Fwd: [sovernspeakout] [Haa Ai] Writing in Inuktitut: An Historical Perspective by Kenn Harper

[David Lewis]

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>Subject: [sovernspeakout] [Haa Ai] Writing in Inuktitut: An Historical
>Perspective by Kenn  Harper
>
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>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Lessard, George [mailto:glessard at gov.nu.ca]
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>Subject: [Haa Ai] Writing in Inuktitut: An Historical Perspective by
>Kenn Harper
>
>
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>Writing in Inuktitut: An Historical Perspective*
>Copyright. The National Library of Canada. (Revised: 1998-02-23)
>
>Sections
>
>Early Greenlandic Writing From Greenland to Labrador
>Alaskan Picture Writing
>Inuktitut Syllabics: the Origins
>Adapting Syllabics to Inuktitut
>The Spread of Syllabics
>Teaching Syllabics
>Learning from Parents
>A Permanent Record
>First, and Only, Syllabic Book by an Inuk
>Need for Syllabic Reform
>Footnotes
>
>by Kenn Harper
>
>"We were stupid. We should have thought of writing on sealskins."1 So said
>Peter Pitseolak, commenting on his forebears' failure to leave a legacy of
>written records.
>
>Peter Pitseolak, Inuk writer and author of People from our Side and Escape
>from Death, who realized the value of written records. Credit: Dorothy
>Eber.(10K)
>
>Throughout the North, Inuit had no traditional writing systems. No attempts
>were made to develop writing systems for Inuit until after contact with
>whites. When that contact occurred, it was white missionaries who made the
>first attempts to reduce the Inuktitut language to written form.
>
>Early Greenlandic Writing
>
>The earliest attempts to develop an orthography for the Inuktitut language
>were the attempts by Lutheran ministers to develop a written form for
>Greenlandic. Poul Egede, son of Hans Egede, the first missionary to
>Greenland, was the pioneer in this work. He drew on the earlier work of his
>father and other missionaries in translating the New Testament, which was
>published in its entirety in Greenlandic in 1766. By 1760 Egede had also
>published a grammar of Greenlandic. In writing Greenlandic for Greenlanders,
>Egede used Roman orthography, but one which differed in some points from
>that of Egede. In 1822 a third translation of the New Testament was
>published, this one by the German Moravian missionary, Johan Conrad
>Kleinschmidt; it too differed orthographically from the previous
>translation. The aim of these early attempts was usually not to produce an
>Inuktitut orthography for Inuit, but rather "for use of other white people,
>and possibly for the student from amongst the Eskimo people who has been
>trained by white scholarship.2
>
>By the mid-1800s it was obvious that there was a need for a standard method
>of writing in Greenlandic. If not, people would continue to write
>Greenlandic in a way which seemed best for each individual but which,
>together, would be very confusing to the readers.
>
>Greenland was fortunate at that time to have a remarkable man working in its
>Moravian priesthood. He was Samuel Kleinschmidt. The son of a missionary, he
>had been born in Greenland and had grown up speaking Greenlandic. His
>interests were wide, but his most important contributions were to the
>cultural life of Greenland, through the publication of his Greenlandic
>grammar and dictionary and his contributions to the newspaper,
>Atuagagdliutit. Kleinschmidt worked on Greenlandic orthographic reform for
>many years. As a linguist he was far ahead of his time. In 1850 he wrote:
>
>It is a serious fault when different sounds are indicated by means of one
>letter, or one sound by means of different letters, and the fault is doubly
>grave in a language which is so thoroughly regular as that of Greenland.3 By
>1871 Kleinschmidt was satisfied with his revised orthography and used it
>consistently in the dictionary he published that year. His innovation became
>the official standard for written Greenlandic for the next century, and was
>used consistently in books, newspapers and all official publications.
>
> >From Greenland to Labrador
>
>The first missionaries to Labrador were Moravians with Greenlandic
>experience. They established a mission in Labrador in the late eighteenth
>century. Most of these missionaries were fluent in Greenlandic already, and
>found few differences between Greenlandic and the Inuit dialect of Labrador.
>
>
>
> >From Greenland they brought a Roman orthography to Labrador, but their
>arrival pre-dated Kleinschmidt's work on the development of standard
>Greenlandic orthography by almost a century, so the Moravian orthography
>introduced in Labrador and used to this day differs in many points from
>Kleinschmidt's Greenlandic. In 1899 a writer made this comment about
>Labrador Inuttut:
>
>Unfortunately the orthography of Eskimo which we usually use is still very
>imperfect, in itself varied and inconsistent.4
>
>The difficulties, in the opinion of a linguist, were "largely due to the
>fact that the Labrador dialect had never been independently analysed. The
>orthography was based on Greenlandic, which was demonstrably different from
>Labrador Inuttut."5
>
>Samuel Kleinschmidt has been credited with the development of a standard
>Greenlandic orthography used for over one hundred years in Greenlandic
>publications. (19K)
>
>The earliest detailed grammar of Labrador Inuttut, written in German by
>Bourquin, relied heavily on Kleinschmidt's analysis of Greenlandic and its
>presumed similarity to Labrador Inuttut.
>
>Roman orthographies were used too to write Inuktitut in the western Canadian
>Arctic, although no standard form developed.
>
>Alaskan Picture Writing
>
>The only place where Inuit attempted to develop their own systems of writing
>was Alaska. The most well-known innovator there was Uyaqoq, a Yupik-speaker
>from the Kuskokwim River, better known by the name Helper Neck ("neck" being
>the English translation of his name), a helper at a Moravian mission
>station. About 1900 Neck, who could neither read nor write English, began to
>develop a system of picture-writing. Other Inuit, working at the mission
>station and inspired by Neck's innovation, developed their own
>picture-writing systems, most of which could be read only by themselves.
>
>Meanwhile Neck continued to work on his system, adding extra symbols and
>eventually developing a syllabic writing system, that is, a system of
>writing in which one character represented one syllable; it was composed of
>Yupik (Eskimo) phonetics, English words and
>arbitrary symbols. While Neck developed his unique system, some of his
>closest associates continued to develop the earliest stage of his work, the
>pictorial writing.
>
>In northern Alaska, in the Inupiaq-speaking area, an independent development
>of picture-writing occurred in the Buckland area on Kotzebue Sound, where
>Lily Savok and her mother, Kiloraq Ruth Eyak, developed a style quite
>different from that of Helper Neck. Their system was not fully developed
>until 1914. A third system was developed on Nunivak Island in the 1940s by
>Edna Kenick, the wife of a missionary.
>
>A sample of Alaskan picture writing by Edna Kenick from Nunivak, Alaska.
>During the 1950s Edna Kenick wrote 49 passages from the Bible in picture
>writing like that pictured here. The manuscript for this material is now
>kept in the Royal Library in Copenhagen, Denmark. (27K)
>
>It is significant that all of these developments, occuring independently of
>each other, were made by Inuit associated with missionary work. Further,
>they were not intended to be used in writing to other Inuit, but only as
>memory aids to assist the innovators in their preaching on Biblical texts.
>
>Pages from an Eskimo-Russian dictionary compiled by E.S. Rubtsov under the
>editorship of G. A. Menovskikov and published in Moscow in 1971. Note the
>cyrillic Russian script. (27K and 42K)
>
>The Alaskan picture-writing is a thing of the past. No-one uses it today and
>the originators of the various systems have all died. Save for these unique
>attempts by Inuit of Alaska to develop their own writing systems, the Roman
>alphabet has been used to write Alaskan Yupik and Inupiaq. It was also used
>in Siberia, before it was eventually supplanted by a system using Russian
>Cyrillic characters.
>
>Inuktitut Syllabics: the Origins
>
>In the eastern Canadian Arctic, excluding Labrador, the situation developed
>quite differently, and it took its cue from the work done in the
>mid-nineteenth century among Cree Indians at Norway House.
>
>In 1840 the Reverend James Evans, a Wesleyan missionary, transferred from
>southern Ontario to Norway House, then part of the Hudson's Bay Company's
>vast territory. In Ontario, Evans had struggled to devise a means of
>recording accurately the sounds of the native Ojibway speech in the Roman
>alphabet, but had finally given up and developed a method of his own. He
>knew Pitman shorthand and turned this knowledge to good advantage in
>creating a syllabic script. He created nine symbols, each of which could be
>written in four different
>positions; these were sufficient to represent the vowel and consonant
>combinations of Ojibway. The mission board to which Evans reported, however,
>did not favour innovation of this nature and refused him permission to use
>his creation.
>
>James Evans, who first devised a system of syllabic characters for Canadian
>Indian languages. (17K)
>
>
>Almost two decades later, at Norway House, Evans learned the Cree language
>but again faced difficulties in reducing it to writing in the Roman
>alphabet. Here he re-examined his syllabic system, modifying it somewhat to
>suit the peculiarities of the Cree language. He taught the simple system to
>the Indians at Norway House and produced religious material for them to
>read. The results were amazing. The system was so simple that it could be
>mastered and literacy acquired within a few hours. Moreover, every Indian
>who mastered the system became a teacher of it, and use of the system spread
>rapidly as far as the Rocky
>Mountains. Even on the trail, Indians were able to communicate by leaving
>messages drawn with charred sticks in birchbark sheets. One writer at the
>time noted:
>
>The Cree syllabarium from which the Inuktitut syllabic writing system was
>derived. (17K)
>
>All accounts represent the diffusion of the syllabic characters among the
>Indian camps of the vast interior occupied by the Cree tribes as
>extraordinary. Parties descending rivers would exchange messages by
>inscriptions on banks or bars of the stream and its acquisition was only the
>labour of a few hours.6 James Evans became known as "the man who made
>birchbark talk."
>
>Indians with James Evans reading syllabics written on birch bark. (36K)
>
>Evans had difficulty meeting the demand for reading material in Cree. The
>Hudson's Bay Company had prohibited the importation of printing presses into
>their territory, so Evans improvised again - he produced material using
>syllabic characters carved in wood, lead melted from the linings of tea
>chests, ink made from soot mixed with fish oil, and birchbark for paper.
>
>Eventually his missionary society was able to provide him with type, ink,
>paper, a hand press and a building.
>
>The use of syllabics prevailed among the Cree because the Indians themselves
>favoured the system. This is not to say that there was not criticism of the
>syllabics. The Anglican Bishop of Rupert's Land wrote in 1849:
>
>The Wesleyans ... have, very unfortunately ... adopted a new character ... A
>few of the Indians can read by means of these syllabic characters; but if
>they had only been taught to read their own language in our letters, it
>would have been one step towards the acquisition of the English tongue.7
>
>The bishop thus saw literacy as a means to speed assimilation.
>
>Roman Catholic and Anglican missionaries nevertheless adopted the syllabic
>script for their translation work among the Indians. In 1861, 15 years after
>Evans' death, the British and Foreign Bible Society in London produced the
>entire Bible in Cree syllabics.
>
>Adapting Syllabics to Inuktitut
>
>Edmund James Peck is usually given credit for the adaptation of Evans' Cree
>Syllabics to Inuktitut, but this is not strictly correct. The adaptation was
>actually made by John Horden and E.A. Watkins, missionaries sent from
>England to the Diocese of Moosonee.
>
>By 1856 Horden, working at Moose Factory, and Watkins at Fort George, were
>producing material in syllabics for Inuit. On June 19, 1856, Watkins noted:
>
>This morning I spent an hour and a half with an Esquimaux youth, who had
>come ... from Little Whale River ... He seemed very anxious to acquire a
>knowledge of the syllabic characters.8
>
>
>In the same year he mentions having received back from Moose Factory some
>Bible selections which he had prepared in Inuktitut and sent down to Moose
>Factory for printing in syllabics.
>
>It was soon evident, however, that the syllabic characters were being
>severely "strained" by the demands of Inuktitut, and that some revisions
>would be necessary if Inuit were to learn and use the system well. Horden
>himself was not convinced that a revision was desirable, but in 1865 he met
>with Watkins in London, under instruction from the Church Missionary
>Society, to modify the Cree system to the Inuktitut language.
>
>John Horden (left) and E.A. Watkins, two missionaries from England, adapted
>Cree syllabics to suit Inuktitut. (10K)
>
>
>Interestingly enough, one of the improvisations that Horden and Watkins
>brought to the system was not their own but one that they had borrowed from
>the legacy of Robert Hunt. Hunt, a Church Missionary Society missionary who
>had gone to Rupert's Land in 1849, established Stanley Mission near Lac La
>Ronge in what is now Saskatchewan. In 1853 he proposed some modifications to
>Evans' Cree syllabics, but his suggestions did not catch on and were never
>formally adopted. The method used today of representing syllable-final
>consonants and vowel length were Horden's and Watkins' adoption of Hunt's
>suggestion.
>
>It is clear that the adaptation of Cree syllabics to the Inuktitut language
>was made by Horden and Watkins. Why then is Edmund James Peck usually
>credited with this accomplishment? The answer is probably that Horden and
>Watkins were primarily missionaries to the Indians and lived among Indians.
>The Inuit work was a side-line for them and neither was able to devote much
>time to it.
>
>
>The Spread of Syllabics
>
>The Inuit work would not flourish until a missionary was recruited to labour
>permanently among the Inuit. That did not happen until 1876 when Edmund Peck
>was called to the ministry. His task was to translate Biblical material into
>Inuktitut in the syllabic script, promote its use, and teach reading and
>writing to the people.
>
>Edmund Peck - known to Inuit as Uqammak, the one who speaks well - was
>assigned the task of translating Biblical material into Iunktitut. (10K)
>
>
>Peck had been born in England in 1850. After a brief career in the navy, he
>took a year of theological training before coming to Hudson Bay with the
>Church Missionary Society in 1876. He established a mission at Little Whale
>River where he ministered to both Indians and Inuit, but his particular love
>was work with Inuit. Initially Peck relied heavily on a Moravian translation
>of the New Testament in the Labrador Inuttut dialect, which he had gotten in
>London before his departure. He studied that material on his Atlantic
>crossing and preached from it on his arrival in Little Whale River. He wrote
>that, on his arrival, "I read to them the Word of God, which, to my great
>joy, they understood."9 Peck relied heavily on Reverend Theodor Bourquin's
>study of the Labrador dialect and Samuel Kleinschmidt's study of
>Greenlandic, which he called "this mine of linguistic treasure,"10 but he
>was aware that the dialect of lower Hudson Bay differed somewhat and he made
>use of native assistants in getting a grip on those differences. He wrote:
>
>... in finding out how far the Moravian Brethren's translation of the New
>Testament was understood in the Little Whale River dialect, both John
>Melucto and Adam Lucy proved most valuable helpers.11
>
>Peck set himself a rigorous schedule for the study of native languages. In
>his diary for November 1876 he noted:
>
>My plan is to write down some simple words and sentences. I then get the
>corresponding Indian or Esquimaux words ... I find all very willing to help
>me, for which I am indeed thankful. My daily collection averages from eighty
>to a hundred words. These are learned the following day, and brought into
>use as soon as possible ... I have now got some thousands of words, mostly
>Esquimaux, which I gathered by study of the Testament, and from different
>friends.12
>
>Peck considered himself to have mastered Inuktitut only after six hours of
>study daily for seven years. In this way he earned his Inuktitut name -
>Uqammak - the one who speaks well - by which he is remembered to this day.
>
>Peck considered himself to have mastered Inuktitut only after six hours of
>study a day for seven years. (20K)
>
>Almost as soon as Peck arrived at Little Whale River, he began working in
>the Inuktitut language, and in 1877 he wrote:
>
>I have succeeded in teaching several of the Eskimos to read in the syllabic
>character; they were very eager to learn.13
>
>In 1884 he made a long journey from Little Whale River to Ungava Bay where
>he spent three weeks teaching the Inuit there. Fifteen years later he
>received a letter from the Moravian, Bishop La Trobe, who passed on the
>comments of a Moravian missionary who had visited Fort Chimo some years
>after Peck's visit:
>
>All the Eskimo, even the old people, are learning to read and write in the
>syllabic character, and your extracts from the Bible and the Catechism are
>highly prized.14
>
>In 1894 Peck established a Church Missionary Society mission at Blacklead
>Island in Cumberland Sound, the first permanent mission on Baffin Island. He
>spent four periods of two years each at Blacklead, spending one-year
>furloughs in England between periods, where he attended to such matters as
>seeing the four gospels through the press and supervising the production of
>other church literature.
>
>Peck established a mission at Blacklead Island in Cumberland Sound near
>Pangnirtung in 1894. This photograph shows Inuit reading in Inuktitut. The
>books were published in England by Peck when he went back there on holiday.
>(15K)
>
>
>Even before missionaries had reached other areas of the Arctic, Peck was
>active in proselytising, sending copies of church literature with
>expeditions, traders and Inuit travellers. In 1903 the gospels reached the
>Pond Inlet area when Inuit from Cumberland Sound travelled there on a small
>trading vessel, the Albert. Peck sent manuscript copies of some portions of
>the gospel on the vessel. He wrote:
>
>I also had copies of some of the books of the Old Testament and the Epistles
>written out by the Blacklead scholars, and these were of great use to me ...
>These copies I have sent away far up north to the completely heathen
>Eskimo.15
>
>In 1914 E.W.T. Greenshield, one of Peck's successors at the Blacklead
>mission, wrote about a trip he made in a whaling vessel well north into
>Davis Strait:
>
>We also met two men, Eskimo from the northernmost point of Baffin Land,
>where they had never seen a missionary yet ... Both had some portions of the
>Scriptures, and with their wives they came to me asking to have many
>passages explained.16
>
>Similarly, on the Fifth Thule Expedition from 1921 to 1924, Therkel
>Mathiassen noted of the Iglulik Inuit: The Peck Syllabic Writing has spread
>widely among the Iglulik Eskimos, where the mothers teach it to their
>children and the latter teach each other; most Iglulik Eskimos can read and
>write this fairly simple but rather imperfect language and they often write
>letters to each other; pencils and pocket-books are consequently in great
>demand among them.17
>
>Peck and a man from Blacklead Island looking over Peck's Inuktitut word
>book. (16K)
>
>
>A tantalizing bit of information contained in a letter from a free trader on
>Baffin Island to a competitor, in 1907, suggests that some knowledge of
>Inuktitut syllabics may even have reached certain areas of southern
>Greenland. The letter, from Osbert Clare Forsyth-Grant, says:
>
>It may interest you to hear that I am in the habit of carrying letters
>written under the supervision of the Danish priests by the Eskimo of West
>Greenland to the Eskimo of the West Coast of Davis Strait and of taking back
>the answers written by the West Coast natives in what looked to me symbols,
>each symbol representing not a letter but a syllable, and that these Eskimo
>with hundreds of miles of sea between them can understand one another and
>take a genuine interest in hearing from the other side.18
>
>Teaching Syllabics
>
>The Anglican Church was able to proselytize successfully over such a wide
>area of the Arctic largely because the syllabic orthography was so easy to
>learn. Inuit taught each other. With the assistance of well-travelled native
>assistants who worked with Peck, Bilby and Greenshield at Blacklead Island,
>and with Bilby and Fleming at Lake Harbour, a large number of Inuit who had
>never met a missionary nonetheless had access to the Bible and were able to
>read it in syllabics. Two of the best-known native assistants were Luke
>Kidlapik and Joseph Pudloo.
>
>Pudloo and Kidlapik were two assistant lay ministers who worked with
>Peck.(8K and 7K)
>
>As a boy Joseph Pudloo had learned syllabics in Reverend Fleming's senior
>class in Lake Harbour. Later he became Fleming's sled driver, taking the
>missionary thousands of miles on visits to Inuit camps. After that he spent
>two years working with the Reverend B.P. Smith at Baker Lake, the first
>native assistant to work in a dialect markedly different from his own.
>
>In 1914 Reverend Greenshield wrote that there were at that time 12 Inuit men
>and six women scattered in different parts of the country, the men acting as
>preachers and the women teaching the children:
>
>They are all voluntary workers, and are doing a good work in a humble, quiet
>way. Our two old friends at Blacklead Island, Peter Tooloogakjuak and Luke
>Kidlapik, are known and respected by all for hundreds of miles round the
>coast. They are now in full charge of the northern district where there is
>no white missionary at present.19
>
>Luke Nowdla, one of the assistant teachers at Blacklead, with his wife and
>family. (26K)
>
>Archibald Lang Fleming, later Bishop of the Arctic, wrote about his travels
>with Luke Kidlapik while Fleming was stationed at Lake Harbour:
>
>On our journey south over the frozen surface of Frobisher Bay we visited
>several encampments and held services with the Eskimo. Kidlapik and I took
>turn and turn about preaching and conducting the services, while Rhoda,
>Kidlapik's little wife, led the singing very nicely. Kidlapik's addresses
>were delivered in a quiet, earnest voice and, thanks to the teaching he had
>received from Peck and Greenshield, he displayed a wonderful knowledge of
>the Gospels. For me it was an inspiring experience to get to know this man
>and a friendship was begun then that remains ...20
>
>Peck conducting an open-air service on Blacklead Island. (25K)
>
>On one of Kidlapik's journeys along the shores of Hudson Strait, he reached
>Inuit who had never seen a missionary but who could almost all read "chiefly
>through copies of the Gospels which they had obtained and read continually.
>Some of these copies of the Word were so dilapidated through continuous
>usage by several families that they were literally dropping to pieces ..."21
>
>Alookie Kilabuk of Pangnirtung, who was born at Southampton Island at the
>turn of the century, grew up at Blacklead Island. She remembers Peter
>Tooloogakjuak and Luke Kidlapik and the work they did there. They were
>genuine helpers, she says, who were able to perform marriages and baptisms,
>and had been taught well by the early missionaries.
>
>Two Inuit evangelists working with Peck at Blacklead Island. Peter
>Tooloogakjuak is seen here with Luke Kidlapik. (22K)
>
>
>For many years Kidlapik was the Anglican catechist on Southampton Island
>where he and his wife moved in 1926 and where Fleming met him again in 1942
>and in 1946.
>
>Luke Kidlapik, a lay preacher at Blacklead Island with his wife Kidlapik.
>(24K)
>
>Wherever these native catechists served, they took with them not only
>religion but also literacy.
>
>Roman Catholic missionaries established their first mission in the eastern
>Canadian Arctic in 1912 at Chesterfield Inlet under the leadership of Father
>Turquetil. The Roman Catholics also adopted the syllabic orthography,
>although with some differences, from the Anglican system.
>
>The Church at Blacklead Island, from a drawing in the Church Missionary
>Gleaner, a newspaper printed in Britain. (19K)
>
>Among the very oldest of Inuit in Baffin Island today are a few who remember
>Reverend Peck from their childhood. Alookie Kilabuk remembers, as a small
>girl, being bounced on his knee in the tiny mission house while the
>missionary sang hymns. Peter Pitseolak, the Inuit historian of the Cape
>Dorset area, who died in 1974, wrote:
>
>I was born when Christianity had already come to Baffin Island. For myself,
>I did not like the old, old way because the shamans would kill the people
>they did not like. When the ministers came the shamans stopped their
>killings. Reverend Peck - Okhamuk - was the first minister to bring the word
>of God to Baffin Island. People were very fond of him because he was so
>loving with all the people and very friendly.22
>
>Learning from Parents
>
>Old-time missionaries such as Peck often operated day classes for children
>at the missions or at the camps they visited. But probably most Inuit
>learned their syllabics from their parents, by rote. On evenings children
>would sit with their parents and, with the prayer book open, memorize the
>syllabic symbols, reciting chant-like, "ai, i, u, a, pai, pi, pu, pa." Peter
>Pitseolak recalled:
>
>Even before I was able to talk I had learned all the alphabet songs by
>listening to people sing them. Okhamuk taught the people the alphabets by
>singing. When the government had come to the North and they were handing out
>these papers with the Eskimo alphabet and the English alphabet, a man came
>and said, "You have to learn these." I told him, "I knew them before I could
>talk." He said, "You can't possibly know these," and I said, "What do you
>want me to do? Close my eyes and sing them to you?" He was very surprised
>that I knew them
>in both languages. He said, "So you have learned."23
>
>In 1972 Agnes Poksiak of Whale Cove wrote in the Keewatin Echo:
>
>I will never forget the few nights that I spent learning syllabics. There
>were few of us inside that igloo, dad, mom, Marie, my older sister, Susie,
>my younger sister, and myself ... Dad would open his Bible and teach me one
>syllabic after another until I was able to read it well enough.24
>
>A drawing done by a Blacklead Island resident. Note the meat drying racks on
>the tent. (16K)
>
>In the 1950s and 1960s, before telephones were common in the north, letters
>written in syllabics often provided the only link between Inuit children who
>left home and lived in hostels to further their education and the parents
>who had, often reluctantly, agreed to let them go. Agnes Poksiak continued:
>
>... it was only a year later that I had my first airplane ride to the
>unknown with my older sister. On that first year in school, Marie and I got
>one letter from mom. That letter was written in pencil on an old piece of
>tea bag but those few written syllabics were the only ones that told us that
>mom and dad were at least alive ... I know that being able to write
>syllabics is a great help when you're away from home.25
>
>Mark Kalluak of Eskimo Point wrote of his desire to learn syllabics in his
>youth:
>
>I know I don't stand alone when I say I never learned syllabics in school
>... Like many others, I learned it from the back of prayer books and Bibles,
>and I believe people who claim learning syllabics is one of the simplest
>systems there is. When I was sent to the hospital at the age of four I
>thought I was being transported to another world and my parents would never
>find me. Perhaps because of my desire to communicate with my parents, I had
>one object in mind - to learn to write. Maybe that is why I learned to write
>syllabics so early.26
>
>Drawing of amauti pattern pieces for women of the Cumberland Sound area.
>(12K)
>
>The German missionaries who came to Labrador in the eighteenth century
>started schools for the Inuit. By 1790, notes Rose Jeddore, "the Labrador
>Inuit were learning reading, writing, and arithmetic ... In 1821 the Book of
>Acts was printed and was soon followed by the whole New Testament, hymnbook,
>the book of Isaiah, Bible stories for children, and some schoolbooks. By
>1841 only 9 or 10 in the congregation of 334 were unable to read."27 All
>instruction in the Inuit schools was carried on in Inuttut and Inuit
>teachers ran the schools. The most notable of these teachers were Nathaniel
>Ilinniatitsijuk, who taught for 50 years, and his wife Frederike, who taught
>for 30 years. Such was the situation until 1949 when Newfoundland joined
>Canada, at which time all instruction in Inuttut was
>discontinued. Only since the mid-1970s have attempts been made to re-instate
>Inuttut in the schools.
>
>A Permanent Record
>
>Inuit developed skill in the use of syllabics quickly, learning by rote from
>missionaries, their parents or other Inuit. With syllabics, Inuit of the
>Eastern Arctic were at last able to communicate with each other at a
>distance and letters were exchanged between camps. With syllabics, Inuit
>were finally able to leave a permanent written record of their activities.
>Many took to keeping diaries, making daily entries about the weather,
>animals taken, family events and other occurrences. In some families these
>diaries are personal treasures, kept within the family and not shared with
>outsiders. To non-Inuit, the most famous of the Inuit diarists who worked in
>syllabics is Peter Pitseolak, for two books of his work have been translated
>and published in English. These books are People from Our Side, a history of
>south-western Baffin Island, and Peter Pitseolak's Escape from Death, based
>on two accounts he left of his and his stepson Ashevak's narrow escape from
>danger on a hunting expedition.
>Pitseolak realized early that Inuit life was rapidly changing and he began
>"writing down what happened from day to day so my grandchildren will know
>what went on when I was alive."28
>
>
>Escape from Death and People from our Side are the two books written from
>the diaries of Pitseolak, and published after his death. (33K and 101K)
>
>Other Inuit, living outside the areas where syllabic orthography was used,
>kept diaries in Roman orthography. In the western Canadian Arctic, Father
>Maurice Metayer translated the autobiography of a man, Nuligak, who lived at
>Herschel Island and later at Tuktoyaktuk. The manuscript, which he received
>in 1956, was published in English in 1966 under the title I, Nuligak.
>
>Metayer says: The original manuscript is somewhat like a mate's log, where
>seasons and
>even years are not mentioned while the most especially interesting facts of
>an eventful life are related.29
>
>The Eskimo Book of Knowledge was published by the Hudson's Bay Company in
>1931, to instruct Inuit in the standard life-style of Southern Canadians of
>that day. (13K)
>
>Missionaries had intended their orthographies, be they syllabic or Roman, as
>means of spreading the Gospel, and they were very effective in accomplishing
>that purpose. But it was to be many years before reading material in
>Inuktitut, other than religious material, became available. When it did, it
>was almost always material prepared by government to inform Inuit. In the
>Labrador dialect, one of the exceptions was the Hudson's Bay Company
>publication of 1931, The Eskimo Book of Knowledge, with sections entitled
>"The British Empire to Which You Belong," "Health" and "Work." In syllabics
>and English, the federal
>Department of Mines and Resources published The Book of Wisdom for Eskimo in
>1947; two years later it published a revised version in syllabics, Western
>Arctic Roman orthography and English.
>
>First, and Only, Syllabic Book by an Inuk
>
>The first book to be written by a Canadian Inuk and published in syllabics
>was The Autobiography of John Ayaruaq, published by the federal government
>in 1968. Many other Inuit stories and articles have appeared in syllabics in
>various publications, most notably in Inuktitut magazine, but none have
>appeared in book form. The first original story to be published in Canadian
>Inuktitut, a novel, was written by Markoosie, a pilot and hunter then living
>in Resolute, and published in serial form in Inuktitut in the late 1960s. A
>government official described it as "a story of life in the old days, not as
>it has appeared to southern eyes, but as it has survived in the memory of
>the Eskimos themselves."30 The story was later translated into English and
>published as a book entitled Harpoon of the Hunter.
>
>The Autobiography of John Ayaruaq was the first book published by a Canadian
>Inuk. The front cover and a page from the book are pictured here. (17K and
>182K)
>
>Need for Syllabic Reform
>
>When Catholic missionaries established missions among the Inuit in the early
>years of this century, they used a syllabic orthography which differed in
>some respects from that used by the Anglican clergy. One of the main
>differences was in the showing of vocalic length. The Anglican system placed
>dots over symbols to show whether the vowel of that syllable was "long" or
>"short," but it considered the terms "long" and "short" in the same sense as
>they are considered in English in which, for example, "bit" contains a short
>sound, but "beet" the long sound of the same vowel. In Inuktitut, the terms
>"long" and "short," as
>applied to vowels, describe the relative length of time that the same sound
>is held, so that, for example, "inuk" has a "short u" sound but "inuuk" a
>"long u" sound. The Catholic syllabic orthography recognized the difference
>in vocalic length, but did so by uplicating the symbol for the vowel which
>was long, so that any syllable containing a long vowel required two symbols
>to write it. Thus the Anglicans wrote "ataata" (father) as  while the
>Catholics wrote it as . There were other minor differences between the two
>systems.
>
>With the spread of secular literature in Inuktitut syllabics, it became
>apparent to government officials and to many Inuit that there existed a need
>for orthographic reform in Inuktitut, to enable all Inuit to write using the
>same consistent orthography.
>
>
>
>* Harper, Kenn. "Writing in Inuktitut: An Historical Perspective",
>Inuktitut. Ottawa: Indian and Northern Affairs, September 1983, pp. 3-35.
>Courtesy of Inuktitut Archives.
>
>
>Footnotes
>
>1. Dorothy Eber (ed.), Peter Pitseolak's Escape from Death (Toronto:
>McClelland and Stewart, 1977), n.p.
>
>2. Maurice S. Flint, Revised Eskimo Grammar (Canadian Eastern
>Arctic)(Toronto: Trinity Church, 1954), p. iv.
>
>3. Samuel Kleinschmidt in James L. Cotter (tr.), in Greenland Eskimo Grammar
>(unpublished English translation in Arctic Collection, M71-4, Box 10,
>General Synod Archives, Anglican Church, Toronto).
>
>4. A. Martin, quoted in Lawrence R. Smith, "Some Recent Phonological and
>Orthographic Changes in Labrador Inuttut," in Bjarne Basse and Kirsten
>Jensen (ed.), Eskimo Languages, Their Present-Day Conditions (Aarhus: Arkona
>Publishers, 1979), p. 106.
>
>5. Lawrence R. Smith, ibid.
>
>6. quoted in Kenn Harper, Uqammak: The Life of Reverend Edmund James Peck
>(unpublished manuscript, 1982), p. 20.
>
>7. Church Missionary Intelligencer and Record (Number 8, Volume 1, December,
>1849), p. 177.
>
>8. Church Missionary Intelligencer and Record (Volume 7, March, 1857) p. 58.
>
>9. quoted in Kenn Harper, op. cit., p. 12.
>
>10.  Edmund James Peck, in preface to Eskimo Grammar (Edmund James Peck
>Papers, File XXXVIII, No. 6, General Synod Archives, Anglican Church,
>Toronto).
>
>11. quoted in Kenn Harper, op. cit., p. 12.
>
>12. Arthur Lewis, The Life and Work of E.J. Peck Among the Eskimos (London:
>Hodder and Stoughton, 1904), p. 81.
>
>13. ibid., p. 86.
>
>14. Archibald Lang Fleming, "The Arctic" (in Fleming Papers, M70-1, Box 8,
>General Synod Archives, Anglican Church, Toronto).
>
>15. Church Missionary Gleaner (1903), p. 905.
>
>16. E.W.T. Greenshield, "Arctic Progress and Peril," Popular Missionary
>Papers (number 43), p. 3, (in Fleming Papers, M70-1, General Synod Archives,
>Anglican Church, Toronto).
>
>17. Therkel Mathiassen, Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos. Report of
>the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921-24 Vol. VI, No. 1 Copenhagen: Gyldendalske
>Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag, 1928), p. 233.
>
>18. Osbert Clare Forsyth-Grant, letter to Wrightington, Esq., 14 January
>1907 (in Archives, Glenbow Foundation, Calgary).
>
>19. E.W.T. Greenshield, op. cit.
>
>20. Archibald Lang Fleming, Archibald the Arctic, p. 346 (manuscript in
>Fleming Papers, M70-1, Box 8, General Synod Archives, Anglican Church,
>Toronto).
>
>21. Church Missionary Gleaner (01 November 1911), p. 163.
>
>22. Dorothy Eber (ed.), People From Our Side (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1975), p.
>40.
>
>23. ibid.
>
>24. Agnes Poksiak, "Eskimo Syllabic Books," Keewatin Echo (Number 52,
>October 1972), p. 2.
>
>25. ibid.
>
>26. Mark Kalluak, letter to Jose Kusugak, 18 March 1976 (Inuit Language
>Commission files, DIAND).
>
>27. Rose Jeddore, "The Decline and Development of the Inuttut Language in
>Labrador," in Bjarne Basse and Kirsten Jensen (ed.), op. cit., p. 84.
>
>28. Dorothy Eber (ed.), 1977, op. cit., n.p.
>
>29. Maurice Metayer (tr.), I, Nuligak (Toronto: Peter Martin Associates,
>1966), p. 8.
>
>30. James McNeill in "Foreword" to Markoosie, Harpoon of the
>Hunter(Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1970), p. 7.
>
>Copyright. The National Library of Canada. (Revised: 1998-02-23).
>
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David Gene Lewis                        Department of Anthropology
Graduate student                        University of Oregon
         cell 541-510-0217                               Eugene, OR 97403

coyotez at oregon.uoregon.edu                      talapus at kalapuya.com
http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~coyotez           http://www.kalapuya.com

Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde,  Kalapuya Tribe