Pinga

An inland power

Pinga is known chiefly from Rasmussen's report on the Caribou Inuit (Kivallirmiut) of the barren lands west of Hudson Bay, Intellectual Culture of the Caribou Eskimos (1930). For these inland people, who lived by the caribou rather than by sea mammals, the Sea Woman mattered less, and speakers described instead a female power who lives above, called Pinga, "the one up there".

What she watches

As Rasmussen's speakers described her, Pinga watches over the caribou and other land animals, and over whether people respect them: killing more than is needed or mistreating the carcasses offends her. She is also associated with souls. Rasmussen reports that some speakers linked her with Hila (Sila), the power of the air, though the relationship is not clearly defined in his account, and this site does not treat them as the same.

Limits of the record

Pinga's name and role come from one ethnographer's report of one region in the 1920s. She is not a pan-Inuit figure, and the details should be taken as what particular Caribou Inuit told Rasmussen, not as a fixed doctrine.