Inuit researchers to give more information to Inuit (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

August 20, 2004

Inuit researchers to give more information to Inuit
Language, history and culture top Inuit Studies Conference agenda
http://www.nunatsiaq.com/news/nunavut/40820_10.html

NUNATSIAQ NEWS

How to communicate research results and information to Inuit: that's
what brought 100 or so academics, researchers and bureaucrats to the
14th International Inuit Studies Conference this week in Calgary.

The conference at the Arctic Institute of North America, which wrapped
us last week, focused on Bringing knowledge home: communicating
research to the Inuit.

Participants from Canada, the U.S., Greenland, Russia and France,
discussed how knowledge can cross from one culture to the next, the
ways Inuit and Qallunaat communicate and how to make sure the results
of community-based research reach communities.

Research papers presented at the conference included a look back at the
Watkins Gospel Selections, the first book published in Inuktitut
syllabics.

Iqaluit businessman, author and historian Kenn Harper spoke about the
missionaries' early efforts to develop literacy for missionary purposes
among Inuit.

Harper tells how the syllabic writing system invented for the Cree was
first introduced to the Inuit in 1855 by Rev. E.A. Watkins at Fort
George and Little Whale River on the James Bay and Hudson Bay coasts.

In that same year, Watkins prepared a small book of gospel selections in
syllabics and sent it to Rev. John Horden in Moose Factory who printed
it on his mission press.

This small book, says Harper, is one of the earliest items printed on
Horden's press and the only one that was printed in Inuktitut. Only one
copy is known to have survived.

The use of Inuktitut languages as a means of communication in today's
North was also on the conference's program, with Eva Aariak, Nunavut's
official languages commissioner, speaking about "How will Nunavut speak
to the future? Changes to Nunavut's Official Languages Act."

Several Greenlanders, including Carl "Puju" Olsen, were at the
conference to speak about Greenland's language policy review and the
need for more Greenlandic terminology, that is, more specialized,
modern words.

Bolatta Vahl from the Greenland Language Secretariat says Greenlandic
needs to develop more terminology because many Greenlanders, who study
in Danish, can "better express their knowledge of the subject in
Danish, even though they have Greenlandic as their mother tongue."

Representatives from ArcticNet, the new environmental ship-board
research project, the Nasivvik centre for environmental health and the
Nunavik Research Centre also told how they communicate information to
Inuit.

Several researchers highlighted their experience using the Internet and
new technology as communication tools for projects including "Healthy
living in Nunavut," a new on-line nutrition course for health workers
in Nunavut, an Alaskan CD-ROM called the "People Awakening Project,"
which encourages sobriety, and "When the weather is Uggianaqtuq," Shari
Fox Gearheard's CD-ROM that uses interactive, multimedia technology to
document and communicate Inuit knowledge about the environment in two
Nunavut communities.

Norman Cohn and Zacharias Kunuk from Igloolik Isuma Productions spoke
about the art of community-base filmmaking and its role in
communication.

"We create traditional artifacts, digital multimedia and
desperately-needed jobs in the same activity."

>From the Siberian Far East region of Kamchatka, Nina Belomestnova gave
an impassioned defence of how newspaper articles promote the culture,
language and well-being of the small indigenous population of Evenks.

How to get information from archives and bring this to the public was
also discussed, with several researchers interested in the history of
Panniqtuuq's former St. Luke's Hospital.