Inuit religion Inuit religion is the shared spiritual beliefs and practices of the Inuit, an Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous people from Alaska, northern Canada, parts of Siberia and Greenland. Their religion shares many similarities with some Al ...

, Pinga ("the one who is p onhigh") is a goddess of the hunt and medicine. She is heavily associated with the sky.

Caribou Inuit tradition

Caribou Inuit Caribou Inuit ( iu, Kivallirmiut/ᑭᕙᓪᓕᕐᒥᐅᑦ), barren-ground caribou hunters, are Inuit who live west of Hudson Bay in Kivalliq Region, Nunavut, between 61° and 65° N and 90° and 102° W in Northern Canada. They were originally na ...

communities, Pinga had some authority over

caribou Reindeer (in North American English, known as caribou if wild and ''reindeer'' if domesticated) are deer in the genus ''Rangifer''. For the last few decades, reindeer were assigned to one species, ''Rangifer tarandus'', with about 10 subspe ...

herds. She became angry if people killed more caribou than they could eat, so Caribou communities were careful not to over-hunt. Pinga is also a

psychopomp Psychopomps (from the Greek word , , literally meaning the 'guide of souls') are supernatural creatures, spirits, entities, angels, demons or deities in many religions whose responsibility is to escort newly deceased souls from Earth to the afte ...

, receiving the souls of the newly deceased and preparing them for reincarnation. '' Angakkuit'' (shamans) might see or communicate with Pinga or sometimes she'd send a spirit to speak with them. Some Caribou Inuit viewed Sila and Pinga as the same or similar while other communities differentiated between the two.

References

Animal goddesses Death goddesses Hunting goddesses Inuit goddesses Medicine goddesses Psychopomps {{NorthAm-myth-stub