<P> The Inuit live throughout most of Northern Canada in the territory of Nunavut, Nunavik in the northern third of Quebec, Nunatsiavut and NunatuKavut in Labrador, and in various parts of the Northwest Territories, particularly around the Arctic Ocean . These areas are known in Inuktitut as the "Inuit Nunangat". </P> <P> In the United States, the Iñupiat live primarily on the Alaska North Slope and on Little Diomede Island . The Greenlandic Inuit are descendants of indigenous migrations from Canada . They are citizens of Denmark, although not of the European Union . </P> <P> Inuit are the descendants of what anthropologists call the Thule culture, who emerged from western Alaska around 1000 CE . They had split from the related Aleut group about 4,000 years ago and from northeastern Siberian migrants, possibly related to the Chukchi language group, still earlier . They spread eastwards across the Arctic . They displaced the related Dorset culture, the last major Paleo - Eskimo culture (in Inuktitut, called the Tuniit). </P> <P> Inuit legends speak of the Tuniit as "giants", people who were taller and stronger than the Inuit . Less frequently, the legends refer to the Dorset as "dwarfs". Researchers believe that the Dorset culture lacked the dogs, larger weapons and other technologies of the Inuit society, which gave the latter an advantage . By 1300, Inuit migrants had reached west Greenland, where they settled, moving into east Greenland over the following century . </P>

When did the inuit arrived in north america