The Netsilik Eskimos: Social Life and Spiritual Culture

Record summary

This volume from Rasmussen’s Fifth Thule Expedition documents Netsilik religious concepts, ritual experts, taboos, souls and spirit helpers in communities dependent on sea ice and marine hunting. It offers a concrete comparison point for intermediary beings because spiritual agency is connected to animals, weather, illness and social obligation. The work is not a report of paranormal events in the modern evidential sense; it is a record of oral traditions and the researcher’s interpretation of them. Terminology, translation, editorial arrangement and the colonial context all require review in the original and subsequent scholarship.