Demarus.com is a page to share our family's pictures. Demarus is the mom, Jason is the dad, and Isis is the baby!

Demarus originally wanted to have her own domain name because a) her name is unique and 2) she wanted to try to sell hand-knitted work online. Oh, what dreams. Demarus still loves to knit. Jason took over the page, but now that he's shown Demarus Frontpage.. watch out.. she might type blogs or something!

Demarus says:

I am Iñupiaq, or Northern Alaskan Coastal  Eskimo. Geesh, what a way to describe my people. Eskimo is an Algonquin word that they used to describe us to explorers and it means "eaters of raw meat". It really sucks to grow up using that word with pride only to learn what it actually means and that's how people see us. I think that this a common misunderstanding with Native tribes. They are redefined by outsiders with terms that symbolized what little outsiders knew of the tribe. Like the Blackfoot or Nez Pierce, I wish that I knew what they called themselves. I think that a lot of tribes call themselves by the word that means "People" in their language.

We like to call ourselves Iñupiat (plural), which means "The Real People". This was a way to distinguish ourselves from the spirits that liked to visit us during dances and feasts, the animal spirits that took human form, and the evil spirits that thwart heroes in legends. I've also heard some say that Iñupiat means "The Traditional People", people who do things in the good traditional way. I think that this definition is very true today. We are good hunters, we have feasts and share our food with the whole community, we dance and celebrate our harvests, we sew parkas and make artwork, and we teach our children the Iñupiaq language and values.

Just recently I've noticed that people like to say that their babies look Eskimos when they're newborns or when they're wearing a furry hood. Why does it irk me? Because I haven't heard of anyone saying "Hey, our baby looks X-ish, let's call it our X-ian baby", insert any other race or culture besides Eskimo. I try to explain that Eskimo is historically a derogatory term and that when it's used I get offended, even if people don't know what the real meaning is. But some people don't think that if a word is not used in a derogatory manner then that means that it's not derogatory and I shouldn't be upset. I think it's wrong to use a word if you know that people don't like it (especially true of Canadians who know that Inuit is the preferred word), and it's wrong to call a baby by an ethnicity that it's not, and also wrong to call a baby an ethnicity just because of what they're wearing. (More on this later, because Isis says "owoh, ahoh" which means "I'm tired". Who reads this About page anyway?)