The aims of this paper are to describe the present conditions of marine mammal hunting and sharing activities among the Nunavik Inuit of Canada and to discuss the social-cultural significance of these activities to them. Nunavik Inuit hunting activities are constrained by both economic and legal factors. For example, the negative factors are the purchase of expensive gas and ammunition and federal regulations, which govern the timing of the hunt and the number of animals that can be taken. On the other hand, the Inuit often make use of the Nunavik Hunter Support Program instituted under the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement to carry out their hunting and sharing activities. Inuit's use of this kind of program is a positive factor to facilitate the activities. Thus, the Inuit organize and practice subsistence activities under particular political and economic circumstances. In this paper, however, I argue that these same activities are in fact not only economic but also contributors to the construction of indigenous social relationships and cultural identities, and thus contribute significantly to the development of emerging Inuit lifestyles in a rapidly changing world. Also, I insist that the contemporary Inuit use subsistence activities themselves as a multi-effective resource.

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Indigenous people of Kamchatka were forced to join a collective farm, kolkhoz under the socialism system. Under the farm collectivization people were able to catch much salmon for private use according to their tradition. Even in 1970s, indigenous people who were working in kolkhoz and sovkhoz (state farm) had about ten-day holidays for their salmon fishing. However, in 1984 license system for indigenous salmon-fishing was introduced and also a limit to the amount of salmon was laid down. Moreover, in 1990s salmon of Kamchatka began to have connection with the world market because each enterprise came under private management. Price of salmon is not so high due to world overproduction, and commercial profit of salmon fishery is also not so high with the exception of sockeye and coho salmon. Most profitable salmon product for local fishing enterprise is salted roe, and this situation also applies to that of indigenous people. The production of salted salmon roe is done vigorously in local areas, and some of them are thought to belong to the underground economy. After the perestroika, a democratic system emerged and local people could elect a governor, members of an assembly and a member of the Lower House. However indigenous peoples are still minorities, and they want their system of usage and management of natural resources that are held by the state.

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Nowadays, Inuit Art is renowned as one representative Canadian art style. However, the history of Inuit art as ‘Art ’ traces back only to 1949, when the ‘contemporary period ’ of Inuit art began. As James Clifford has pointed out, as the world system of industrial capitalism globally spread, the art market also expanded all over the world, although it is based on ‘modem art-culture system’ that was established as a unique system to modem Euro-American societies in the beginning of 20th century. In this art market, the center of this system, that is the art world of Euro-American societies, has one-sidedly classified and evaluated the products of peripheral societies, that is, non-Western societies. In this sense, it can be said that ‘ethnic art ’ is a product of the extension of art market based on the ‘art-culture system’, which parallels the spread of the world system. The same thing can be said to Inuit Art as well. Inuit art as ‘Art ’ resulted from the incorporation of Inuit societies into an art market based on ‘art-culture system’. In this sense, to consider the history of Inuit Art sheds light on one aspect of the process of extension of the art market based on ‘art-culture system ’. Then, how were Inuit societies incorporated into art market based on ‘art-culture system’? How are Inuit societies influenced by this process of incorporation? Is it true that Inuit societies were merely one-sidedly and passively incorporated into the art market? In this paper, I will examine the history and present conditions of Inuit Art in order to reconsider the ‘art-culture system’.

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