Kuspuks. I would love to see Water Tribe characters in kuspuks. There's no conceivable reason they can't wear them. And if you wanna pull from the Earth Kingdom's very clear Chinese cultural influence and show there was some cultural diffusion through trade, perhaps some families have kuspuks that are made of a handsome brocade or are richly embroidered. Maybe they were gifts from good-hearted merchants or political allies passed down for generations. Also traditional jewelry like labrets and this piece of jewelry that's like a necklace but worn by the ears, called agluirutet in Central Yup'ik.
Ivory and whale bone figures are so lovely and iconic to us. And by whale bone I mean the actual bones of whales
Stuff like this figure made of a vertibra with an ivory face. Or scrimshaw in ivory
Like this tusk engraved with an image of a man on a dog sled, or maybe scrimshaw in baleen
Like this piece depicting a man walking toward the sun.
And Inupiaq words! Even something easy like "quayanaq" in place of "thank you." In my writing I have Water Tribe characters refer to Fire Nation soldiers and firebenders in general as "Ikunmiut" ("ikun" means match, as in a matchstick, so literally "matchstick people") with "Ikunmiu" for a singular form.
The concept of teasing cousins would be great. Basically, your cross cousins can tease you (with love and no ill will) to their hearts' content and you gotta put up with it. The example I found when first looking into the concept was these girls found their cousin sleeping and kissed him a bunch and he woke up with lipstick all over his face and all the other guys laughing. Another part of this was sometimes the cousins would write joke insult songs and sing them to each other. I'm not telling anyone they have to write goofy rap battles with Water Tribe characters, but if you wanted to, there's genuine irl cultural precendent for something like that.
Mentions of traditional dancing and singing. People wanna act all disappointed that Yue wasn't worshipped like a greek god or something but no one wants to consider that if the culture is supposed to be fantasy eskimo, she'd much more likely have a dance that tells her story than any sort of altar or statue dedicated to her. The same could be said of Sokka and Katara's victories during Sozin's Comet.
I'm gonna sound really vain for a hot second and say the entire reason I started this blog is because I didn't see the kind of content I write anywhere else, and got kind of tired of seeing people talk about the Inuit as if (a) they're a monolith and also the only circumpolar people worth talking about, and (b) as if these cultures and the people of them aren't still here? The Inuit, Inupiat, and Yup'ik peoples are still living and breathing and fighting like hell to not be forgotten. And yet people talk about us like we're Tolkein elves or dnd druids. It's so gross and exotifying. They don't have images of the Alaska Territorial Guard training to fight off the Japanese navy in their minds when they see Zuko land on the Southern Water Tribe. They don't recognize (likely accidental) references to Siļa in Huu's speach about the universe. They don't imagine Water Tribe characters engaging in traditional athletic games like eskimo stick pull or one foot high kick. They fill that void with vague mysticism and one hair style or cosmetic custom if we're lucky.
If any other Inupiat, Inuit, or Yup'ik fans of the Avatar franchise would like to add to this, by all means do. Self-promote even, if you wanna
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