Inuit communities create new words to describe climate change
An Inuit family sits on a traditional sled in Cape Dorset, Canada. Photo from Wikimedia
Canada’s Northwest Territories make up one of the fastest-warming regions of the Arctic. Here, native Inuits see spring arriving weeks earlier than it used to, while the ground beneath their homes thaws and slumps.
Yet while much of the world talks about solar power, wind energy and other sustainable energy technologies to slow climate warming, Inuvialuit communities struggle to do the same. They don’t have the words for these energy options in their native language.
Sheena Adams is partnering with Inuvialuit elders to change this by creating a vocabulary around renewable energy in their language of Inuvialuktun. About 20 percent of roughly 3,100 Inuvialuit people speak this language conversationally today, with most speaking English. This means the project has two goals: to draw attention to renewable energy options, as well as to help revitalize a declining language, says Adams, a graduate student in environment and sustainability at Royal Roads University in British Columbia.
“There is a big push to help restore those languages because, like a lot of indigenous languages in the world, we are losing them,” she says. “So I thought this would be a good way to support that movement while promoting renewable energy and conservation.”
Adapting Language To Modernization
Adams also works as the regional energy project coordinator with the sustainable energy nonprofit Arctic Energy Alliance based in Inuvik, a town of about 3,300 people that includes a substantial Inuvialuit population. Last spring, Adams reached out to 10 elders from the town and five others in the vicinity to tackle the project together in Inuvik. “When we started this, we didn’t know if they’d be able to create all these words,” Adams says. “Sometimes modernization can’t happen.”But Inuvialuit people are deeply connected to the land, so they already had words to work with. It made their language naturally adaptable to modernization through this route, Adams says. “I’m not sure it would have been so easy if you were talking about cancer or something like that,” she adds. Through a workshop that lasted several days, the group was able to create 186 terms across three dialects, including "annugihiut anugihiuttin" for "wind turbine" and "siqiniqmin aullan" for "solar panels."
Beverly Amos, an Inuvik resident who works at the Inuvialuit Cultural Resource Centre and helped Adams on the project, emphasizes that conservation has always been central to her culture. “At one time, before contact with the Europeans or other races, we had our own form of conservation for anything, including energy,” Amos says. Her organization works to preserve and revive the Inuvialuktun language.
That means that words around sustainable living do exist — they just need to be updated to fit the modern technologies, Amos explains. “It’s just finding them back and finding the best way to use them for this day and age.”
Getting The Words Out
In most cases, the new terms were compound words that put together existing terms in novel ways, just as the English words "solar" and "power" are combined to describe that technology. The word for "wind," for example, already existed in Inuvialuktun, as did the word for "turbine," although, in this language, it refers to the wings of a dragonfly. “The roots of the words are ancient,” Amos says.Adams partnered with artist Emma Segal to design illustrations that would explain some of the key terms. The project received funding from the Arctic Energy Alliance and the Inuvialuit Community Economic Development Organization. Over the next six months, Adams will travel to the six participating communities to share the terms and illustrations that she plans to print on mugs, T-shirts and other materials to distribute as gifts to schools. She hopes that getting the words into people’s homes and in the hands of children will help weave them into a conversation.
Igor Krupnik is an Arctic ethnologist with the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. He points out that pressure to use English has largely weakened Inuvialuktun and other indigenous languages in Alaska and Canada. For him, the value in creating these new words is that it gives Inuvialuit people options to continue using their own language when describing these modern technologies. “If someone develops a word for ‘wind turbine’ in their language, that is good, then they don’t have to use an English word,” Krupnik says.
"It's A Real Challenge"
Albert Elias, a 75-year-old elder involved in the project, is optimistic that the project will help to reinvigorate the language he grew up speaking.“It's a real challenge to try to revive it and try to have younger people speak and understand it because there are so many other influences,” Elias says. “People my age still have our language fluidly, but there are not many of us.”
Amos thinks that once popularized, the terms could also help to bring about more interest in renewable energy in the region that still predominately depends on oil and gas. “Once you start talking about it, sooner or later something might happen, eh?” she adds.
Adams was surprised by how much the elders seemed to learn about renewable energy through the workshop and was pleased by their excitement to be involved.
Interestingly, the biggest crowd-pleaser was not a word she asked them to translate, “but they came up with it and decided it was their absolute favorite,” Adams says. That word was taniktuun, which translates to "collaborative learning." Their definition of taniktuun is “working together, we learn and get smarter.”
Amos echoes that sentiment, noting that if it takes working with outside groups to help reinvigorate her language, then she is all for it. “I’m glad for the assistance,” she says. “Sometimes that’s the only way to get our message across is by using non-Inuvialuit organizations, and we help each other. You know, that’s working together.” ]]>