Rhythm of the Tides: my arctic experience

The Inuit Language

The arctic people of the world, no matter where they were located, shared a common lifestyle, language and culture. Before Canada, U.S., Denmark and Russia took over their traditional lands, they were united by a common tongue and belief system. Today's arctic people can participate at the Inuit Circumpolar Council speaking the same language that's been spoken for millennia, albeit with some dialectical differences.

Despite the fact that it was only a verbal language, Inukitut survived for thousands of years. Now that it's become a written language, it faces extinction. Inuit across the world face a major challenge, and that's why the circumpolar council has become so important: it's the unified voice of Inuit around the globe and language protection is high on the list of issues it deals with.

Ancient Inuit society was family based and everything was shared rather than traded. Because there was no need to buy and sell things to strangers, the concept of money and a written language never developed. As there was nothing to record and keep track of, writing was useless and so it never came about.

Of course, one might argue that the reason they didn't develop a written language was because they had no trees, and thus no paper like the ancient Egyptians had. The counter argument is that the ancient Babylonians had no paper either, but they used clay tablets to record important things on. Therefore, if there had been a need for writing, the Inuit would have found the means to do it. Using walrus tusks as the medium would not have been a big stretch for them. Their ingenuity has been demonstrated in so many ways!

Moreover, the ancient Incas of South America, who commanded an empire of over fifty million people before Christopher Columbus set sail for the new world, didn't have a written language either. They didn't need one as they also didn't have money. However, they did have the quipu, a numerical system for recording transactions throughout the vast empire. It used strings of different colours and various types of knots to record inventories of corn and potatoes, for example. Very few of them survived the Spanish conquest of the Incan Empire.

The downside of not having had a written language is that neither the Inuit, nor the Incas, have a recorded history, other than what has survived in the memory of the elders. Inuit knowledge and mythology have been passed down from generation to generation. But when the current elders are gone, the last to have experienced the traditional Inuit lifestyle, they take with them much of that history and knowledge.

There is so much to do and so little time left. Efforts are being made to record the traditional knowledge that resides in their brains before it's lost. If that can be achieved, then the written language that was developed by the missionaries will have paid some real dividends for the Inuit.

How was their verbal language codified into a written language?

It happened in steps. The English missionary and teacher James Evans is credited with the first step. In the early part of the nineteenth century, he developed a syllabary for the languages of the Ojibwa and Cree Indians. The second step occurred many years later, when other missionaries adapted the Cree syllabary to the Inukitut language.

So, what did nineteenth century Inuit gain by having a written language?

They probably didn't benefit much, as only a few had the time to learn to read and write: those who benefited from trading with the Europeans. For the majority, reading and writing was not a necessity, and learning how to do it interfered with more important things, like putting food on the table.

The third and final step was to convert this new syllabary into more recognizable characters by using the Latin alphabet. But, why do that? If most of the Inuit were too busy to learn the simpler syllabary, why introduce a more complex writing system?

The push came from the European missionaries because it allowed them to translate the bible into Inukitut so that more Inuit souls could be saved.

As a result of those efforts, today the vast majority of Inuit are Christian, and the vast majority of those are Anglican, which explains why the largest church in Iqaluit, and Nunavut, for that matter, is Anglican.

Like all ancient cultures, the Inuit believed in the spirit world. They believed that every living and inanimate thing has a spirit; and that when a person or animal dies, its spirit enters the spirit world and from there it can affect those still living. They further believed that everything in life happened through the involvement of some spirit, and that the shamans had the power and knowledge to communicate with the spirit world. Christianity changed that. Today, only the church hierarchy have that power. I suppose that the written language played some part in that transformation.

While the church converted many Inuit to Christianity, the government converted all of them to Canadians. When Nunavut came into being, in 1999, it inherited three official languages. Not only did they have to learn the old syllabic and the Latin form of their language, those in government positions have to also know English and French. Modern life has not been easy for the Inuit, and it should not be surprising that they have so many social problems. We southerners would be in far worse shape, if we had been hit with the same perfect storm that hit them.

That they're doing as well as they are is tribute to their tenacity and strength that allowed them to survive under conditions that others would have succumbed to. I take off my hat to them!