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I have a number of concerns with this article. Among them:
-- Miskwito 01:51, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
Dear Miskwito,
Thank You very much for Your time and work to raise the most important questions about the article I initiated a few hours before that.
I put now my answer to subpage /Examples of using term shamanism among Eskimos in recent scientific literature, which contains also the other concerns You asked.
Although I grow more and more astonished by the profundness, depth and amount of culture of Eskimo groups (and parallelly, I get more and more embarassed by my ignorance which I have to face during that), but, thinking on Your concerns and reading the literature I could avail during the holidays, I think I have done no capital mistakes in the article.
Have a very happy Easter,
Physis 01:29, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm just making a subsection of this to make it easier to answer --
First, just by way of background:
So....rather as I would answer an email message, I guess. Miskwito's original comments in italics, mine in Roman.
I would say that "Eskimo" and "shamanism" are both used in the ethnographic & comparative religion literature, which Physis pretty well documents in the subsidiary talk page Talk:Eskimo shamanism/Examples of using term shamanism among Eskimos in recent scientific literature. But far less frequently the combined term "Eskimo shamanism." In the online bibliography Physis provided on that page, Shamanism in North America — A Comprehensive Bibliography on the Use of the Term by Peter N. Jones, only three publications used the terms "Eskimo shamanism" or "Eskimo shaman." Other articles identify a specific culture as Eskimo & describe practices of that culture as involving shamanism — e.g., "Shamanistic behavior among the Netsilik Eskimos" or "From shamans to healers: the survival of an Inupiaq Eskimo skill." I would bet, though I don't have time to prove it at the moment, that the literature has moved more towards using the identifiers preferred by the cultures they are referring to. (Though a related example springs to mind: the Alaska Native Language Center used to refer to the Ingalik language & people but now uses the preferred name Deg Hit’an — the Deg Hit'an people have pointed out that Ingalik comes from a neighboring people's pejorative for them.)
My problem with the combined term Eskimo shamanism is two-fold:
Most of the sources currently provided in the article indicate variation in where the authors got their data. Knud Rasmussen visited the people of some Eskimo cultures but not others. Daniel Merkur's book is clearly about shamans among the Inuit, not among the various Yupik peoples — & probably specific groups of Inuit too. Shamans in Eurasia are clearly not practicing in North America. And so on. However, as currently written, the article pretty much throws them all in together. Of course it will be difficult to distinguish variations between cultures if all the cultures are thrown, undifferentiated, into one big mish-mash.
The religious techniques of shamanism are practiced among the peoples long-known as Eskimo, and I support having a general article about that. However, in my opinion the article needs to be moved/renamed — perhaps "Shamanism among Eskimo peoples" (seeing as we still lack any better "universal" term), or even "Shamanism among the Inuit, Yupik, and Sirenik peoples," with this article becoming a redirect. There is no obligation on Wikipedia to have short pithy names for articles, particularly if they are inaccurate. I am not particularly swayed by Physis's argument on the subsidiary talk page about "use the most common name" in order not to contradict Wikipedia naming conventions (precision) — not when it comes to offensiveness of a name. Great example at Talk:Dakota War of 1862 about how that article was moved/renamed from its prior objectionable name of "Sioux Uprising" — one of the arguments of people who wanted to keep the prior name was the old one of "it's most commonly known." But they made the right choice (albeit with documentation of changing practice in naming that conflict in the literature).
I am more swayed by this argument by Physis: "But do we need a common name for Yupiks and Inuits at all? Yes, because linguistical comparisons make it necessary. Until now this is 'Eskimo', and any other term (known by me) would hurt both principles precision and 'use the most common name.'" I agree with that. And so I propose changing the article title to Shamanism among Eskimo peoples with a section added to the page about the terminology problem similar to the one on the Eskimo page. I do object to the page as currently named.
Meanwhile, the article also needs to stop glomming all the various Eskimo cultures into one big undifferentiated group. The so-called Eskimo peoples cover a lot of territory — the practices of the Alutiiq of southcentral Alaska, even in the area of shamanism, are unlikely to be identical to the practices of the Kalaallit of Greenland. If a fact cited from one of Knud Rasmussen's writings is derived from his experience among a particular culture, that specific culture should be named — instead of just simplistically labeling it as "Eskimo." Even the photo included with the article has this problem. Turns out there's a copy of that photo in one of the books I own — this wasn't just some random "Eskimo shaman" from any old where portrayed in the photo, but a particular shaman from a particular culture ( Yup'ik) in a particular village in Alaska. I will look that photo up again tonight & relabel the one on the article accordingly, & add info about it also to the photo page itself.
Where editors are willing & ready to do the work, I would also suggest adding to the articles on specific cultures about the shamanic practices & other religious beliefs native to those cultures. I already plan on doing so for the Yup'ik article when I get a chance, & I can easily be persuaded to do that also for the Inupiat (Alaska Inuit) article.
Yes, various Eskimo cultures do practice shamanism, though of course they have their own words for its practitioners. But yes, there are problems with the sentence. My question would be: "What differences?" I also question simply labeling any given culture as being "shamanistic." I would not say, for example, that the Yupiit "followed the religion of shamanism" or therefore that their culture was "shamanistic." Most cultures that include the practice of shamanism also have other religious & spiritual beliefs & practices that are not necessarily dependent on their belief in shamanism. Which explains why so many cultures which used to have, but no longer, have shamans still retain so many of their other pre-Christian or pre-other world religion beliefs. I wouldn't really call shamanism a religion, I'd call it a religious or spiritual practice, or perhaps a collection of practices & techniques.
I agree, there should be at least a brief discussion of what soul dualism is within the body of the article. Pre-Christian Finnish belief also included a dualistic concept of the soul.
Again, I would not call shamanism a "religion." Otherwise, I agree. A lot of readers will wonder if the article is talking about outer space aliens... or maybe "illegal" immigrants. Physis discusses the phrase in a section of the subsidiary talk page called "Alien" is a terminus technicus, no connotations, which is helpful, but what would be even more helpful would be to use language in the article that doesn't require Wikipedia's mostly generalist readers to dig into the depths of academic discourse with its specialist jargon in order to understand material that could be written & explained in plain language, with references supplied so that those who do want to dive into the academic discussion can do so if they want.
All that said, this article is in its early stages, & I'm glad Physis started & put such effort into it. I'll gladly contribute to its improvement as I have time.
By the way, as a matter of citation style, see Wikipedia:Citing_sources#Footnotes_come_after_punctuation where it is written: "Footnotes come after punctuation: Some words, phrases or facts must be referenced mid-sentence; footnotes at the end of a sentence or phrase are placed immediately after the punctuation." Not before it, & not with extra spaces between it & the material it refers to either. I was going to suggest a copy edit on that, but I see Miskwito has already started. -- Yksin 00:07, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
What would be wrong with entitling the article "Shamanism among the Inuit and Yupik"? That would alleviate the need for the exhaustive apology in the lead which we have now (Nov. 2008). -- Bejnar ( talk) 00:09, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Dear User:Miskwito
Thank You for Your message, and also thank You the work You have just begun on the article Eskimo shamanism.
Only one thing may need discussion: You replaced mediation to mediumship and "mediator" to "medium". The replacement affects two principial thoughts expressed in the literature:
As early authors as Mircea Eliade, stressed the importance not to label all sorceres as shamans. For an important distinction, Mircea Eliade wrote [1]
“ | If we include in term "shaman" every sorcerer, witch, medicine man or fan whom we meet during the hystory of ethnology of religions, then we get a very complex and diffuse concept, which will be of no use to us. ... We have to make the same distinction to specify the relation of the shaman and spirits. ... It is easy to see what is the difference between the shaman and the obsessed person — the shaman controls his spirits, in the following sense: despite of being a human being, he manages to contact the dead, the demons, the spirits of Nature, without becoming a mere tool of them. It must be admitted that we can meet also obsessed shamans too, but they are rather the exception, which has its explanation | ” |
I do not have the original, I have to translate back from a Hungarian publication, thus my “citing” is not literal. My emphasis added.
I do not want to say that "mediumship" means the same as "obsesession", but as far as i can understand the Mediumship article, it is a very special concept.
Eliade (and maybe other authors) warn us to be cautious with our terminology, and I transfer his warning (maybe in an unfair overgeneralized way) also to the notion of mediumship.
The shaman can be regarded as a "mediator" in very many senses [2]
This may look like a popularizing overgeneralization or like my unfair citing of a book, by [2] relly devotes a standalone chapter to "The shaman as mediator", and really literarily terms these functions “mediation”. (Of corurse I cannot verify the author, because I have never been on fieldworks).
Both #"Medium" is too specific/narrow and #Generality of "mediator" is needed by the notion of shamanism may suggest using the abstract and general word mediation and avoid specific (debatable) notions like mediumship
Again, I thank very much for making the text much smoother.
Best regards,
Physis 23:53, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
I agree with both of Physis' points. It should be "mediation" and "mediator" not "mediumship" or "medium." Medium brings up a completely different connotation, which is inappropriate to what shamans did.
BTW, I have Eliade's book on shamanism in English translation at home, if I can only find it. So I will add it to the references later. -- Yksin 00:18, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
However wikilinking to the page Mediator isn't a good choice, since the mediation done by shamans is certainly not in the sense of dispute resolution, which is mainly what that article is about. So I'm going to remove that wikilink. -- Yksin 00:23, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
Dear Yksin,
Thank You very much for Your detailed reply (in #Another response to Miskwito's concerns)
I have tried to solved some of the points You proposes. The result can be read in the renamed, extended and somewhat reorganized, partly rewritten version of Shamanism among Eskimo peoples.
My motivations for the tried solutions can be read in /Bidirectional approach to organize the beauty of tension between diversity versus unity of cultures
Sorry for that some of Your points are not fixed yet. I concentrated to solve the main problem, maybe even that is debatable.
Have a nice week-end,
Physis 20:32, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
I just undertook a major cleanup/edit of this article. Mostly I was involved in "englishing" the text, cleaning up redundancies (there were many) and streamlining references. I also requested citation for some facts and removed excessive wikilinking. I also tried to use standard anthropological terms, but more needs to be done in this regard. I have embedded some notes in the article using HTML comments to identify where I left off. Please also note that I commented out the section arguing for the unity of Eskimo culture (but left it in the source). That section really does not belong here, but rather in a general article on Eskimo culture: it does not address the point of the article (shamanism) and is arguing a point halfway through the article that has to be assumed from the beginning.
I certainly hope I haven't run roughshod over anyone's feelings or any of the discussion here, as that is certainly not my intention. However, there was enough work needed at the basic presentational level (not content level) that it made sense to dive right in.
Finally, a minor note, but in the references shouldn't Diószegi be Diósszegi? I may be wrong, but I believe the place name where the name comes from is Diósszeg.
+ Fenevad 22:43, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
I have finished the major editorial pass I made. I would appreciate it if someone could look through it and make corrections, especially in the Netsiliks section, where I think I understood things right, but I'm not sure. + Fenevad 15:03, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
I have a suggestion regarding the section I commented out in the article. I think it would make more sense to start another article on that subject (if there isn't already one) and move the content to that location and then link to it in the lead paragraph for this article. That way it wouldn't seem as a digression, but the information would still be available. What does anyone else think?
+ Fenevad 14:10, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
There is a commeted out section on Kugaaruk. The majority of people in Kugaaruk are Netsiliks although I have seen evidence that they may have been further east at one point. Also you can't say "Netsilingmiut Inuit" as that translates to "People of the seal people". CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 06:54, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Alaskan Native religion (new name) or Shamanism among Eskimo peoples (old name) for only Eskimo shamanism of the Eskimo peoples (Alaska, Siberia, Canada, Greenland; also Aleut people). This page not for Alaskan Eskimos ( Inupiat, Alutiiq, Yup'ik ~ Cup'ik ~ Cup'ig, Siberian Yupik) and/or not for all Alaska Natives (Eskimos and Non-Eskimos). Alaska Natives are indigenous peoples of Alaska, United States: Eskimo {Iñupiat, Yupik}, Aleut and Non-Eskimo (Indian) {Eyak, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and a number of Alaskan Athabaskan} cultures. -- Kmoksy ( talk) 21:10, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
I added the category on Category:Alaska Native culture since the new title indicates this article is about them. Should I remove the categories on Category:Eskimos and Category:Inuit shamanism? The term Eskimo covers people in Siberia, Canada, and Greenland which have nothing to do with Alaska. The term Inuit covers groups in Greenland and Canada and is not limited to Alaska either.
The term Alaska Natives covers Alaskan Athabaskans, Eyak people, Tlingit, Haida people, Tsimshian, Eskimo groups ( Inupiat, Yupik peoples), and Aleut. Several of them have nothing to do with the Eskimos or the Inuit and do not speak one of the Eskimo–Aleut languages. Dimadick ( talk) 21:47, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
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On a quick glance, I noticed "Bogoraz, Waldemar" (1913). The Eskimo of Siberia (PDF), is used as a reference. This redundant listing is unnecessary. That section also contains the "Old photos" and "Interviews" subsections. This creates a rather long section and since there is duplication it might need pruning and possibly separating into an "External links" section if possible. -- Otr500 ( talk) 18:15, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
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I have a number of concerns with this article. Among them:
-- Miskwito 01:51, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
Dear Miskwito,
Thank You very much for Your time and work to raise the most important questions about the article I initiated a few hours before that.
I put now my answer to subpage /Examples of using term shamanism among Eskimos in recent scientific literature, which contains also the other concerns You asked.
Although I grow more and more astonished by the profundness, depth and amount of culture of Eskimo groups (and parallelly, I get more and more embarassed by my ignorance which I have to face during that), but, thinking on Your concerns and reading the literature I could avail during the holidays, I think I have done no capital mistakes in the article.
Have a very happy Easter,
Physis 01:29, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm just making a subsection of this to make it easier to answer --
First, just by way of background:
So....rather as I would answer an email message, I guess. Miskwito's original comments in italics, mine in Roman.
I would say that "Eskimo" and "shamanism" are both used in the ethnographic & comparative religion literature, which Physis pretty well documents in the subsidiary talk page Talk:Eskimo shamanism/Examples of using term shamanism among Eskimos in recent scientific literature. But far less frequently the combined term "Eskimo shamanism." In the online bibliography Physis provided on that page, Shamanism in North America — A Comprehensive Bibliography on the Use of the Term by Peter N. Jones, only three publications used the terms "Eskimo shamanism" or "Eskimo shaman." Other articles identify a specific culture as Eskimo & describe practices of that culture as involving shamanism — e.g., "Shamanistic behavior among the Netsilik Eskimos" or "From shamans to healers: the survival of an Inupiaq Eskimo skill." I would bet, though I don't have time to prove it at the moment, that the literature has moved more towards using the identifiers preferred by the cultures they are referring to. (Though a related example springs to mind: the Alaska Native Language Center used to refer to the Ingalik language & people but now uses the preferred name Deg Hit’an — the Deg Hit'an people have pointed out that Ingalik comes from a neighboring people's pejorative for them.)
My problem with the combined term Eskimo shamanism is two-fold:
Most of the sources currently provided in the article indicate variation in where the authors got their data. Knud Rasmussen visited the people of some Eskimo cultures but not others. Daniel Merkur's book is clearly about shamans among the Inuit, not among the various Yupik peoples — & probably specific groups of Inuit too. Shamans in Eurasia are clearly not practicing in North America. And so on. However, as currently written, the article pretty much throws them all in together. Of course it will be difficult to distinguish variations between cultures if all the cultures are thrown, undifferentiated, into one big mish-mash.
The religious techniques of shamanism are practiced among the peoples long-known as Eskimo, and I support having a general article about that. However, in my opinion the article needs to be moved/renamed — perhaps "Shamanism among Eskimo peoples" (seeing as we still lack any better "universal" term), or even "Shamanism among the Inuit, Yupik, and Sirenik peoples," with this article becoming a redirect. There is no obligation on Wikipedia to have short pithy names for articles, particularly if they are inaccurate. I am not particularly swayed by Physis's argument on the subsidiary talk page about "use the most common name" in order not to contradict Wikipedia naming conventions (precision) — not when it comes to offensiveness of a name. Great example at Talk:Dakota War of 1862 about how that article was moved/renamed from its prior objectionable name of "Sioux Uprising" — one of the arguments of people who wanted to keep the prior name was the old one of "it's most commonly known." But they made the right choice (albeit with documentation of changing practice in naming that conflict in the literature).
I am more swayed by this argument by Physis: "But do we need a common name for Yupiks and Inuits at all? Yes, because linguistical comparisons make it necessary. Until now this is 'Eskimo', and any other term (known by me) would hurt both principles precision and 'use the most common name.'" I agree with that. And so I propose changing the article title to Shamanism among Eskimo peoples with a section added to the page about the terminology problem similar to the one on the Eskimo page. I do object to the page as currently named.
Meanwhile, the article also needs to stop glomming all the various Eskimo cultures into one big undifferentiated group. The so-called Eskimo peoples cover a lot of territory — the practices of the Alutiiq of southcentral Alaska, even in the area of shamanism, are unlikely to be identical to the practices of the Kalaallit of Greenland. If a fact cited from one of Knud Rasmussen's writings is derived from his experience among a particular culture, that specific culture should be named — instead of just simplistically labeling it as "Eskimo." Even the photo included with the article has this problem. Turns out there's a copy of that photo in one of the books I own — this wasn't just some random "Eskimo shaman" from any old where portrayed in the photo, but a particular shaman from a particular culture ( Yup'ik) in a particular village in Alaska. I will look that photo up again tonight & relabel the one on the article accordingly, & add info about it also to the photo page itself.
Where editors are willing & ready to do the work, I would also suggest adding to the articles on specific cultures about the shamanic practices & other religious beliefs native to those cultures. I already plan on doing so for the Yup'ik article when I get a chance, & I can easily be persuaded to do that also for the Inupiat (Alaska Inuit) article.
Yes, various Eskimo cultures do practice shamanism, though of course they have their own words for its practitioners. But yes, there are problems with the sentence. My question would be: "What differences?" I also question simply labeling any given culture as being "shamanistic." I would not say, for example, that the Yupiit "followed the religion of shamanism" or therefore that their culture was "shamanistic." Most cultures that include the practice of shamanism also have other religious & spiritual beliefs & practices that are not necessarily dependent on their belief in shamanism. Which explains why so many cultures which used to have, but no longer, have shamans still retain so many of their other pre-Christian or pre-other world religion beliefs. I wouldn't really call shamanism a religion, I'd call it a religious or spiritual practice, or perhaps a collection of practices & techniques.
I agree, there should be at least a brief discussion of what soul dualism is within the body of the article. Pre-Christian Finnish belief also included a dualistic concept of the soul.
Again, I would not call shamanism a "religion." Otherwise, I agree. A lot of readers will wonder if the article is talking about outer space aliens... or maybe "illegal" immigrants. Physis discusses the phrase in a section of the subsidiary talk page called "Alien" is a terminus technicus, no connotations, which is helpful, but what would be even more helpful would be to use language in the article that doesn't require Wikipedia's mostly generalist readers to dig into the depths of academic discourse with its specialist jargon in order to understand material that could be written & explained in plain language, with references supplied so that those who do want to dive into the academic discussion can do so if they want.
All that said, this article is in its early stages, & I'm glad Physis started & put such effort into it. I'll gladly contribute to its improvement as I have time.
By the way, as a matter of citation style, see Wikipedia:Citing_sources#Footnotes_come_after_punctuation where it is written: "Footnotes come after punctuation: Some words, phrases or facts must be referenced mid-sentence; footnotes at the end of a sentence or phrase are placed immediately after the punctuation." Not before it, & not with extra spaces between it & the material it refers to either. I was going to suggest a copy edit on that, but I see Miskwito has already started. -- Yksin 00:07, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
What would be wrong with entitling the article "Shamanism among the Inuit and Yupik"? That would alleviate the need for the exhaustive apology in the lead which we have now (Nov. 2008). -- Bejnar ( talk) 00:09, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Dear User:Miskwito
Thank You for Your message, and also thank You the work You have just begun on the article Eskimo shamanism.
Only one thing may need discussion: You replaced mediation to mediumship and "mediator" to "medium". The replacement affects two principial thoughts expressed in the literature:
As early authors as Mircea Eliade, stressed the importance not to label all sorceres as shamans. For an important distinction, Mircea Eliade wrote [1]
“ | If we include in term "shaman" every sorcerer, witch, medicine man or fan whom we meet during the hystory of ethnology of religions, then we get a very complex and diffuse concept, which will be of no use to us. ... We have to make the same distinction to specify the relation of the shaman and spirits. ... It is easy to see what is the difference between the shaman and the obsessed person — the shaman controls his spirits, in the following sense: despite of being a human being, he manages to contact the dead, the demons, the spirits of Nature, without becoming a mere tool of them. It must be admitted that we can meet also obsessed shamans too, but they are rather the exception, which has its explanation | ” |
I do not have the original, I have to translate back from a Hungarian publication, thus my “citing” is not literal. My emphasis added.
I do not want to say that "mediumship" means the same as "obsesession", but as far as i can understand the Mediumship article, it is a very special concept.
Eliade (and maybe other authors) warn us to be cautious with our terminology, and I transfer his warning (maybe in an unfair overgeneralized way) also to the notion of mediumship.
The shaman can be regarded as a "mediator" in very many senses [2]
This may look like a popularizing overgeneralization or like my unfair citing of a book, by [2] relly devotes a standalone chapter to "The shaman as mediator", and really literarily terms these functions “mediation”. (Of corurse I cannot verify the author, because I have never been on fieldworks).
Both #"Medium" is too specific/narrow and #Generality of "mediator" is needed by the notion of shamanism may suggest using the abstract and general word mediation and avoid specific (debatable) notions like mediumship
Again, I thank very much for making the text much smoother.
Best regards,
Physis 23:53, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
I agree with both of Physis' points. It should be "mediation" and "mediator" not "mediumship" or "medium." Medium brings up a completely different connotation, which is inappropriate to what shamans did.
BTW, I have Eliade's book on shamanism in English translation at home, if I can only find it. So I will add it to the references later. -- Yksin 00:18, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
However wikilinking to the page Mediator isn't a good choice, since the mediation done by shamans is certainly not in the sense of dispute resolution, which is mainly what that article is about. So I'm going to remove that wikilink. -- Yksin 00:23, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
Dear Yksin,
Thank You very much for Your detailed reply (in #Another response to Miskwito's concerns)
I have tried to solved some of the points You proposes. The result can be read in the renamed, extended and somewhat reorganized, partly rewritten version of Shamanism among Eskimo peoples.
My motivations for the tried solutions can be read in /Bidirectional approach to organize the beauty of tension between diversity versus unity of cultures
Sorry for that some of Your points are not fixed yet. I concentrated to solve the main problem, maybe even that is debatable.
Have a nice week-end,
Physis 20:32, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
I just undertook a major cleanup/edit of this article. Mostly I was involved in "englishing" the text, cleaning up redundancies (there were many) and streamlining references. I also requested citation for some facts and removed excessive wikilinking. I also tried to use standard anthropological terms, but more needs to be done in this regard. I have embedded some notes in the article using HTML comments to identify where I left off. Please also note that I commented out the section arguing for the unity of Eskimo culture (but left it in the source). That section really does not belong here, but rather in a general article on Eskimo culture: it does not address the point of the article (shamanism) and is arguing a point halfway through the article that has to be assumed from the beginning.
I certainly hope I haven't run roughshod over anyone's feelings or any of the discussion here, as that is certainly not my intention. However, there was enough work needed at the basic presentational level (not content level) that it made sense to dive right in.
Finally, a minor note, but in the references shouldn't Diószegi be Diósszegi? I may be wrong, but I believe the place name where the name comes from is Diósszeg.
+ Fenevad 22:43, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
I have finished the major editorial pass I made. I would appreciate it if someone could look through it and make corrections, especially in the Netsiliks section, where I think I understood things right, but I'm not sure. + Fenevad 15:03, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
I have a suggestion regarding the section I commented out in the article. I think it would make more sense to start another article on that subject (if there isn't already one) and move the content to that location and then link to it in the lead paragraph for this article. That way it wouldn't seem as a digression, but the information would still be available. What does anyone else think?
+ Fenevad 14:10, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
There is a commeted out section on Kugaaruk. The majority of people in Kugaaruk are Netsiliks although I have seen evidence that they may have been further east at one point. Also you can't say "Netsilingmiut Inuit" as that translates to "People of the seal people". CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 06:54, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Alaskan Native religion (new name) or Shamanism among Eskimo peoples (old name) for only Eskimo shamanism of the Eskimo peoples (Alaska, Siberia, Canada, Greenland; also Aleut people). This page not for Alaskan Eskimos ( Inupiat, Alutiiq, Yup'ik ~ Cup'ik ~ Cup'ig, Siberian Yupik) and/or not for all Alaska Natives (Eskimos and Non-Eskimos). Alaska Natives are indigenous peoples of Alaska, United States: Eskimo {Iñupiat, Yupik}, Aleut and Non-Eskimo (Indian) {Eyak, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and a number of Alaskan Athabaskan} cultures. -- Kmoksy ( talk) 21:10, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
I added the category on Category:Alaska Native culture since the new title indicates this article is about them. Should I remove the categories on Category:Eskimos and Category:Inuit shamanism? The term Eskimo covers people in Siberia, Canada, and Greenland which have nothing to do with Alaska. The term Inuit covers groups in Greenland and Canada and is not limited to Alaska either.
The term Alaska Natives covers Alaskan Athabaskans, Eyak people, Tlingit, Haida people, Tsimshian, Eskimo groups ( Inupiat, Yupik peoples), and Aleut. Several of them have nothing to do with the Eskimos or the Inuit and do not speak one of the Eskimo–Aleut languages. Dimadick ( talk) 21:47, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
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On a quick glance, I noticed "Bogoraz, Waldemar" (1913). The Eskimo of Siberia (PDF), is used as a reference. This redundant listing is unnecessary. That section also contains the "Old photos" and "Interviews" subsections. This creates a rather long section and since there is duplication it might need pruning and possibly separating into an "External links" section if possible. -- Otr500 ( talk) 18:15, 24 May 2021 (UTC)