A remarkable collection of photographs documenting the lives of Inuit populations in Alaska and Greenland in the early 20th century. The photographs, all credited to the New York-based stock photo agency Brown Brothers, show Inuit adults and children with their families, their pets, on the hunt, and at play. Many of the photographs have handwritten notes in pencil to verso describing the contents of the image in greater detail.

Among the highlights are a picture of a boy with his dog, captioned “Like children of other lands they love their pets”; an image showing near-endless strings of herring eggs drying in the sun; an igloo in the early stages of construction; children playing with their “home made” sleigh; a family standing outside of their “summer tent”; and a particularly striking photograph of an Inuit woman ice fishing.

The handwritten notes to verso on the photographs refer to the people depicted as “Eskimos,” the common term among Western nations at the time for the indigenous peoples of the northern circumpolar region stretching from eastern Siberia through Alaska, northern Canada, and Greenland. While the exact etymology of the term remains uncertain, it is regarded by many Inuit and Yupik people as offensive and colonialist, since it was never a term used by either peoples to refer to themselves and homogenizes several distinct cultural and ethnic groups. The term is still in common if diminishing use throughout Alaska, where the term “Alaska Native” is gaining prominence as a means to refer to the Iñupiat (Alaskan Inuit), Yupik, Aleut, and other groups. Greenland’s Inuit population are officially designated as Greenlanders or Greenlandic Inuit, which includes the Kalaallit, Inughuit, and Tunumiit.