Over the past three decades, the anthropology of nature and that of ontologies and cosmologies have undergone considerable development, shedding new light on many phenomena, beliefs and experiences around the world. Drawing on ethnographic material from our research with the Inuit, this first presentation proposed to put into perspective and test several of these theoretical approaches - those of Tim Ingold, Philippe Descola, Roberte Hamayon, Ann Fienup-Riordan, Bruno Latour and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro - with the contemporary conceptions of the Inuit of Nunavut and Nunavik.
In these regions of the Canadian Arctic, numerous conflicts still regularly pit hunters, ecologists, biologists and politicians against each other. These profound differences demonstrate the Inuit's attachment to hunting, as well as the resilience of northern traditions in the midst of modernity. These same divergences also oblige the anthropologist to clarify certain apparent paradoxes, such as that of hunters who today prefer the "biblical environmentalism" promoted by evangelical groups to the environmentalism of ecologists. On a theoretical level, while contemporary ontological anthropology does shed light on several fundamental aspects of these hunters' thinking, traditions and customs, it does not always do justice to the complexity of Inuit perspectives, according to which humans and animals are indispensable to each other - but in an irreversible position, with the former remaining predators and the latter anonymous prey. From a naturalistic point of view, one might wonder whether Inuit animism is not distorted by an excessive humanization of animals, even though these hunters insist on a different hierarchy, in which animals are seen as prey, even though myths show that humans and animals interact with each other and share many commonalities.
