Although there are still many important questions to be answered, the available evidence tells us that within the vast geographic regions of the Arctic, our distant and more recent ancestors carved out a homeland and established a way of life that has retained a cultural identity, social coherence, and territorial integrity throughout each and every stage of our history.
We think that it is true to say that no other living culture has maintained such a continuous and consistent way of life for such a long period of time over such a large territory. When we speak about the origins and history of our culture, we do so from a perspective that is different from that often used by non-Inuit who have studied our past. For example, in our culture we do not divide the past from the present so we do not like to use terms such as "prehistory." Our history is simply our history and we feel that the time has come for us as Inuit to take more control over determining what is important and how it should be interpreted.
To be of value, our history must be used to instruct our young and to inform all of us about who we are as Inuit in today's world. We do not want our history to confine us to the past. Our past is preserved and explained through the telling of stories and the passing of information from one generation to the next through what is called the oral tradition. Inuit recognize the importance of maintaining the oral tradition as a part of our culture and way of learning. At the same time we realize that there are other ways to understand the past through activities such as archeology and the study of historical documents. Both ways of knowing must now be used by Inuit and it is our elders and our schools that will provide the necessary tools.
Archeology has been one of the important ways for discovering our past. Every summer archeologists from down south come to our land. Inuit often travel with them, giving advice about where to go and answering questions about the things they are finding. Now archeologists are actually being joined in their work by young Inuit who will someday take over their research. Now the challenge is ours to begin to rebuild an understanding of our past by using all of the information we now have from our legends, our real life stories, our knowledge about the Arctic environment and it's wildlife and from information now available to us through archeology.