Inuit angakkuq

Domain XI · Traditional medicine & indigenous healing · Inuit lands (Nunavut and elsewhere)

What it is

The angakkuq (plural angakkuit) is the shaman of Inuit tradition. An Inuit-produced IsumaTV/SILA lesson plan, drawing on Elders' interviews, describes angakkuit as healers, doctors and advisers. They were born with and skilled in seeing spirits. They were specialists in unseen powers rather than…

Format

• Phase B: Engagement and cultural assessment (sessions 1–3). Goal: understand the problem in the client's own terms.
• Phase C: Collaborative planning. Goal: set goals by discussion and consensus (aajiiqatigiinniq) and place individual goals within family and community obligations.

Questions to explore with your client

• What drew you to it, and what are you hoping it will change?
• Does it involve any substance, plant preparation, remedy or supplement? Has your doctor or prescriber been told, especially about any medication you take?
• Is it a group, retreat or community? How do they respond if someone wants to leave or raises a concern?
• How do you and the practitioner understand what is happening, in spiritual or cultural terms? Is that a source of comfort, worry, or both?
• Who runs it, and what training or registration do they hold?
• What actually happens in a session or meeting, and how often?
• What does it cost, and is there pressure to commit to more?
• How do you feel afterwards, in the hours and days that follow?
• Does it fit with, or clash with, the work we do here?

What practitioners of it watch for

• Contagion risk. Your own vicarious distress.
• Exposure to suicide in peers. Abuse at home. Loss of language and identity.
• Wait times and travel costs. A client feeling "sent away." Keep the door open.
• Fear of child-welfare involvement, given its historical role in Inuit family separation.
• Non-interference norms that stop family from acting. Discuss these openly. Clusters after a death in the community.

When to involve someone else

• New or worsening physical symptoms, or advice to stop or change prescribed medication: involve the client's doctor or prescriber.
• Signs of coercion, isolation from family and friends, escalating costs or secrecy: discuss openly and consider safeguarding.
• A crisis or thoughts of suicide: follow your crisis protocol. In the US, call or text 988; in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123.

Drawn automatically from the guide's own sections. Stay curious: neither endorse nor dismiss what the client values, and check anything that matters against the full guide and its sources. Not medical advice.