Who are the Inuit and Where did the Inuit come from?

The Inuit are the native peoples of the Arctic land stretching from central Alaska to the northern coast of Canada and onto the island of Greenland.

Their ancestors came to North America from Asia in about 3,000 B.C., many thousands of years after the first Indian people arrived on the continent. The Inuit are more closely related to Asians than to other Native American peoples.

The Inuit are better known by the name “Eskimo,” a mispronunciation of an Algonquian word meaning “eaters of raw meat.” They, however, prefer the term “Inuit,” which means “people” in their own language.