amuletsInuit amulet
said the Inuit terms vary by group and are not collapsed into one here
also: Netsilik amulet · Iglulik amulet · arnguaq
amuletSiberia and the ArcticNorth AmericaCanadaGreenlandUnited States of Americaconfidence mediumneeds checking
This record prints only what published ethnography and Inuit institutions have themselves made public. It does not set out which amulet answers which spirit, and does not reconstruct any rite from scattered sources. — this project's own limit, applied under the atlas's rule on restricted knowledge; no Inuit authority has been cited here as imposing it
The atlas prints the restriction and stops. Why.
Small worked or unworked pieces of animal and bird — bone, claw, tooth, skin, feather — sewn to clothing or carried, one amulet to one spirit. There is no single form. The class is defined by the relation, not the shape: published ethnography states that the effect of an Inuit amulet is attributed to the spirit that corresponds to it.
citedWhen
recorded from c. 1900; older, and undated here still carried cited
| Period | recorded by twentieth-century ethnographers |
|---|---|
| How the date is known | ethnographic — somebody recorded it being used, on a date |
| Note | 1900 marks the period the ethnographers whose records this rests on were working, not the start of the practice. Whether every form of it is still carried is not something this project has a dated source for. |
Years are stored astronomically — 1 CE is 1, 1 BCE is 0, 500 BCE is −499 — and printed the way a reader says them. How these dates are made.
The thing itself
| Made of | Bone and ivory · Tooth, tusk and claw · Skin · Hair |
|---|---|
| Goes | At the neck · Sewn into clothing · In a pocket or a bag |
| Made by | an angakkuq, or a lay person; the ethnography records both |
| Retired | no — it is kept |
| Note | No single form: the class is defined by the amulet's relation to a spirit. Form is left blank rather than forced into a key. |
What its carriers say it stops
Reported, attributed, not tested here. Each row below is somebody's claim, with their name on it.
- Illness — sickness in general, where no cause is named citedsaid by the published ethnography of Inuit religion, which holds that illness can be caused by offending the spirits
- Ghosts and hungry spirits citedsaid by the same record: amulets are worn among the means of avoiding offence and retribution
- Harm to a child — harm to an infant or a small child; common across the atlas, though not the largest class in it — see /story/most-of-them-are-for-children/ citedsaid by the Netsilik, in the recorded instance of a boy carrying eighty
The story
Two numbers in the ethnographic record say more about this practice than any description of an object does.
The first is 80. Wikipedia's summary of the published ethnography of Inuit religion records that the Netsilik used a great many amulets — even dogs could have them — and gives one recorded instance of a young boy who had eighty, so many that he could hardly play. The second is 17: one man carried seventeen names taken from his ancestors, and the names were themselves intended to protect him. Beside that sits the Iglulik, who used few.
Amulets sit inside a system with other parts. Inuit religion holds that human illness can be caused by offending the spirits, and that fear of retribution produces caution; to avoid giving offence, people have observed rules and taboos, offered prayers and songs, worn amulets, and consulted the angakkuit, the ritual specialists who mediate between people and spirits. An amulet might be made by an angakkuq, but lay people made them too.
Inference — an eighty-amulet child and a seventeen-name man describe a practice where protection is cumulative rather than singular, which is a different logic from the one-charm-one-neck traditions that fill most of this atlas. This project states that as its own reading of the published record and not as anybody's account of their own practice.
This record prints what published ethnography and Inuit and Greenlandic institutions have made public, and no more. It does not reconstruct which animal answers which spirit, and it does not fill the gaps from a neighbouring tradition.
How it is made and carried
Selected and attached: sewn to a parka, hung at the neck, set into a hood. An amulet corresponds to a spirit, and the rest of the making is not printed here. Names function alongside objects — a name taken from an ancestor is described in the ethnography as protective in itself.
Now
Inuit amulet practice is documented by twentieth-century ethnographers working in the Canadian Arctic and Greenland; Inuit religious practice continues alongside Christianity across the Arctic. This project has read no dated present-day account it can cite, so no claim is made here about what any community carries in 2026.
Not to be confused with
- Tupilaq — an amulet protects the person carrying it; a tupilaq was made to be sent away at an enemy. The carved figures sold in Greenland today are tupilaq, not amulets
What this is near
What names this one
Each in its own words, from its own page.
Where this came from
- Inuit religion — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
- Tupilaq — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
- Shamanism in Siberia — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
Elsewhere
Record updated 2026-09-16. This record as JSON. Every field carries its own provenance; the tier chips above say which.