Eskimo-Aleut Research Articles

The Chukchi Influence on Chaplinski Yupik

Abstract Chaplinski Yupik (also often referred to as Siberian Yupik), a critically endangered Eskimo language spoken on the Bering coast in the north-eastern Siberia, shows numerous traces of language contact with Chukchi. A striking example is Chaplinski Yupik personal names, a significant part of which have Chukchi origin. In this study Chaplinski Yupik names are analyzed based on the genealogies of Chaplinski Yupik people compiled in 1970–1980s. The article focuses on phonological and grammatical adaptation of Chukchi names in Chaplinski Yupik. The case of personal names clearly reflects the history of Chukchi-Yupik language contact in the area – from an asymmetrical contact situation (the knowledge of Chukchi was common among Yupik speakers but not vice versa) and regarding Chukchi as a more prestigious language to a gradual loss of Chukchi-Yupik bilingualism by the end of the 20th century.

Postsecondary Inuit Students From Nunavut Pathways: When Students’ Satisfaction Meets Language Discrimination

We present a multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) based on a survey of 362 Inuit students and graduates from Nunavut who attended college or university in Canada. Most participants reported that they were satisfied with their postsecondary educational experience and that postsecondary education had greatly improved their income and job outcomes. Results also show that postsecondary education clearly contributes to capacity building: Half of the participants reported working in their communities, and a majority said they wanted to work there. Nevertheless, some issues still need to be addressed by policymakers, the most notable being gender inequality in terms of job status, systemic discrimination against Inuit language speakers in the educational system, and the need to provide more access to postsecondary education.

Le rôle de l’environnement physique arctique sur l’évolution du Tunumiisut, la langue inuit de la côte est du Groenland au xixe siècle

Depuis de nombreuses années, Pierre Robbe et Bernadette Robbe élaborent un dictionnaire encyclopédique sur la langue inuit de la côte est du Groenland, le tunumiisut, l’un des 16 dialectes que compte la langue parlée aujourd’hui par le peuple Inuit du détroit de Béring à la côte orientale du Groenland.Par rapport à tous ces dialectes et principalement à celui de la côte ouest du Groenland, le Kilaamiusut – la langue officielle de ce pays dont il est historiquement proche – le lexique du tunumiisut a profondément évolué au cours du xixe siècle. De nombreux mots ont été remplacés par des lexèmes descriptifs ou métaphoriques selon le modèle que les chamanes utilisaient pour ne pas nommer directement des entités potentiellement dangereuses.En s’appuyant sur l’histoire linguistique de l’inuit, l’archéologie, l’étude de la vie animale en relation avec le climat, de nombreux récits et témoignages collectés, les auteurs suggèrent que la compréhension de ce particularisme, qui résulte certes de facteurs d’ordre culturel, est néanmoins étroitement lié aux conditions écologiques de cette région de l’Arctique (climat, glace, faune), conditions qui fluctuent au cours du temps entre des périodes fastes et des phases catastrophiques pour la vie animale et, partant, pour celles des humains dont dépendait directement l’existence.

A socially anchored approach to spatial language in Kalaallisut

Abstract In this article we demonstrate the fundamental relationship between the linguistic encoding of spatial relations and the topography of Greenland as an island, more specifically as a large island with considerable inland ice, and social engagement with that space. Kalaallisut (or Greenlandic, ISO 639-3 kal) uses an absolute frame of reference and a cardinal direction system that arises from an environmentally anchored coastal orientation system. Sociocultural knowledge and experiences play an important role in this system. It is deeply rooted in the geophysical environment, and changes to that environment can and do affect the linguistic encoding of space. Crucially, changes in people’s relationship with the environment affect how it is conceptualized in language. This is part of a broader pattern of Inuit language usage in changing Arctic environments and societies.

Nunatsiavut, ‘our beautiful land’: Inuit landscape ethnoecology in Labrador, Canada

For Inuit in the subarctic transition zone of northeastern Canada, an intimate knowledge of the environment and local biodiversity is crucial for successful traditional activities. This study examines what kinds of landscape features and habitats Inuit of Nunatsiavut recognize and name. During interviews, community members (mostly Elders) were shown photographs from the region and were asked to describe and name salient types of places in Labrador Inuttitut. The most frequently reported geographical units dealt with the region’s topography (e.g., mountain, island, flat-place), hydrology (e.g., river, bay), and superficial characteristics (e.g., bedrock, permanent snow patch). Ecological considerations were also prominent, such as plant associations and animal habitats (e.g., shrubby-place, wetland, caribou-return-to-place). Areas were often characterized by a dominant species or substrate type, being named using the plural form of the species and (or)substrate (e.g., “napâttuk” meaning ‘tree’ and “napâttuit” meaning ‘forest’ or “siugak” meaning ‘sand’ and “siugalak” meaning ‘sandy-area’). Some types of places reported by Inuit were significant mainly for traditional activities (e.g., berry-patch, seal-place, dry-wood-place, danger-place), aiding navigation and resource finding. Integrating Inuit conceptions of ecosystems and their component landscape units with those of contemporary science can improve our understanding of subarctic ecology, benefit climate change adaptation strategies, and Inuit language as well as culture conservation initiatives.

Reflecting on the Official Languages Act at 50: Was the Advent of the Charter so Great After All?

This piece examines more closely the relationship between the OLA and the Charter, arguing that the relationship between the two rights instruments is much more fraught than commonly believed. The advent of the Charter and its entrenchment of language rights have always been seen as unquestionably positive for the OLA. However, it may be time to re-evaluate that belief. Using the concept of “constitutional displacement,” the article suggests that the Charter also had the effect of overshadowing the OLA, which limits its potential for reform. A similar fate befell other statutes, such as the Canadian Bill of Rights. By way of contrast, the OLA is compared to the Inuit Language Protection Act (ILPA) in Nunavut to suggest that the latter enjoys a higher profile in the territory and has more potential for expansion precisely because of the lack of clearly defined, entrenched Indigenous language rights in the constitution.

Initiatives on preserving the Inuktitut language in Nunavut

The subject of this research is the main initiatives undertaken in Nunavut aimed at preservation and development of the Inuktitut, which is the language of one of the three indigenous peoples of Canada – the Inuit. According to UNESCO, the Inuktitut alongside the majority of languages of the indigenous peoples of Canada, is currently classified as “definitely endangered”, and its preservation requires new solutions of the government. Indigenous languages are not only a means of communication, but also represent a complex system of the centuries-old knowledge, play a significant role in the identity of indigenous peoples, conservation of their culture, worldview, and self-determination. The problem of preservation of language as the crucial element of ethno-cultural heritage becomes increasingly important in the modern era of globalization, which has captured all countries and continents. The novelty of this study consists in analysis and assessment of the experience of the Canadian region Nunavut in implementation of bilingual education models in the regional educational institutions, as well as in the use of information technologies for popularizing the Inuktitut language. Despite the fact that the overall language situation in Nunavut remains complicate, immersion into the language on the levels of preschool and school education, development of media, television and radio broadcasting, the last two decades mark positive trends in the number of Intuits with the command of Inuit language. The experience of Nunavut is of practical importance for the development and implementation of federal and regional programs aimed at supporting the languages and cultures of the indigenous small-numbered peoples of Russia.

Perspectives of Nunavut patients and families on their cancer and end of life care experiences

ABSTRACT The present study arose from a recognition among service providers that Nunavut patients and families could be better supported during their care journeys by improved understanding of people’s experiences of the health-care system. Using a summative approach to content analysis informed by the Piliriqatigiinniq Model for Community Health Research, we conducted in-depth interviews with 10 patients and family members living in Nunavut communities who experienced cancer or end of life care. Results included the following themes: difficulties associated with extensive medical travel; preference for care within the community and for family involvement in care; challenges with communication; challenges with culturally appropriate care; and the value of service providers with strong ties to the community. These themes emphasise the importance of health service capacity building in Nunavut with emphasis on Inuit language and cultural knowledge. They also underscore efforts to improve the quality and consistency of communication among health service providers working in both community and southern referral settings and between service providers and the patients and families they serve.

Languages Canada: The Paradoxes of Linguistic Inclusivity – Colonial/ Founding, Aboriginal and Immigrant language rights

AbstractThis article approaches the question of inclusivity in contemporary Canadian society through the lens of official language policy. Although Canada has well-developed bilingual policies for English and French at the federal and provincial levels, the only jurisdictions which (at the time of writing) afford official language status to Aboriginal languages in addition to English and French are the Northwest Territories (nine First Nations and Inuit languages) and Nunavut (the Inuit language/s). The article situates the development of these territorial language policies within the contexts of Canadian history, the emergence of language policy more generally in Western societies, and the human rights revolution, and offers a tentative evaluation of them in terms of inclusivity, noting the paradox that inclusive recognition of the territories’ indigenous languages has not been extended to the immigrant languages, whose speakers partly outnumber the smaller Aboriginal-language communities, as well as the daunting problems faced in turning official recognition into practical implementation.

Diagnosing Object Agreement vs. Clitic Doubling: An Inuit Case Study

Much recent literature has focused on whether the verbal agreement morphology cross-referencing objects is true φ-agreement or clitic doubling. I address this question on the basis of comparative data from related Inuit languages, Inuktitut and Kalaallisut (West Greenlandic), and argue that both possibilities are attested in Inuit. Evidence for this claim comes from diverging syntactic and semantic properties of the object DPs encoded by this cross-referencing morphology. I demonstrate that object DPs in Inuktitut display various properties mirroring the behavior of clitic-doubled objects crosslinguistically, while their counterparts in Kalaallisut display none of these properties, indicating genuine φ-agreement rather than clitic doubling. Crucially, this distinction cannot be detected morphologically, as the relevant cross-referencing morphemes are uniform across Inuit. Therefore, this article cautions against the reliability of canonical morphological diagnostics for (agreement) affixes vs. clitics.

Palaeo-Eskimo genetic ancestry and the peopling of Chukotka and North America

Paleo-Eskimos were the first people to settle vast regions of the American Arctic around 5,000 years ago, and were subsequently joined and largely displaced around 1,000 years ago by ancestors of present-day Inuit and Yup’ik1–3. The genetic relationship between Paleo-Eskimos and Native American, Inuit, Yup’ik and Aleut populations remains uncertain4–7. Here we present new genomic data for 48 ancient individuals from Chukotka, East Siberia, the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, and the Canadian Arctic. We co-analyze these data with new data from present-day Alaskan Iñupiat and West Siberian populations and published genomes. Employing new methods based on rare allele and haplotype sharing as well as established methods4,8–10, we show that Paleo-Eskimo-related ancestry is ubiquitous among populations speaking Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut languages. We develop a comprehensive model for the Holocene peopling events of Chukotka and North America, and show that several key migrations connected to the origin of the Na-Dene peoples, the peopling of the Aleutian Islands, and the spread of Yup’ik and Inuit across the Arctic region are genetically linked to a single Siberian source related to Paleo-Eskimos.

Documenting Linguistic Knowledge in an Inuit Language Atlas

The traditional method of orally transmitting language is weakening with the passing of fluent Elders and language erosion in contemporary Inuit society. Language documentation is a vital component of language maintenance and revitalization. In this paper we present a pilot online, multimedia cybercartographic Atlas of the Inuit Language in Canada, the goal of which is to help protect and strengthen the vitality of Inuit dialects through the documentation of their words. The main component of the atlas is a multidialectal database of written and spoken words. We discuss the role of dictionaries in language documentation, introduce the features of the atlas, explore the appeal of the atlas to different types of users (in particular, language learners), and present future directions for the atlas project.

Inuit-Centred Learning in the Inuit Bachelor of Education Program

The Inuit Bachelor of Education (IBED) program in Labrador is a partnership between the Nunatsiavut Government (NG) and Memorial University of Newfoundland. It is preparing teachers to be key participants in NG’s education system. The IBED students and Sylvia Moore, the lead faculty member in the program, have based this paper on a collaborative presentation. The writers explore the tensions between the current provincial curriculum offered in the regional schools and a curriculum that is founded on Inuit history, culture, and worldview, restores the central role of the Inuit language, and is community-based as recommended in the 2011 National Strategy on Inuit Education. The students discuss four key threads of culturally relevant education: land, language, resources, and local knowledge. Moore reflects on how the IBED program incorporates these same elements to support Inuit identity and the developing pedagogy of the pre-service teachers.

Antipassive Adds an Argument

AbstractIn this paper, I give an analysis of the syntax of the antipassive construction in the Eskimo-Aleut language family. In this account, I follow previous works, such as Benua (1997), Basilico (2004, 2012), Aldridge (2012), and Johns and Kučerová (2017) and posit that the antipassive, oblique argument occupies a different position than the transitive, absolutive object. However, I do not argue that the absolutive direct object argument and the oblique antipassive object occupy the same base position. Instead, I analyze the antipassive marker as an element which creates an argument position: it turns the verb to which it is attached from a predicate of events into a relation between an event and an entity, introducing the undergoer thematic role predicate and its argument. By considering that the antipassive morpheme introduces an argument, rather than saturating or demoting one, we explain a number of interesting phenomena: why ‘agentive’ verbs do not appear with an antipassive morpheme while ‘patientive’ verbs do, why the antipassive is associated with the inchoative as well as the applicative, and why transitive impersonal verbs do not undergo antipassivization.

Nolwena Monnier (ed.), Languages for Specific Purposes in History

At first sight this book is a curiously heterogeneous collection of papers. The subjects treated range historically from the 1st century AD to the present day, geographically from ancient Judea to Lithuania, and linguistically from koine Greek to the Eskimo language, Aleut. The title is a little ambiguous: here it becomes clear that history refers to the historical periods that these studies cover, and is not meant to be taken as referring to the academic discipline of history. Despite their ...

Transformational Bilingual Learning: Re-Engaging Marginalized Learners through Language, Culture, Community, and Identity

The Miqqut project was a participatory action research project through which Inuit language and literacy learning was embedded in a traditional skills program. Community-based researchers tracked learners’ progress through entrance, exit, and post-program interviews and questionnaires, as well as through participant observation. Results show that participants became more willing to communicate and improved in Inuktitut language and literacy. The program built strong identities and relational networks. Participants became anchored in lifelong learning as they gained confidence in contexts within which they would continue to practise and develop what they had learned.

Inuit principals and the changing context of bilingual education in Nunavut

Although positive policies and laws promote the Inuit language andInuit qaujimajatuqangit(IQ) in all sectors of Nunavut society, including at all levels of Inuit schooling, many Nunavut schools are still struggling to overturn colonizing practices and mindsets that have hindered effective education of Inuit youth. In this article, we document perceptions of students, teachers, principals, parents, and community members related to school transformation under the leadership of an Inuk principal and and Inuk co-principal in two Nunavut high schools. These oral accounts show that having an Inuit principal enhanced students’ opportunities to learn and practise the Inuit language and IQ through enhanced, localized programming and increased exposure to Inuit ways of speaking and being. Parents were mobilized and equipped to support and advocate for their children, including joining local District Education Authorities, when they were able to communicate easily and effectively with the principal, and saw their knowledge, culture, and language valued and practised in the school system. We argue that the strong, community-anchored leadership modelled in these two schools transformed the context for effective intercultural, bilingual education. Results point to the importance of leadership by school principals in actualizing the goals set out in Nunavut’s Education Act (2008), governmental mandates, and language laws.

“We don’t have the words in Inuktitut”: Pharmacy translations in Nunavut, Canada

AbstractIn efforts to preserve and revitalize Aboriginal languages, recently introduced language legislation in Nunavut, Canada requires the availability of all essential services in Inuit languages. In Nunavut, the majority of inhabitants speak an Inuit language as their mother tongue but pharmaceutical health care is currently only available in English or French. Some challenges to legislative compliance include multiple dialects spoken across the Territory, the absence of any standardized Inuit terminology, and a complete absence of any pharmacists or pharmacy technicians who speak an Inuit language. Language concordant pharmacy health care is essential as it informs patient understanding of dosing instructions, side effects and treatment rationale which reduce adverse drug events, increase patient adherence and maximize the benefits of pharmacotherapy. The development of Inuit pharmaceutical terminology enhances the appreciation of Inuit language adaptability, while building cross-cultural understandi...

How the accusative became the relative

AbstractThe Eskimo-Uralic hypothesis of a genetic link between Eskimo-Aleut and the Uralic languages is now reaching its second centenary. Two major problems with its advancement sinceBergsland’s (1959)summary of its status are addressed in this article. The first of these is the lack of an obvious correlate of the ubiquitous Eskimo-Aleut (EA) relative case marker -min Uralic; the other is the lack of anm-initial first person singular morpheme in EA to correlate with that of the Uralic languages. That the EA singular genitive/relative marker -m— as well as the instrumental/accusative singular -məkbased on it — might be cognate with Uralic singular accusative -mwas suggested already bySauvageot (1953), but no firm conclusion on the matter has since been reached. This has remained a tantalizing possibility, despite the conflicting semantics. However, the remarkable morphosyntactic parallels between Eskimo-Aleut and Samoyedic in particular have grown more apparent with recent publications. A solution is proposed, linking the emergence of ergativity in the Eskimo-Aleut family with a reanalysis of the original nominative-accusative case marking system.

Situating Educational Issues in Nunavut: Perceptions of School Leaders and Teachers

The purpose of this article is to describe some educational contexts and challenges experienced by students and educators who live in Nunavut. The data for this qualitative study include twenty-four semi-structured interviews involving fourteen principals, vice-principals, and teachers from Nunavut. Four themes surfaced: student attendance, legacy of residential schools, lack of Inuktitut/Inuinnaqtun resources, and transient teachers. With regard to student attendance, participants viewed this issue as one of the most challenging aspects of their education system. Second, participants emphasized that the Nunavut Department of Education was promoting fluent Inuktitut/Inuinnaqtun and English learners. While participants valued the importance of maintaining the vitality of the Inuit language, they believed resources to promote the Inuit language were limited. Third, many principals indicated that the legacy of residential schools was a reason some school-parent relationships lacked an element of trust. Last, participants explained that the constant teacher turnover caused relational strains between educators, students, parents, and community members. Cultural compatibility theory was employed as the philosophical basis to conceptualize findings. This theory assumes that a student needs an educational experience where that learner can see, feel, hear, taste, and touch his/her cultural values and beliefs. The design of educational programs need to foster the unique identities of Inuit peoples through the implementation of curricula built upon local Inuit culture, language, and knowledge. In doing so, attendance issues within school can be addressed, for example. Also, when parents see their culture within the school curriculum and environment, they will feel more welcomed and at home in this familiar context.