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November 6, 1998

New culture department prepares to defend Inuktitut

Nunavut's embryonic Department of Elders, Culture and Youth is offering Inuktitut lessons to Nunavut's new deputy ministers.

DWANE WILKIN
Nunatsiaq News

IQALUIT - Attima Hadlari couldn't help but smile at the touch of irony he brings to his new job as director of the Nunavut Language Bureau.

The former interpreter-translator still has difficulty understanding what his elders are saying sometimes, especially when the subject of conversation turns to life on the land.

And Hadlari's own children are unable to speak Innuinaqtun, the traditional language of the Inuit living at Cambridge Bay - an example, he readily admits, he would hope younger parents do not follow.

"We have to be messengers to our kids," Hadlari says. "That's going to be my mandate, to let younger generations know that using Inuktitut is something to be proud of.

"I have to be a role model."

Tangled in the web of social ills with which the new Nunavut government will have to grapple after April 1 is the ever-present threat of language erosion.

Closing the gulf in understanding that separates Inuit young from old in many northern communities is just one of the tasks that lie ahead for managers of the large and ambitious Department of Language, Elders and Youth.

It's no accident that the department's first major language conference is being held later this month in the Kitikmeot community of Cambridge Bay. Of the territory's three regions, the health of Inuktitut is considered at greatest risk here.

"That area of Nunavut is losing the Innuinaqtun language very fast, as well as Gjoa Haven and Taloyoak. The kids are all talking in English," says Hadlari.

"When I'm travelling in the east, in the Keewatin and Baffin regions, it's very nice to hear kids in the street speaking their own language. I wish that will happen in the Kitikmeot in the future."

The embryonic language bureau has undertaken a few initiatives already. Starting this week, the bureau will be offering Inuktitut lessons to all non-Inuit deputy ministers of the new territorial administration.

"We don't expect all non-Inuit DMs to speak Inuktitut," Peter Ernerk, deputy minister of the Department of Culture, Languages, Elders and Youth says, "but we expect them to learn Inuit culture and to speak a little bit."

Under Ernerk's direction, the department has been given primary responsibility for preventing Inuktitut and its dialects from joining the world's long list of dead human languages.

Ernerk vows to do everything possible to promote the use of Inuktitut at the community level. "Our responsibility will be to make sure no Inuit community in Nunavut loses its language," he says.

In September, the Office of the Interim Commissioner gave the Department of Culture, Languages Elders and Youth considerable latitude to take whatever measures deemed necessary to support Nunavut's official languages, with special emphasis on Inuktitut.

As a result, the proposed jurisdiction of Nunavut's language bureau will go far beyond that of simply providing translation and interpretation services to other government departments.

On the contrary, language bureau staff will be expected to play a lead role in the protection, promotion and revitalization of Inuktitut, including Innuiaqtun and Inuvialuktun.

One of the language bureau's first tasks will be to find ways to make Inuktitut-speaking elders part of the education process at community schools, as language consultants and-or instructors. Three roving language specialists who will travel from community to community are to form the bureau's core.

"Inuktitut language has been looked at for a long time as a second language in the classroom. If we're going to turn that around, we have to make Inuit feel that Inuktitut is their first language," Ernerk says.

In the meantime, the office of the Interim Commissioner has instructed the Culture, Language, Elders and Youth Department to work closely with the Department of Education to develop new Inuktitut education courses and material for the Kindergarten to Grade 12 curriculum.

And Ernerk says he'll be looking to elders and youth at the Cambridge Bay conference for additional direction as his department prepares to make specific policy recommendations to Nunavut's first minister of Culture, Language Elders and Youth.

One symbolic, but highly visible policy that the new government must consider is the whole question of signs in government offices and agencies, and the translation of government documents, forms and correspondence.

Ernerk said he has already begun setting a personal example of how the Inuit language can become a working language of the Nunavut government - he's drafting all of his own correspondence in Inuktitut first, then having it translated into English for non-Inuktitut speaking colleagues.

And he recommends that other deputy ministers follow his lead.

"This way we can condition ourselves to think in Inuktitut again."

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