The angakok is generally not loved--he knows too many unpleasant things that are going to happen, so he says.

The business of the angakok is mainly singing incantations and going into trances, for he has no medicines.

If a person is sick, he may prescribe abstinence from certain foods for a certain number of moons; for instance, the patient must not eat seal meat, or deer meat, but only the flesh of the walrus.

Monotonous incantations take the place of the white man's drugs.

The performance of a self-confident angakok is quite impressive--if one has not witnessed it too many times before.