic sources and translations. However, it is important to note that the Inuktitut term qimmiit4 denotes beings embedded in physical and spiritual life, rather than domestic dogs understood commonly as a species. Qimmiit were integral to mobility across the Arctic (Inuit Nunangat), enabling seasonal movement, communication, and hunting, as well as providing protection, but their significance extends beyond mundane function. Qimmiit are recognized as co-travellers whose lives are intertwined with human existence in both physical life and the Afterlife. Just as humans possess a name-soul (atiq), qimmiit are also understood to have name-souls. In the context of shamanism described in the ethnographic sources below, qimmiit were regarded as spirit-helpers to shamans, who sometimes wore amulets made from qimmiit teeth. And just as humans wore amulets for protection, qimmiit could likewise be fitted with amulets.

4. Qikiqtani Truth Commission (QTC)

The years 1950–1975 marked a period of profound disruption for Inuit in the Qikiqtani region, during which state authorities, including the RCMP and other government agents, exercised unprecedented control over mobility and settlement. Allegations that Inuit sled dogs were killed during this period prompted the Qikiqtani Truth Commission (Qikiqtani Inuit Association 2024), which documented Inuit testimony collected through interviews from 2007–2010, concluding that government actions caused lasting cultural, social, and spiritual harm. In Inuit testimony, these events are described as qimmiijaqtauniq, literally “many dogs or dog teams being taken away or killed,” a phrase now commonly translated as “the dog slaughter” (Qikiqtani Truth Commission 2024, p. 36). Described in the QTC Final Report the Inuktitut term qimutsiit names the dog team as dogs and hunter as one: “The closeness of this relationship is captured by the Inuktitut term for dog team, qimutsiit, which includes both the qimmiit and the hunter” (Qikiqtani Truth Commission 2024, p. 31).

5. 2019 Apology

In 2019, the federal government formally apologized to Inuit of Baffin Island in Iqaluit for harms inflicted between 1950 and 1975, with particular emphasis on the pain and trauma caused by the loss of qimmiit. Reported by Sara Frizzell for CBC News (Frizzell 2020), the apology was delivered by Minister Carolyn Bennett and acknowledged that the killing of sled dogs caused deep emotional, cultural, and spiritual harm to Inuit families by severing their ability to travel, hunt, and care for one another. Testimony gathered through the Qikiqtani Truth Commission from 350 Inuit described the loss of dogs as a profound rupture in daily life and identity. While the Commission found no centralized conspiracy, it documented how the dramatic decline in dog populations became a lasting source of grief, dislocation, and intergenerational trauma. The apology marked a first step toward healing, supported by $20 million funding commitment to Inuit-led cultural revitalization, governance, and programs sustaining dog team traditions.

6. 2024 Apology

In November 2024, the federal government issued a formal apology for its role in the slaughter of Inuit sled dogs in Nunavik during the 1950s and 1960s, committing $45 million toward reconciliation initiatives. Reported by Savanna Craig for APTN News (Craig 2024), the apology was delivered by Crown Indigenous Relations Minister Gary Anandasangaree in Kangiqsujuaq. He acknowledged that the killings occurred under federal authority and that Canada failed to intervene despite knowing sled dogs were essential to Inuit survival, mobility, and safety. The apology followed decades of advocacy by Makivvik Corporation and built on findings by Justice Jean Jacques Croteau that more than one thousand dogs were killed without regard for Inuit families.5 While no apology can restore what was lost, the funding will support dog team revitalization, cultural renewal, and community healing (Craig 2024).

7. Sources for Ethnographic Inquiry

This article draws primarily on the ethnographic writings and biographical records of Church of England missionary Edmund James Peck, anthropologist Franz Boas, explorer–ethnographer Knud Rasmussen, explorer–author Peter Freuchen, and Oblate missionary Pierre Henry. The sources represent post-contact engagement with Inuit communities though are early enough to reflect pre-contact beliefs and practices, particularly shamanism.

Edmund James Peck (1850–1924) was a Church of England missionary who worked extensively among Inuit communities in the eastern Canadian Arctic, particularly in the regions of Baffin Island, Cumberland Sound, and Hudson Bay. Arriving in the Arctic in 1894, Peck spent more than three decades living among Inuit, learning Inuktitut and employing a written syllabic system that became central to Inuit literacy which earned him the name Uqammaq, “the one who speaks well” (Laugrand 2003, p. 10). Apostle to the Inuit: The Journals and Ethnographic Notes reflect his years on Baffin Island 1894–1905 (Peck 2006). In addition to translated works he published a pamphlet, The Eskimo: Our Brethren of the Arctic in 1920 (Laugrand 2003).

Franz Boas (1858–1942) conducted foundational fieldwork among the Inuit of Baffin Island from 1883 to 1884. Boas concluded that Inuit were “far from being uncivilized” (Boas 1988, p. 110), an appreciation that decisively shaped his relativist approach to suspend ethnocentric judgments, an approach later referred to as cultural relativism (Pöhl 2008). Through sustained attention to daily life, language, religion, and mythology, Boas documented Inuit beliefs and practices with notable care for his time. Boas took the initiative to work with Peck, encouraging him to collect ethnographic data of high quality for publication, data that Boas would utilize in The Eskimo of Baffin Land and Hudson Bay (Laugrand 2003).

Knud Rasmussen (1879–1933) was a Greenlandic Danish explorer–ethnographer of mixed ancestry, part Inuit on his mother’s side and with a Danish father (Rasmussen 1927). He was fluent in Greenlandic (Kalaallisut) and by the age of eight could shoot a gun and harness and drive a team of sled dogs (Bown 2015, p. 21). This upbringing gave Rasmussen skills uncommon among European ethnographers, including the ability to travel long distances by dog team and to endure Arctic conditions alongside Inuit companions. This embodied familiarity with Arctic travel and dog teams informed his works, including The People of the Polar North (Rasmussen 1908), Across Arctic America (Rasmussen 1927), and Eskimo Folk Tales (Rasmussen 1921), allowing him to document not only material practices but also the moral, social, and spiritual dimensions of human–dog relations with unusual depth for his time.6

Peter Freuchen (1886–1957) was a Danish explorer, writer, and ethnographic observer associated with Fifth Thule Expedition (1921–1924) (Rasmussen 1927). He lived for extended periods in Greenland, where he married Navarana, an Inuit woman with whom he had two children. Through travel, hunting, and daily life within Inuit communities, Freuchen gained firsthand familiarity with Arctic subsistence practices, mobility, and social life. His contributions to the Fifth Thule Expedition, along with later works such as Arctic Adventure: My Life in the Frozen North (1936), and Book of the Eskimos (1961), provide twentieth-century descriptive accounts of Inuit life that inform subsequent ethnographic and historical studies.

Pierre Henry (1904–1979), known among Inuit as Kajualuk for his red beard (Choque 1985, p. 68), was a French Oblate missionary who lived and worked in the Central Arctic, primarily in the Pelly Bay region of what is now Nunavut. Arriving in the Arctic in 1932, Henry remained among Inuit communities for almost 40 years. His missionary life is recounted in Kajualuk: Apostle of the Inuit, a biographical narrative grounded in journals, correspondence, and community memory. Henry adopted Inuit travel practices, relied fully on sled dogs for mobility, and oriented his daily life around Inuit rhythms of movement, hunting, and seasonal change. Notably, Henry avoided direct interference in shamanic practice and allowed, albeit reluctantly, traditional drumming and dancing to take place at the mission (Choque 1985, p. 96).

8. Voice of Qimmiit in Song Lyrics as Expression of Relationality

The discussion that follows aligns ethnographic and missionary sources with specific lyric phrases from the song Travel Without Me, attending to how Inuit travel, survival, and relationality with qimmiit unfold across intertwined physical and spiritual dimensions.

The song Travel Without Me (Ginn 2021) is part of the Animal Kinship Project (Ginn 2024), a multimedia educational resource that explores relationships between humans and animals through creative scholarship grounded in Indigenous histories and worldviews. The project features the ten-song album Spirit to Be that brings forward narratives of animal kinship that span species and landscapes, foregrounding teachings that emphasize shared life, survival, and relational responsibility. Travel Without Me confronts the legacy of the Inuit sled dog killings by asking critical questions about loss, movement, and continuity, positioning the absence of qimmiit as both a material and relational rupture.

Media coverage of the project has noted its engagement with painful colonial histories, highlighting how the album addresses the tragic sled dog slaughter alongside other animal-centred narratives, translating historical trauma into forms that invite reflection, emotional resonance, and ethical attentiveness (Volmers 2023). Within the Animal Kinship Project, music functions as a relational and pedagogical medium capable of holding history, responsibility, and moral inquiry together.

Travel Without Me draws attention to how the killing of sled dogs fractured not only mobility but kinship itself. Rather than serving as an object of formal lyrical analysis, the song functions as a guiding narrative reference that frames the article’s central inquiry into Inuit–Qimmiit relationality. The analytical aim of this study is to examine how ethnographic and historical sources illuminate the role of qimmiit in sustaining human life, knowledge, and relational obligation, particularly within Arctic environments where travel, endurance, and survival are inseparable from bodily experience and the continuity of social and spiritual worlds. In this context, Travel Without Me introduces themes that recur across Inuit oral histories and ethnographic accounts, framing the loss of qimmiit as disruptive to Inuit beliefs and practices across both physical and spiritual domains.

9. Ethnographic Record Framed Through Lyric and Relational Meanings

• Verse 1
• I took my place in the traces
• the hunter’s voice my command
• Many times my weight, I pulled to bring this sled home
• gave my life to the journeys of man

Edmund Peck describes the sled dog harness in the context of outdoor life and occupation, emphasizing the sledge (sled) as the means of transportation and the importance of dogs.

Each dog has a separate harness. This is generally made of sealskin. One part is lifted over the dog’s head: two other pieces go over the chest and under the forelegs, and are joined at the back of the dog. At the point of junction is attached the peto, which is a very strong line or trace, fastened to the sledge. The traces are not all the same length, but they are tied so that the leading dog is well in advance of the one coming after.

(Lewis 1908, p. 58)

Each dog has its own harness, as described by Rasmussen; among the Netsilik it is fitted with a harness when it is very young:

From being quite small, before it can walk, it ought to have harness on, and one must pretend that it is pulling and putting its weight into the harness: qimuktuη· ərniArmät, they say, in order that it may be a good puller.

(Rasmussen 1931, p. 149)

Boas mentions pups also, “Generally the pups are put into a small harness and are allowed to crawl about the side of the bed, where they are tied to the wall by a trace” (Boas 1964, p. 157).

The harness is tied to the sledge with an ipEq described as a “band, trace, line, with which something is tied” (Rasmussen 1931, p. 455). Boas studied the implements from Ponds Bay and Southampton Island made of bone and ivory used for the traces including descriptions with illustrations of swivels and eyes for dog traces (Boas et al. 1907).

The harness carries a profound meaning in the description of Henry’s interment. In the words of closing farewell recorded by Charles Choque, referring to Henry with his Inuit-given name:

Tiny flakes of snow fall slowly; a last prayer and the coffin disappears. His dogs now forever unharnessed, Kajualuk has undertaken alone his final journey, a journey of no return to the gigantic igloo of happiness eternal, where he will contemplate his God, his redeemer.

(Choque 1985, p. 279)

This functions as a fitting rite of committal, set against the interment language one would expect for a Catholic priest, in which finality is expressed through the body’s return to dust or petitions for resurrection and eternal rest. The unharnessing of dogs displaces this ritual language, instead drawing on Inuit understandings of life as sustained through shared travel, while marking death as the singular moment of separation from dog companions. Even in death, dogs remain central to meaning, serving as the relational measure against which final solitude is understood.

This draws attention to a burial described by Boas:

The body must be carried to the place of burial … dogs are never allowed to drag the sledge on such an occasion, and sledges are rarely used as the sledge must be left with the deceased, never to be used again. On the fourth day after death the relatives may go for the first time upon the ice, but the men are not allowed to hunt; on the next day they must go sealing, but without dogs and sledge, walking to the hunting ground and dragging the seal home. On the sixth day they are at liberty to use their dogs again.

(Boas 1964, pp. 205–6)

The sled dog’s commitment to pulling the sledge with every reserve of strength and endurance is remarkable. Freuchen estimates that a sled pulled by ten dogs can pull “800 pounds or more under good conditions” (Freuchen 1961). Even when extra rest is required along the journey, their persistent drive to continue remains striking. Their dedication drew deep admiration from Henry, remembered for speaking directly to his dogs, “yours is a noble task” (Choque 1985, p. 169). Read through Henry’s Christian perspective, the phrase resonates with the New Testament description of an overseer whose calling is understood as a noble task of pastoral care (1 Tim. 3:1). In this respect, Henry’s reliance on his dogs reflects a functional and relational attachment consistent with Inuit understandings of dogs as companions in human labour and travel, a recognition reinforced by the fact that his own missionary work across the Arctic would not have been possible without reliance on dog teams, though he interprets this relationship through the lens of his own Christian worldview rather than within Inuit spiritual cosmology.

Notably absent from Henry’s ministry is interference with shamanic practice. This absence is explained not by ignorance or rejection of Inuit spirituality, his reputation among the Inuit as “one of the few missionaries, or white man of any calling, who had the sensibility to stay out of the shaman’s way” (Choque 1985, p. 219). Such restraint is unusual given the broader missionary rejection of shamanism and suggests a deliberate boundary keeping that allowed Inuit spiritual authorities to retain their roles. Arguably this separation would also have distanced Henry from Inuit associations of dogs as spirit-helpers documented by Rasmussen and Boas. While pastoral care is a spiritual ministry, and Henry saw dogs as co-workers with him, he did not associate dogs as spirit-helpers in the same way as Inuit shamanic traditions.

Spirit beings capable of obsession are described in Rasmussen on an occasion when evil spirits haunted a village, in which case “the shamans were requested to drive the evil spirits away” (Rasmussen 1929, p. 144). After singing and with the aid of helping spirits, the shamans declared their success in driving the evil spirit away.

In another case, during a stay on Southampton Island, Rasmussen described an escalated incident where a shaman named Saraq was required to battle against an evil spirit. After defeating the evil spirit, a harness is put on the shaman and he is dragged by the trace. For a time the shaman “behaves like a madman… lashing out at every side” (Rasmussen 1929, p. 147). When the harness is taken off, he returns to his normal state (Rasmussen 1929, p. 148).

In the varied stories of Sedna, the sea woman, the figure of a dog and harness is prominent. In the internal chronology of these narratives, the dog appears prior to the creation of sea beings, a sequence that reflects the prominence of the human-dog relationship within Inuit understandings of the world. Two versions are recounted by Peck. In a chapter dedicated to religion,7 Peck recounts the belief in Sedna’s special dominion over the sea and the weather, and that the creation of sea animals is attributed to her. Sedna clings to her father’s boat but her father cuts off her fingers, which become sea creatures, such as seals and whales.8 In revenge, Sedna sets a pack of hungry dogs upon him (Lewis 1908, pp. 36–38). In another rendition, after Sedna sank into the water, the father camps on the shore, tied to Sedna’s dog harness (Peck 2006, pp. 362–63). Freuchen provides an account in which the woman sends young dogs to overturn her father’s kayak, causing his drowning as an act of revenge for being forced to marry a dog (Freuchen 1961).

These accounts indicate that sled dogs function as indispensable co-travelers whose significance extends from physical survival to spiritual meaning. Collectively ethnographic accounts by Rasmussen, Boas, Peck, Freuchen, and Henry document Inuit technologies of harnessing, traces, and early training as practical systems that cultivate strength, endurance, and responsiveness essential to Arctic travel, embedding dogs within daily labor, mobility, and subsistence. Harnesses mark thresholds between life and death in burial rites and appear in the Sedna narrative, where the father is bound to the dog’s harness prior to the creation of sea beings, while dogs also feature in shamanic performances and spirit confrontations. Together, these accounts position dogs as sustaining endurance, protection, and meaning across physical and cosmological realms.

• Verse 2
• From the darkness of the morning
• until the darkness end of day
• My destiny to serve you master
• 10,000 years of blood in my veins

The circumpolar region experiences extremes of light and darkness. From the late spring through the summer months, the sun does not set. During this time, the Arctic is known as the land of the midnight sun. In direct contrast, the sun does not rise during the winter months. This phenomenon is known in the Arctic as the polar night.

Peck refers to the darkness and lack of sunlight, using the physical realm as an illustration of spiritual darkness:

The long dreary winter, the darkness that over-shadows an Arctic station, and the complete isolation in which it is cut off, might almost be taken as symbolic of the degradation of life of the inhabitants, of the spiritual darkness of the kingdom of Satan, and the power of sin to separate from the joys of the Sun of Righteousness.

(Lewis 1908, p. 218)

Peck writes, “No sun today. We do miss his genial rays. But Jesus, the Sun of Righteousness, does not leave us without His soul-reviving presence” (Lewis 1908, p. 220). And also, “Even though the nights were long, yet Arctic darkness had its special hope… when the people who sit in darkness and the shadow of death shall see a great light” (Lewis 1908, p. 227).

Henry was acutely aware of winter darkness, but he did not use the darkness to illustrate spiritual light and darkness, “At this time of year, polar nights last twenty-four hours, the sun disappears completely” (Choque 1985, p. 81).

Arrive polar nights, arrive rigors of winter! For months on end, not a sound will disturb the profound, white silence, save the howling of the dogs, the mournful cawing of sedentary ravens, and the ever stronger beat of the drum, accompanying primitive dances.

(Choque 1985, p. 96)

In Netsilik words for Names of the Moons, Rasmussen lists the term kapisrAq, defined as “the dark time” (Rasmussen 1931, p. 464). In accounts of the Netsilik, Rasmussen describes the polar nights in various ways: “the dark period” (Rasmussen 1931, p. 167), “the dark, cold period” (Rasmussen 1931, p. 352), and that, “in North Greenland, that the approaching darkness and long stormy nights affected the nerves and minds of the Eskimos” who were fearful of “visits by spirits” (Rasmussen 1931, p. 81).

In The People of the Polar North, Rasmussen dedicates an entire chapter to the polar night, referring to it frequently and with a variety of expressions: “the Dark season” (Rasmussen 1908, pp. 29, 34, 67, 89), “the great Darkness” (Rasmussen 1908, p. 33), “the great Dark” (Rasmussen 1908, p. 79), “the long Dark of winter” (Rasmussen 1908, p. 117), and “the Dark draws near” (Rasmussen 1908, p. 77). In one account recorded by Rasmussen a woman named Arnaluk utters a grave warning:

“That—out there over the sea. It is the Dark coming up, the great Dark”.

(Rasmussen 1908, p. 79)

And the men respond, “Ha! Now the dark nights are coming, soon the ice will close in the sea”.

(Rasmussen 1908, p. 80)

Within this environmental context of darkness and extreme cold, where dogs are able to travel and operate when humans alone could not, Inuit narrative traditions recount the origins of the human–dog relationship. In Inuit origin stories under the title ‘The Creation,” dogs are represented as the first animal to appear in relation to humans.

Then there is a story of a man and a woman; but how can it be? It is a riddle—when did they find each other, when did they grow up? I do not know. But the woman made babies’ clothes and wandered about. She found the babies, dressed them, and brought them home. That is how there came to be so many people.

When there were so many of them, they wanted dogs. And a man went out with dog’s harness in his hand, and began to stamp on the ground, calling “Hoc, hoc, hoc!” Then the dogs sprang out of little tiny mounds. And they shook themselves well, for they were covered with sand. That is how men got dogs.

(Rasmussen 1908, pp. 100–1)

Researching the emergence of arctic-adapted sled dogs, Mikkel-Holger Sinding et al. determined genetic continuity in Arctic dog breeds can be dated to “at least the past ~9500 years” (Sinding et al. 2020, p. 1495). Vitale et al. arrive at a similar number, “For at least 9000 years dogs have been pulling sleds across the Arctic, facilitating subsistence strategies and migrations” (Vitale et al. 2023, p. 1). As a dog bred for survival in the arctic, they can work in extreme cold. Rasmussen references the temperature during the winter, ranging “somewhere between minus 40° and minus 60 °C” (Rasmussen 1927, p. 193). Describing a hunter remaining motionless at a seal breathing hole:

Hour after hour goes by, and I realize what a fund of patience and hardiness is required when this hunting has to be pursued in a storm and in a temperature of about −50 ° Celsius.

(Rasmussen 1931, p. 158)

Yet the dogs are relied on for traveling in the extreme weather.

Across the loam plains we met a fresh north wind, and severe cold, which drove the frost in our faces. The going was bad; a hard crust had settled on the snow, and the dogs’ feet were suffering. The wind struck cold against our bodies, and it was difficult to keep our faces towards the dogs, for our skin was fast stiffening into ice.

(Rasmussen 1908, p. 246)

The circumpolar Arctic is defined by extreme cycles of light and darkness, from the midnight sun to the prolonged polar night, conditions that shape travel, survival, and spiritual understanding. Henry records winter darkness as a lived environmental reality, while Inuit accounts documented by Rasmussen present darkness as a named cosmological force associated with spirits and psychological strain. In Inuit origin narratives, dogs emerge at the outset of creation in relation to humans, a relationship confirmed by modern science to have been sustained across nearly 10,000 years of Arctic life. Through loyal protection, communication, and endurance, sled dogs enable mobility, safety, and subsistence in extreme cold, mediating human vulnerability and linking physical survival with spiritual kinship and resilience.

• Chorus
• Oh-Oh-Oh-Oh, how will you travel without me?
• Oh-Oh-Oh-Oh, how will you travel without me?

In “Epic tales” Rasmussen narrates an account of Atungait who set out to travel the world.

It is said that Atungait determined to travel round the world, and therefore set about carefully breeding dogs. They would have to be strong and of great endurance.

(Rasmussen 1929, p. 285)

The story of Atungait, told by Ivaluardjuk, centres on travel as an undertaking made possible only with dogs. Before setting out to travel around the world, Atungait carefully breeds and tests his dogs for strength and endurance. Throughout the journey, Atungait’s survival repeatedly depends on his team, whether outrunning pursuers or crossing ice. When he came to a glacier, Ivaluardjuk emphasizes the life-saving role of the dogs:

He travelled on again, night and day in one, and came to a glacier. There was no other way to go, so he drove up into the ice. It was steep and smooth, and at all the places where there was a sheer descent, it was only his dogs that saved him from being dashed down, for they had long, sharp claws and did not slip on the smooth ice.

(Rasmussen 1929, p. 286)

Boas considers travel in the context of the geographical conditions in spring, including regional variations and the different ice surfaces.

The different mode of hunting in the spring causes a different distribution of the settlements. During this season those regions which had been deserted during the winter are most visited by the hunters. On light dog sledges they travel over the rough ice and along the shores of the fjords and islands. The natives who lived in large settlements during the winter are spread over the whole country, in order that everyone may have a better chance of traveling over his own hunting ground.

(Boas 1964, p. 53)

In the daily challenge for survival, and far north of the amenities of city living, Rasmussen writes, “I felt a warming wave of joy rush through my body, the joy which those who live on their travels feel most keenly: excitement at the rich possibilities of life!” (Rasmussen 1908, p. 79).

Writing of Sorqaq, Rasmussen assumes a formal style, reminiscent of the King James Bible.

Happy Sorqaq! Thou wast born with an energy that will never let thee rest. Thou must live traveling because thou canst not stand always and every day to return to the same pen. The domestic animal nature has never formed part of thy composition. The world is large, that men may take it in possession. And so, when the travelling fever comes over thee, then do fling thyself on thy sledge, lord of the day, master of thy dogs!

(Rasmussen 1908, pp. 42–43)

In “Inuit, Igloos and Dogs,” Franz Boas presents sled dogs as indispensable to Inuit life and Arctic travel. Dogs are essential for mobility, described as “the only mode of travel” (Boas 1988, p. 211), determining whether journeys can proceed at all. Boas records his own reliance on Inuit dog teams, noting his lack of skill in driving dogs (Boas 1988, p. 181), and describing the labour involved as “unbelievably strenuous” (Boas 1988, p. 208). He also refers to the practice of lending dogs within Inuit communities, initially as a recipient and later as a participant able to reciprocate when he had dogs to spare. On several occasions, Boas purchased dogs, recognizing that his research could not be completed in full, in large part due to shortages of available teams (Boas 1988, p. 208).

Henry shares the same view; it was abundantly clear to him that he could not fulfil his mission work without his dog team. Visual documentation reinforces this relational stance, with a photograph identifying Henry with a dog as his “inseparable companion” (Choque 1985, p. 179). In this sense, Henry appears to have embraced dogs as helpers in his spiritual ministry, not as spirit beings, but as co-workers in travel, protection, and survival.

Communication between the driver and dogs receives only incidental attention in Rasmussen’s accounts, where he occasionally refers to commands shouted to set the sled in motion at the outset of a journey. Boas, by contrast, offers a more concentrated observation, particularly in situations where dogs haul heavy loads and require continual verbal engagement. Beyond commands for starting and stopping, as well as turning left or right, often specific to individual drivers, Boas notes a broader vocabulary that dogs learn to recognize, including words for seal, snow house, and returning home.

The act of commanding observed in communication between driver and dogs finds a parallel in shamanic practices. Rasmussen, perhaps drawing on a Christian referential framework, contrasts prayer with command.

For the magicians, who are the leaders of the people, can, by their arts and skill, make the powers who are masters of life and death subject to them, not by prayer but by command; the supernatural thus becomes the magician’s tool and man is to a certain extent master of his destiny.

(Rasmussen 1908, p. 126)

Rasmussen describes magic words “addressed either to spirits of the air or to the souls of departed humans or animals” (Rasmussen 1931, p. 278). This offers a glimpse into the Inuit worldview represented in People of the Polar North, in which both humans and animals are understood to possess a soul (atiq). In such a metaphysical context, language is not merely descriptive but efficacious, functioning as a means of acting upon physical and spiritual worlds alike. Thus, magic words serve as an incantation for physical healing, to control weather, or call animals to give themselves to a hunter. There are also specific words associated with dogs. In one utterance magic words are spoken over dogs that are being trained “as strong and enduring bear-hounds” (Rasmussen 1931, p. 283).

In the absence of a shaman, agency is further displaced onto dogs, who are believed to communicate magical words for human benefit. Rasmussen narrates a magic song that includes a dog’s words with efficacy in the spirit realm, used as a spell to heal the sick. As told by Nakasuk,

The last lines are special dog words that cannot be turned into comprehensible human speech, but they are of powerful effect, driving out evil spirits, when uttered by a sick person.

(Rasmussen 1931, p. 282)

Within ethnographic accounts and Inuit narrative sources, mobility consistently emerges as inseparable from dependence on dogs, revealing how travel itself was structured through Inuit–Qimmiit relationality. In stories such as Atungait’s journey, travel is possible only through dogs bred for strength and endurance. Boas, Rasmussen, and Henry similarly document travel as seasonally demanding and inseparable from dog teams, emphasizing communication, command recognition, and task coordination, while Henry further frames this work in spiritual terms. As physical endurance is secured through dogs, spiritual endurance is pursued through incantation, rather than prayer. In Rasmussen’s recounting of magic words, it appears that, for the Netsilik at least, both humans and dogs at times possessed the capacity to communicate efficacious words or sounds.

• Verse 3
• I can feel the trail and I know the distance
• I’ve been your eyes in every storm
• Through the blinding wind you could put your head down
• trusting me to find the way home

“With my poor dog on the ice, it simply leads me” (Rasmussen 1931, p. 335).

In the story of Atungait above, Ivaluardjuk describes the dangerous travel across glaciers and waters, and that “Once or twice, when they came to places which he thought they would never manage to pass, he [Atungait] closed his eyes” (Rasmussen 1931, p. 285).

Dogs are trusted to navigate in storms. Boas, describes a trip that he reluctantly made on his own, making use of his compass to steer the sledge, during which he encountered severe weather. The visibility was so poor that he “could hardly see the dogs ahead of the sledge” (Boas 1988, p. 209).

Rasmussen describes crossing a very narrow bridge of ice, when the snow was “thrown up so furiously by our sledges that we could hardly see the dogs” (Rasmussen 1908, p. 84). Seeking to reach a cave as shelter about four miles away, they carried on, managing to reach the shelter “despite the dark and the blinding snow” (Rasmussen 1908, p. 84). Rasmussen refers to a 250-km stretch when “the sledge ran of itself” (Rasmussen 1908, p. 468).

Rasmussen includes a narrative about the dog breeder Sorqaq:

Sorqaq was a passionate lover of dogs, and a very clever breeder. He had a special predilection for black animals. He had devoted great care to the breeding of them and had managed to produce a very excellent hunting strain. When Sorqaq was in the vicinity of bears, no sledge could keep pace with his.

(Rasmussen 1908, pp. 39–40)

Evidence of the excellent hunting strain is compelling, for as they run, the dogs locate breathing holes, tracking scents into the wind incessantly. Left up to the hunters Rasmussen admits, “Finding a breathing hole without the aid of a dog is a matter of pure chance” (Rasmussen 1908, p. 157). The hunting capacity of the dogs to know the trail and guide the hunters is noted by Rasmussen:

We drove on new ice, our sledge being shod with walrus tusks, the best running for that purpose. A slap against the leg of our boots—a sound which starts well-trained dogs at a wild gallop—and off we rushed over the ice, and had soon overtaken the view at which we had been gazing. Now and again the team scented seal or walrus, through breathing-holes, and then we nodded and laughed at each other, and seized fast hold of the thongs of the sledge. For hunting dogs do not spare their strength when they smell the prey, and they hunger and thirst for warm blood.

(Rasmussen 1908, p. 84)

In a section dedicated to the description of the dog as faithful and indispensable, Rasmussen remarks on the hunting ability of the dogs to detect breathing holes:

If he has a dog, a hungry one for preference, it will lead him over the ice with distended nostrils in order to get the scent of something eatable, and it is from wonderfully long distances that it will suddenly prick its ears, lift its tail and rush away, not stopping until with unfailing certainty and without wavering a moment it has taken its master to a breathing hole.

(Rasmussen 1908, p. 148)

Both Peck and Boas describe similar experiences observing sled dogs in pursuit of a breathing hole:

The Eskimo set out on light sledges dragged by a few dogs, which quickly take up the scent of the seals. The dogs hurry at the utmost speed to the place of the hole, where they stop at once.

(Boas 1964, p. 74)

After reaching the actual hunting ground, the dogs were continually driven in a windward direction. If they scented a seal-hole, they raced away for it at full speed, for they know as well as their owners sometimes even better how to find the game.

(Lewis 1908, p. 253)

Henry, recording the hunter who dispenses with the obligation of Sunday rest, records the hunter’s reliance on the dogs to forge the trail when the dogs have picked up the scent of caribou or a polar bear (Choque 1985, p. 113).

Rasmussen recalls the story of hunters who had relaxed during a spring hunt:

They were sitting half asleep on their sledges, languid from the April sunshine, and torpid after heavy eating. Then the one in front was roused suddenly from his slumbers by his dogs jerking violently at the traces and setting off at full speed.

(Rasmussen 1908, pp. 11–12)

In the spiritual realm, dogs are believed to serve the supernatural sight of shamans, where distances extend far beyond the physical world into the spirit world. This is the realm of spirit travel believed to be accessed by shamans. Rasmussen describes “spirit flights” undergone by shamans, during which the shaman can see into remote realms:

Nothing is hidden from him any longer: not only can he see things far, far away, but he can also discover souls, stolen souls, which are either kept concealed in far, strange lands or have been taken up or down to the Land of the Dead.9

(Rasmussen 1929, p. 113)

But in his spirit flight, the shaman is considered incapable of maintaining the faculties of abolishing all distance and seeing all things without the support of helping spirits. While “bears in human form are the shamans’ best helpers” (Rasmussen 1929, p. 112), and lemmings have a unique understanding of disease and causes of death, dogs are “reckoned as powerful and effective helpers,” (Rasmussen 1929, p. 112), along with fox, owl, bear, and shark.

In some narratives associated with the spirit world, a dog is described as capable of taking human form. Recounting the story of Takánâluk arnâluk, more commonly referred to as Sedna, Rasmussen describes the father who forced his daughter to marry a dog.

There was once a little girl who would not have a husband. No one was good enough. At last her father grew angry and said: “Then may she have my dog!” And then one evening, when they were going to rest, a strange man came in. No one knew who he was. He had the fangs of a dog hanging down on either side of his chest as an amulet. This man lay down beside the girl and took her to wife. It was the father’s dog in human form, and thus the threat was carried out.

(Rasmussen 1929, p. 63)

Rasmussen relates from old legends that amulets were believed to give humans the power to transform themselves into animals (Rasmussen 1908, p. 138). The myth of Sedna, represented as an origin story, demonstrates the belief in physical transformation between humans and animals, in this case, a dog. In People of the Polar North, Rasmussen describes various animals who are represented in amulets, including dogs, typically a piece of bone.

In a discussion of religious ideas, Boas describes the common practice of wearing amulets (Boas 1964, p. 184). Generally worn for protection, amulets are worn by both men and women, in some cases from childhood: “The power of an amulet was magically attached to the person who had worn it since he was a child” (Rasmussen 1931, p. 41). And herein lies a strong relational connection with dogs, for as puppies they were fitted with an amulet.

Dogs, too, have amulets. If a man wishes to have strong and fleet dogs, he hangs round the necks of his puppies a small stone that has fallen from a bird rock. This stone has been both fleet and strong in its flight, and the same qualities will be conferred on the dogs by the amulet.

(Rasmussen 1908, p. 139)

The wearing of amulets for both puppies and children may signify another strong bond between dogs and humans, the name-soul.

In People of the Polar North, Rasmussen introduces metaphysical beliefs that include the continuity of the name-soul.

The Eskimos regarded the name as a kind of soul, with which was associated a certain amount of vitality and dexterity. The man who was named after one deceased, inherited the qualities of his name; and it was said that the dead man had no peace, and that his soul could not pass to the land of the departed, before his name had been given again.

(Rasmussen 1908, p. 116)

Rasmussen describes the soul in “Religion and views of life” of the Netsilik. Whereas animals such as the bear and raven have a soul as a manifestation of life, the dog is unique in having a name-soul.

The name, too, is a kind of soul that unites man with a certain power, but a soul is only known in connection with man and man’s domestic animal, the dog. The name soul assists in maintaining life and also gives its bearer a particular power of resistance.

(Rasmussen 1931, p. 214)

Dogs are named either after dead dogs or after living people. And they should have many names, for they have a name-soul just as people have, and many names therefore shield them from sickness.

(Rasmussen 1931, p. 150)

Amulets worn by both humans and dogs underscore continuity in life and being. Notably, dogs occupy a distinctive position among animals in that they, like humans, may wear amulets and possess a name-soul. The name-soul and the amulet function together as modes of resistance, with the name-soul sustaining life and the amulet serving to protect life.

Recording “Tales of Angakut,” Boas includes a legend set south of Tununirn (Baffin Island) in which an old woman and her granddaughter live in extreme hunger. When the girl is sent to beg for food from a neighboring house, she is scolded and turned away. In response to the refusal, the old woman causes the occupants of the other house to fall into a sleep from which they never awaken. The site is thereafter associated with lingering souls and the sounds of dogs that continue to be heard in the region.

When travellers pass this region nowadays, they can hear the souls of these people driving their dogs, and the howling of the dogs may also be heard.

(Boas et al. 1907, p. 550)

The story offers a glimpse into a worldview in which humans and dogs, bound by kinship, continue in relation beyond death. An afterlife image of sled travel is conveyed through the sounds of human souls guiding their dogs.

Inuit narratives as recorded in ethnographic accounts consistently present sled dogs as essential across both physical and metaphysical realms. Physically, dogs enable survival and movement through storms, darkness, unstable ice, and hunting grounds, guiding sledges, locating breathing holes, and sustaining travel when human perception fails. Metaphysically, dogs occupy significant spiritual roles as helpers in shamanic spirit travel and as figures in origin narratives involving transformation between human and animal forms. The parallel practices of fitting both children and puppies with amulets and naming them through the name-soul align dogs closely with humans in life and spiritual being, identifying dogs’ continuity beyond physical function or utility. Even after death, the narrative described by Boas evokes an afterlife image of sled travel, with human souls heard guiding their dogs, affirming enduring kinship that transcends physical mortality.

• Verse 4
• I have been bred to face the biting cold of winter
• so many miles across the snowpack I have run
• I stood on guard against the dangers in the shadows
• but I have fallen now against the gun

The dangers encountered in the Arctic, particularly during the winter months, are near-constant and formative of everyday life. Travel unfolds amid blizzards and extreme cold, where freezing to death is a continual risk. Journeys over ice bridges and cracking sea ice expose both dogs and drivers to persistent risks of serious injury and drowning. Hunger and starvation recur during prolonged winters when hunting is unsuccessful, while encounters with polar bears and wolves pose immediate danger to both humans and dogs. Extended darkness, isolation, and exposure exert cumulative physical and psychological strain.

These physical dangers are inseparable from spiritual peril. Inuit accounts describe a world inhabited by powerful spirit beings whose displeasure may manifest as storms, illness, failed hunts, or madness. Souls of the dead and of animals improperly treated may retaliate, while evil spirits can intrude upon camps and threaten the lives of individuals. Maintaining balance amid these forces requires vigilance, ritual care, and reliance on dogs, who help mediate both material survival and cosmological order.

The dangers of life in the Arctic shape Inuit worldviews and traditions. Under the chapter Religion and Views of Life, Rasmussen uses the subtitle “We do not believe, we fear” (Rasmussen 1929, p. 54). Life in the subsistence conditions of the Arctic permits little indulgence in abstract metaphysical reflection or apologetic reasoning. Through his exchanges with the shaman Aua, he learns that fear is ever-present:

We fear the weather spirit of earth, that we must fight against to wrest our food from land and sea. We fear Sila.10

We fear dearth and hunger in the cold snow huts.

We fear Takánakapsâluk, the great woman down at the bottom of the sea, that rules over all the beasts of the sea.

We fear the sickness that we meet with daily all around us; not death, but the suffering.

We fear the evil spirits of life, those of the air, of the sea and the earth, that can help wicked shamans to harm their fellow men.

We fear the souls of dead human beings and of the animals we have killed.

The greatest peril of life lies in the fact that human food consists entirely of souls. All the creatures that we have to kill and eat, all those that we have to strike down and destroy to make clothes for ourselves, have souls, like we have, souls that do not perish with the body, and which must therefore be propitiated lest they should revenge themselves on us for taking away their bodies.

(Rasmussen 1929, p. 56)

Inuit customs, Aua teaches him, “come from life and turn toward life” (Rasmussen 1929, p. 56). If this is Inuit religion, or more appropriately an accumulated form of knowledge grounded in relational practice, it is not organized around belief in the doctrinal or propositional sense, nor around abstract explanations of causality. Instead, it is grounded in an existential orientation shaped by vulnerability, uncertainty, and lived experience in an Arctic environment where survival is never assured. What governs life is fear understood not as panic, but as an attentive, ethical awareness of forces human and nonhuman that can harm or sustain life. Fear, in this account, is relational and cosmological. The subtitle thus signals Rasmussen’s recognition that Inuit religion is not about belief statements but about maintaining balance in a world where all food has a soul and all life is bound by reciprocal obligation.

Rasmussen recounts a report told by Qâvigarssuaq, that he and his companion during travel through King William’s Land and along the south coast of Queen Maud Gulf, had encountered several groups of Kitlinermiut whose reception ranged from friendly to openly hostile. In some instances, only women were initially visible, while men lay concealed behind stones and snowdrifts in ambush, prepared to attack. Feeling unsafe, Qâvigarssuaq relied on the dogs to protect them during the darkness of the night.

In order not to be taken by surprise they used to tie their dogs up in a wide circle round about the tent, so that they would always be certain of being awakened, no matter from what direction anyone might come.

(Rasmussen 1931, p. 76)

The dogs thus served as an early warning system during the night, guarding against a surprise attack.

In The People of the Polar North, Rasmussen recounts an encounter with the spirit world where dogs provide warning to hunters. Following the murder of her son, an old woman prepares herself for death so that she may return as a revenant and seek vengeance against the murderer. When fog later descends on the ice the sound of the murderer shrieking, being torn to pieces, is heard by others in the hunting party. The spirit being, referred to as a monster, is detected by the dogs, their alertness in strange silence signalling an evil spirit. This gives the hunters opportunity to prepare for the imminent danger. The dogs are released and they surround the being, enabling the men to destroy it before it kills others. Dogs thus function as beings of discernment within a cosmological order, possessing the capacity to detect when the spirit realm intervenes in the physical world and to restore balance. (Rasmussen 1908, pp. 128–30).

In the worldview articulated by the shaman Aua, summarized as “we do not believe, we fear” (Rasmussen 1929, p. 56),11 fear denotes a disciplined attentiveness oriented toward maintaining balance between physical and spirit worlds rather than adherence to doctrinal belief. Arctic winters are shaped by near-constant dangers that place both humans and dogs at continual risk. These physical dangers are at times inseparable from threats arising in the spirit realm, including the violence of avenging beings. Within this cosmological order, dogs mediate survival through mobility and protection, serving as early warning guardians capable of discerning moments when the spirit world intrudes into physical life.

• Verse 5
• Put down the vicious one that lunges at your children
• cut the harness of the one you cannot save
• But who would shoot us by the hundreds by the thousands?
• Did they bring you to your knees when they sent us to our graves?

Following the Qikiqtani Truth Commission. the Canadian government has issued two apologies for policies, actions, and inactions of the Government of Canada related to the killing of sled dogs. The 2019 apology (Government of Canada 2019), addresses the Qikiqtani region in Nunavut and treats the killing of qimmiit as one element within a broader set of colonial policies, without detailing how dogs were killed or what happened to their bodies. Issues of graves, remains, or disposal is absent. The 2024 apology (Government of Canada 2024) is specific to Nunavik in northern Quebec and includes explicit, community-derived testimony describing how dogs were shot, burned, and left unburied on the land.

Elders described dogs being shot in front of their owners, burned in piles on the ice, or left where their remains remained visible for months, compounding grief and trauma. Inuit leaders emphasized that this violence severed mobility, forced settlement life, and imposed reliance on costly southern technologies.

(Government of Canada 2024)

The killings and the manner in which the dogs’ bodies were exposed underscore the structural violence imposed upon Inuit society and demonstrate a profound disregard for the depth of communal loss. While Inuit burial practices concerning the human dead were marked by care, memory, and relational continuity, sled dogs were not ordinarily buried according to the same mortuary customs. Nevertheless, the public killing of the dogs and the prolonged exposure of their bodies constituted a rupture in relational norms, particularly when contrasted with the care devoted to human graves.

The Eskimos of old time devoted great labour to the making of their graves. Huge blocks of granite had been collected and piled up in cairns on the top of a little height, just facing the sea. Their surroundings imparted a desolate and lugubrious appearance to them, and it was a unique and peculiarly sinister and deserted atmosphere which seemed in the twilight to brood over these great, cold blocks of granite, covering the mouldering remains.

(Rasmussen 1908, p. 228)

Boas provides details of the great respect for graves that he witnessed in Cumberland Sound.

The tomb is always vaulted, as any stone or piece of snow resting upon the body is believed to be a. burden to the soul of the deceased. The man’s hunting implements and other utensils are placed by the side of his grave; the pots, the lamps, knives, &c., by the side of that of the woman; toys, by that of a child. …. These objects are held in great respect and are never removed, at least as long as it is known to whose grave they belong.

(Boas 1964, p. 205)

Rasmussen attests to the disturbance of graves, recounting a scolding he received from Qisunguaq after he had taken a few small items from an old grave (even though he had left gifts of exchange at the grave).

You are so strange, you white men! You collect things you will never require, and you cannot leave even the graves alone. All this calamity is the revenge of the dead. Perhaps we shall die of hunger. Just because you took those stupid things! … The thoughts of the dead are not as our thoughts; the dead are incomprehensible in their doings!

(Rasmussen 1908, p. 72)

Among the Inughuit described in People of the Polar North, Rasmussen recounts that some graves included the remains of dogs, most notably the practice of burying dogs with a deceased man suggesting an expression of companionship extending beyond death.

When a person dies, the body must be buried as quickly as possible… If the deceased is a man, his team of dogs is slain and the dead dogs are harnessed to his sledge, which is placed by the grave.12 (If, however, the dead person is a female, only one dog is killed.) This is done, that he may not be alone in his death.

(Rasmussen 1908, p. 113)

The song lyric “they sent us to our graves,” read in light of Inuit understandings of qimmiit, evokes the public killing of dogs in plain sight as a form of violence that Inuit neither understood nor would have enacted themselves, underscoring a profound rupture in relational norms and moral understanding. The killings convey severance, marking the disruption of relationships of travel and companionship that extended beyond physical life, signifying the finality of government-imposed death.

Yes, death follows men about, dogs men’s footsteps, and is never farther away from life than his shadow from a man!

(Rasmussen 1908, p. 49)

In the harsh living conditions of the Arctic, as might be expected, narratives of death are abundant in the writings of Rasmussen. Causes of death of men are most often natural causes, although cases of murder, suicide, and infanticide occur. The deaths of dogs are most often caused by disease, although weak dogs transpire in the extreme conditions, with one dog dying in the traces (Lewis 1908, p. 329). And in the most dire of circumstances where starvation of humans is otherwise certain, dogs will be eaten as a food source for humans to survive (Rasmussen 1908, pp. 34–35), that “the killing of dogs was the last step to prevent starvation” (Laugrand et al. 1999). This comports with observations by Freuchen and Kaj Birket-Smith who reported that Inuit of the Hudson Bay were opposed to killing dogs, even in the case of rabies, and that the Caribou Inuit had an aversion to killing dogs (Laugrand and Oosten 2002).

In a section on Polar Justice, Peter Freuchen recounts a story told to him by Semigaq concerning Kayuk, a man known for greed and deceit whose actions offended community norms. Kayuk flattered hunters whose dogs had just given birth, lifted newborn puppies as if admiring them, then deliberately dropped them onto the rocks so they died, allowing him to take them away and eat them in secret. Although many suspected him, no one openly accused him. Knowing Kayuk often stole from meat racks, one hunter placed the liver of an old dog there, anticipating he would take it. After eating it, Kayuk became gravely ill, his skin peeling as he suffered. He survived initially but drowned the following year, a fate “considered to be punishment from Silarssuaq, the great spirit of justice” (Freuchen 1961).

Otherwise, the eating of dogs is taboo: “no man may eat dog flesh, and their skins must never be used for clothing or sleeping rugs; a sick dog must never be killed, it must die itself” (Rasmussen 1931, p. 150). Rasmussen documents a ritual context in which sled dogs were killed to accompany a deceased person into the afterlife, described above, and another instance in Peck, where a sick man shoots his dog as a means for healing, and Peck interprets the act as propitiation similar to the killing of an animal for atonement in Judaism (Lewis 1908, pp. 43–44); outside of these limited practices, the intentional killing of dogs is not described in the ethnographic sources.

There is a story that serves as a moral warning against breaking taboos and, at least inadvertently, killing dogs. Rasmussen recounts the myth of “The Very Obstinate Man” who kills Moon Man’s dog (Rasmussen 1921, pp. 56–59). The Moon Spirit, Aningâp (or Tarqip inua) is “one of the great regulating powers” and “the moral guardian of mankind” (Rasmussen 1929, pp. 73–34), who provides guidance rather than punishment.

In the story an extremely obstinate man forces his wife, who is in mourning for their dead child, to sew his kayak skin in violation of taboo.13 While she works, a monstrous dog emerges from the sea14 to confront the violation of the taboo. The man, steadfast in his obstinacy, attacks and kills the dog. Only then does the dog’s owner, the Moon Man, appear. The Moon Man does not initiate violence but is attacked by the man, who tries to strangle the Moon Man, despite repeated warnings that the death of the Moon Man would end the ebb and flow of the tide and the breeding of seals. The man relents from violence only when learning that the death of the Moon Man would end the daylight. The Moon Man restores his dog to life and ascends into the sky with his dog team. The obstinate man attempts to follow, but at his first attempt, his dogs fall to the earth. After cleansing his dogs in the sea, he is able to ascend in the sky and reach the moon. After his return, he abandons his obstinance and no longer forces his wife to break mourning taboos.

As depicted in the narrative, the dog is not an expendable animal but a guardian of taboo, a being whose presence enforces balance between human action, social obligation, and cosmic continuity. The obstinate man’s killing of the dog is portrayed as an act of moral blindness driven by refusal to heed relational limits. Only after catastrophic consequences are made explicit does he relinquish his violence. The Moon Man’s dog team, ascension, and restoration of the slain dog affirm that dogs exist within a cosmological hierarchy linking human conduct to environmental stability.

This story offers a moral and cosmological framework that helps explain why the large scale killing of sled dogs in Canada was experienced by Inuit not merely as material loss, but as a profound violation of moral order. Read alongside the historical dog killings, the story can be interpreted as an allegory of the government sanctioned destruction of sled dogs as colonial violence, enacted through a willful stranglehold on qimutsiit and marked by ruthless obstinacy toward Inuit–Qimmiit wellbeing. The consequences impacted the ebb and flow of life, the seal hunt, and ushered in darkness. The resulting trauma lies not only in loss of qimmiit as travel companions, but in the breaking of a shared physical–spiritual world where harming dogs threatens life itself.

Ethnographic accounts reveal that qimmiit were essential to travel and survival and embedded within burial practices, cosmology, and relationships extending beyond death. Federal apologies for the killing of sled dogs expose contrasting recognition, with the 2024 Nunavik apology acknowledging violent destruction and desecration of dogs’ bodies. Read alongside burial practices and narratives recorded by Boas and Rasmussen, dogs emerge as moral and cosmological beings whose harm disrupts balance between human conduct, animal life, and environmental continuity. The large-scale killing of sled dogs is thus understood not merely as material loss, but as colonial violence that fractured a shared physical–spiritual world fundamental to Inuit life.

10. Conclusions

This article has explored traditional Inuit beliefs and practices evident in human–animal relationality through the physical and spiritual significance of qimmiit, examining how sled dogs functioned as co-travellers with humans across domains that Western scholarship often separates into material life and metaphysical meaning under the category of religion. Unlike popular literary and cinematic portrayals that often attribute personhood to dogs through sentiment and moral projection, Inuit understandings of qimmiit emerge instead from a relational ontology grounded in body, soul(s), and spirit. Qimmiit are represented in origin stories and in accounts of daily life, where the mythic and the mundane are not separated but understood as interconnected.

Read comparatively, ethnographic and missionary sources by Rasmussen, Boas, Peck, Freuchen, and Henry are treated as informative records of a relational world in which human survival, hunting, travel, and endurance are inseparable from the lives, labour, and ontological being of dogs. Explorer, anthropologist, and missionary alike were drawn to Inuit religion, whether to document it, interpret it, or, in the missionary case, to introduce Christianity, yet all attest to the centrality of qimmiit in sustaining both life and meaning.

Framed by the song Travel Without Me, the article explores how harness, command, breeding, and endurance bind dogs and humans within shared journeys shaped by storms, darkness, hunger, and dangers. Rasmussen’s narration of the shaman Aua’s words, “we do not believe, we fear” (Rasmussen 1929, p. 56), captures an Inuit religious orientation toward maintaining cosmological balance amid physical and spiritual peril. Within this worldview, fear operates as disciplined attentiveness to forces that govern hunting success, weather, illness, spirits, and the souls of animals, and qimmiit emerge as helpers in mitigating these fears by securing movement, protection, and continuity between worlds.

This article further emphasizes Inuit metaphysics in which beings are constituted through interrelated dimensions of body, soul, and name. Among animals, dogs uniquely possess name-souls, wear amulets like children, serve as helpers in shamanic practice, and accompany humans across the boundary of death, including burial practices ensuring that one is not alone in the Afterlife. These continuities sharpen the meaning of rupture articulated through Inuit testimony gathered by the Qikiqtani Truth Commission, where the killing of sled dogs between the 1950s and 1970s is remembered as qimmiijaqtauniq: not only the destruction of dogs, but the killing of name-soul beings and the fracturing of a shared physical–spiritual world.

The inquiry into how traditional Inuit beliefs and practices are expressed through human–animal relationality with qimmiit emerges clearly through the ethnographic sources. Inuit kinship with qimmiit as co-travellers across physical and spirit realms emerges as lived relationality rather than abstract doctrine. Because mobility and hunting depend on dogs, travel becomes an embodied relational practice: dogs extend perception in storms, locate breathing holes, and guard camps at night, so survival is experienced as shared agency between humans and dogs rather than as an exclusively human endeavor. This dependence is narrated alongside metaphysical claims that organized Inuit life. Dogs appear as more-than-physical beings who, like humans, may be protected through amulets and linked to vitality through the name-soul and into the Afterlife. Shamanic practice further situates dogs within spiritual action, not only as practical companions but as helpers within spirit travel and conflict, where words and commands, both mundane and magic, mediate physical and spiritual existence. Origin stories and representative narratives place dog figures and the harness at the threshold of the spirit world, showing how kinship, taboo, and cosmological order are expressed through qimmiit. Burial customs intensify this worldview: the withdrawal, killing, or symbolic unharnessing of dogs marks death as the rupture of shared travel, and imagine sled teams persisting beyond death. Viewed through the Inuit–Qimmiit relationship, religion appears as an ontologically grounded practice of attentiveness shaped by travel exposed to near-constant danger, in which dependence on qimmiit as ensouled beings whose physical and spiritual senses and abilities sustain life.

Read through a religious studies lens, and while not reducible to western theoretical categories, these sources reveal a cosmological framework in which mobility and survival are embedded within sacred relational structures linking human and animal life. Inuit–Qimmiit kinship emerges as lived cosmological relationality enacted through embodied survival practices rather than doctrinal belief. The ethnographic record reflects an existential orientation shaped by vulnerability, environmental exposure, and the necessity of maintaining balance within a world animated by human and nonhuman forces. Across narratives of travel, ritual, death, and continuity beyond life, qimmiit appear as co-travellers within relational worlds that link embodied existence and cosmological order, articulated through endurance in environmentally extreme conditions. Disruptions to Inuit–Qimmiit kinship therefore represent cosmological ruptures as well as material losses, offering important implications for religious studies engagement with Indigenous cosmologies and contemporary reconciliation discourse.