Where did you get that information? The Inuit traditionally use a qulliq/kudlik (a lamp fueled by seal oil) for light, heat, etc. and everything I can find now says that it's not something introduced in the last couple of hundred years. For example,
Can you find anything that says fire was a necessity for survival for paleo-eskimo cultures because I remember reading it wasn't, but I'm having trouble googling a source for or against it.
I don't know about "necessity". Only that it was part of the Dorset culture for 2,000 years, and used by even earlier Arctic cultures.
A search for "dorset soapstone lamps" finds plenty of examples that lamps were used, and even pictures of the archeological finds of such lamps.
http://books.google.se/books?id=kGWuMa6sRYsC&pg=PA372... says "Winter light and heat were supplied by soapstone lamps ... The previous Dorset inhabitants of Arctic Canada had used soapstone lamps for some 2,000 years. ... Soapstone cooking pots ... "
http://books.google.se/books?id=iBCc5bQlP1wC&pg=PA179... has "The most conspicuous difference between Saqqaq and Dorset sites lies in the occurrence of fire-cracked rocks. These are common in Saqqaq sites ... During the Dorset culture, the heating of winter dwellings relied on the use of soapstone lamps."
(Note that "Saqqaq culture existed from around 2500 BCE until about 800 BCE", so is before Dorset, pushing back the use of fire even further.)
Or for a regular HTML link, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/dorset-cultu... says "Dorset culture, 500 BC-1500 AD, is known archaeologically from most coastal regions of arctic Canada. The Dorset people were descended from Palaeoeskimos of the PRE-DORSET CULTURE. Compared to their ancestors, the Dorset people had a more successful economy and lived in more permanent houses built of snow and turf and heated with soapstone oil lamps."
I don't know whether it's true (haven't googled it) but the natives of Tierra del Fuego were reported not to use fire much & to wander around nekkid. The natives didn't survive contact w/ Europeans very long, however.
> Among the archipelagic tribes of southern Chile it was predominantly the women who gathered shellfish on the beaches at low tide and who, from bark canoes, dived with a shell blade and a basket held in their teeth. The shellfish gatherers were careful not to exhaust the supply in one area. These people also always carried a fire on a clay platform in their canoes, both for warmth and for roasting shellfish over the coals. The men hunted roosting cormorants, penguins, steamer ducks, petrels, and other marine birds at night with torches and killed them with clubs. Ducks and geese were lured by decoys, then captured with pole snares.
http://books.google.se/books?id=G49CwQpozoUC&pg=PA29&...
says that Inuit were curious why people were hunting whales for oil for light, when they knew that seal oil was better for the qulliq.
Ahh, even better. The Dorset culture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorset_culture - 500 BCE–1500 CE) used soapstone lamps very much like the the qulliq for heat.