Joshua Kango and his dog team in Iqaluit   photo: Nick Newbery

• a class of domestic dogs that emerged as an ecotype within a specific ecological niche;
• largely the result of environmental adaptation, mostly under conditions of natural selection; influenced by human preferences and interference;
• fits the requirement of a specific human society living in a particular ecosystem.

            The Primitive and Aboriginal Dog Society further defines a landrace as²:

… a naturally occurring type of dog ‘breed’ in which the dogs are similar in appearance and usually behaviour. They were created by natural selection for their local environments (example: double vs single coats depending on climate) and through only a small amount of direct artificial selection. These are not ‘pure’ breeds in the modern sense of having a narrow gene pool selected for some purpose, with no other breeds allowed to be crossed in…Other landraces maintain their general appearance and temperaments due to only small genetic contributions of foreign dogs being absorbed into the larger landrace, and also because the traits of the foreign dogs are not compatible and cannot be maintained under natural selection…

The Inuit Dog is an aboriginal dog.^3,4 Profoundly different from "cultured" breeds, they are still domestic but:

• have evolved by natural selection under conditions of free life and close interactions with people;
• are a unique piece of nature, time bound and place bound, most similar to zoological subspecies;
• are historically associated with ethnic groups and cultures;
• are the oldest and the only natural…dogs in existence.

Aboriginal but not primitive. The Inuit Dog was at one time considered a “primitive aboriginal landrace”. However, according to the Primitive and Aboriginal Dog Society⁶.

The only truly primitive dogs today are the Australian (and perhaps the Thai) Dingo and the New Guinea Singing Dog. These are the only dogs still living in a totally wild state. Although many have been tamed (as the first specimens brought to their native lands must have been) and so reproduced in and near aboriginal habitation, they have never been domesticated. They are the proto-domesticate ‘generalized’ dog and are, according to the available evidence, still close in morphology, and probably behaviour, to the dogs of about 15000 years ago.

Inuit Family, one dog only, 1926, Baker Lake, N.W.T.
                                                                Credit: L. T. Burwash
                Dept. of Indian Affairs and Northern Dev. collection
                                                     Library and Archives Canada

Inuit Dog, Iqaluit 2020 Photo: Jake Gearheard

Arctic Wolf     Photo: Corel