At a time when western societies seem to have lost their markers, once found in sexual life, in gender relationships, in the sexual division of tasks, in standard definitions of the individual and the person, of family and kin, at a time, too, when they are bending under the weight of an exponential build-up of texts, theories and scientific discoveries, as ephemeral as they are brilliant, in the life sciences as well as in history, it is good to take time out to go and examine an indigenous society which, only fifty years ago, was still living from hunting, trapping, fishing and gathering. The people in this instance are the Inuit (as they name themselves, literally meaning: ‘the real humans’).