Introduction to Inuit orality |
The theme of orality also leads us to investigate the richness of Inuit discourse when it infiltrates new social settings.
While the Inuit claim that the reach of our tongue, the spread of our language determines our homeland, how much weight do
they give to this idea in their new work and new life settings? Beyond the usual association of place and language, of "the land" and
the Inuit language vs "the village", and the use of English in Alaska and Canada, what are the actual daily practices in both public and
private places in local communities? This question also surfaces in those spheres devoted to public debate, especially the elected regional
assemblies in Alaska, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Labrador and Greenland. A study such as Language in Nunavut: Discourse and
Identity in the Baffin Region (Dorais and Sammons, 2002) offers many avenues; however,
it is clear that these issues need to be addressed through their actual linguistic dimension (observing neologisms, for example).
We also need to reflect further on the increase in collaborative work between outside researchers and indigenous communities.
Since the 1990s we have seen a move away from the dominant paradigm that tended to incorporate Inuit knowledge into
social research labelling it Traditional Ecological Knowledge. In spite of its merits, its attempt to ground and
acknowledge the validity of Inuit knowledge, this approach was found wanting: its potential as a matrix for framing
and shaping ideas was unexploited. This left many Inuit feeling dissatisfied with the outcome of this kind of study,
as Aqqaluk Lynge warned the scientific community during the 13th Inuit Studies Conference in Anchorage (Alaska) in 2002.
Researchers have become more sensitive about their own research practices and the need to disseminate their findings; and this
has led to more communication and exchange of ideas in Arctic communities. Some progress was made this decade as the titles of the
2002 and 2004 conferences in Anchorage and Calgary reveal: Indigenous Voices and Bringing Knowledge Home. Yet these advances
must stretch beyond fieldwork and filter through to discussions in seminars and conferences where dialogue and debate occur.
This process remains in its infancy: in these settings researchers and Inuit tend to satisfy themselves with each other's
presence rather than taking up the challenge of elaborating together a common language. We see the theme of orality as an
invitation to seriously try, as the issues of ethics and scientific truth claims are lying directly behind this problem.
Our call has indeed been heard by Inuit as many travelled far in order to participate in the Paris conference.
Three approaches to Inuit orality
Language
Eskaleut linguistics have made significant contributions to our understanding of linguistic developments from the very first international Inuit Studies conference.
As organizers of the 15th Conference, we wanted linguists to share their work, especially their findings concerning typology and diachronics. Our intention by focusing on orality was also to shift attention to the role of discourse and oral communication in different contexts (use of the spoken word, story-telling, dialogue), all rather under-researched in the various forms of the Inuit language.
At a time when the spoken word in its various guises and its replacement by the written word dominate linguistics research more generally, the Conference enabled participants to reflect on the evolution of oral communication more broadly - its structure and syntax, word order, register according to context, use of repetition - and this through the specific lens of the Inuit experience. The findings appeared in 2009, edited by Mahieu and Tersis (John Benjamins, publisher).
In the early days when linguists, anthropologists and archaeologists dominated the field, space and landscape received far less attention than language and social structure in Inuit Studies. Initially, the land was merely considered as a resource for hunting and fishing. Nuna, as a concept, was ignored. Then in the wake of toponymy projects carried out during the 1980s, as researchers then feared that this ancestral knowledge could disappear without trace, studies of land and space became more sophisticated. Researchers soon recognized the complexity of Inuit toponymy and how they truly form "geographic systems" (Müller-Wille 1987:1-5). This made researchers aware of just how vital space and landscape were for the Inuit, a repository of toponymical and geographical knowledge rather than a simple infrastructure or game reserve. However, these studies bypassed the role of the spoken word even though it lay at the heart of this body of language. The theme of orality sought to make us dwell on both form and content in Inuit speech as well as on the social context in which it is heard to make us more attentive to constructions of space and landscape.
Also, from the 1970s, Inuit discourse on identity insisted on the link between their land and its landscapes and their identity as a specific human group; no doubt in relation to the historical land claim settlements reached in the last thirty years all over the Inuit Arctic. In recent years however, new discourses that tend to disconnect Inuit identity from the land have emerged. They draw on traditional forms of orality games, songs, drum dances, life stories, tales of serendipity and dream weaving - as well as on new ones political speeches, radio programmes, movies and TV series - and develop in new types of spaces and places. To be fully understood, their spatial context needs to be thoroughly analysed.
The most widespread type of research on Inuit geography is the study of toponomy. This approach flowered during the 1990s in response to an Inuit call for place name surveys and greatly benefited from the development of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software. In the 2000s, research has shifted to writing GIS programs adapted to Inuit geographic knowledge and means of knowing. How can place names handed down through oral tradition be adequately captured and transposed onto maps? This is the kind of challenge raised by geographers working with cartographers to try and combine visual and textual information.
Just how vital such projects are can be appreciated when we consider how much use the Inuit make of topographical maps: they see them as handy tools with which to jog their memories, and invaluable for preserving and handing down their geographic knowledge, a knowledge anchored in their own lived experiences of a particular landscape (Collignon 2004). Building on these field studies we now need to shift to more theoretical work on cartographic representations and how they are challenged by orality as a knowledge system.
The aim of this conference, then, was to contribute to our understanding of orality in the 21st century, by making the most of new developments in Inuit research and the resurgence of the spoken word. While never going as far as rejecting the status of the written text, many Inuit feel that writing cannot compete with the spoken word when it comes to transmitting oral history, shaping a living archive, and thus passing on their cultural heritage. Several sessions were devoted to exploring the notion of the subject, or person, of the " I " who conveys meaning through voice and body, through speaking and swaying, through utterance and rhythm compared with the textual, written " I " that merely suggests a shadow, an absence, a missing person (Meschonnic 1993; Mather 1995;15).
Just as they voiced their pleas during their victorious struggles for land claims and environmental rights, the Inuit emerge on the local and global stages as stakeholders to be reckoned with. Recently, and in this very same spirit, they initiated a discussion with social science researchers, especially anthropologists, in order to counter established methods that privilege a scientific approach. These partnerships between researchers and indigenous communities foster new kinds of collaborative projects on topics that lay dormant or neglected such as collective memory, common law, shamanism and Christianity, physical and mental health, dreams, etc. The Inuit as independent investigators have launched new exploratory projects without any external input2.
These collaborative efforts formed part of this Conference agenda for they compel us to engage with many salient issues for researchers: how can we better involve indigenous communities and how can we encourage the younger generation of Inuit to take part? Let us not forget the great resources these partnerships offer: renewed energy for ethnography, reasserting the value of Inuit voices, an emerging discourse of the invisible and the marginal (whether spirits and ghosts, land appropriation, dreams, the spoken word). At the same time let us not under-estimate how worthwhile and indispensable traditional fieldwork and theoretical analysis of collected data remain.
At the end of the 20th century, most researchers in Inuit Studies, faced with the absence of visible rites
and rituals, wondered why pre-Christian representations held such sway both at the individual and collective levels. Yet collaborative research
studies show how traditions of oral history, cultural heritage and the spoken word have lain dormant at least in the Canadian Arctic and in
Alaska rather than disappeared (Trudel 2002; Interviewing Inuit Elders series 1999 sq. and
Inuit Perspectives on the 20th Century, 2000 sq;
Crowell 2004). Contrary to expectations, contemporary Inuit discourse does not radically contradict earlier findings from the pre-Christian
era. During the 1980s and the 1990s one may recall how the research community greatly benefited from Ann Fienup-Riordan's work, especially
her insights into the role of the natural world for the Yupit of Alaska. She highlighted how much nature figured in their consciousness, how
much they foregrounded it in their understanding of their world, one organized in cycles where socio-cosmic exchanges include the living,
the dead, spirits and wildlife3. This approach, in keeping with the work of Nurit Bird-David (1999), Tim Ingold (1996) and Philippe
Descola (1996), relied on the pre-eminence attributed to the notion of personhood.
This conference has opened new perspectives on how we can connect this key idea of personhood with that of the subject. As we have seen, recent collaborative studies indicate just how embedded the Inuit sense of knowledge as individual practice remains, rooted in a rich unique lived experience. This Inuit knowledge in all its particularity gives us pause to think about how much it is shaped by random and contingent elements as much as by tensions between meanings of "I" and "us".
REFERENCES
APORTA Claudio, 2004, "On the nature of routes, trails and tracks, and the role of the trail breaker among the Inuit of Igloolik", Études/Inuit/Studies, 28(2), p. 58-71.
BIRD-DAVID Nurit, 1999, "'Animism' revisited: On personhood, environment and relational epistemology", Current Anthropology, 40s, p. 67-91.
BONNEMAISON, Joël, 1986-87. Les fondements d'une identité. Territoire, histoire et société dans l'archipel de Vanuatu (Mélanésie). Paris : Orstom, Travaux et Documents, 201, 2 vol.
BONNEMAISON Joël, CAMBRESY Luc et QUINTY-BOURGEOIS Laurence (dir.), 1999, Le territoire, lien ou frontière? vol.1. : Les territoires de l'identité, Paris, L'Harmattan, coll. Géographie et Cultures.
COLLIGNON Béatrice, 2004, "Recueillir les toponymes inuit. Pour quoi faire ?", Études/Inuit/Studies, 28(2) - 2004, p. 89-106. CROWELL Aron L., 2004, "Terms of engagement : the collaborative representation of Alutiiq identity, Études/Inuit/Studies, 28(1) : 9-35. DESCOLA Philippe et PALSSON Gísli (dir.), 1996, Nature and society : anthropological perspectives, London / New York, Routledge, European association of social anthropologists.
DORAIS Louis-Jacques, SAMMONS Susan, 2002, Language in Nunavut : Discourse and Identity in the Baffin Region, Iqaluit, Nunavut Arctic College et Québec, GÉTIC (Université Laval).
HANCOCK Claire, 2004, "L'idéologie du territoire en géographie : incursions féminines dans une discipline masculiniste", in C. Bard (dir.), Le genre des territoires. Masculin, féminin, neutre., Angers, Presses de l'Université d'Angers, p. 165-174.
HENSCHAW Ann et ASHOONA Aksatunga, 2009, "Collaborative Place Name Research in the Community of Kinngait (Nunvavut, Canada)", dans ce volume.
INGOLD Tim, 1996, Key debates in anthropology, 1988-1993, London, Routledge.
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MATHER Elsie, 1995, "With a Vision beyond Our Immediate Needs, Oral Tradition in an Age of Literacy", When Our Words Return, Writing, Hearing, and Remembering Oral Traditions of Alaska and Yukon, Logan, Utah State University Press, p. 13-26.
MÜLLER-WILLE Ludger, 1987, Inuttitut Nunait Atingitta Katirsutauningit Nunavimmi (Kupaimmi, Kanatami) / Gazetteer of Inuit Place Names in Nunavik (Québec, Canada) / Répertoire toponymique Inuit du Nunavik (Québec, Canada), Inukjuak: Institut Culturel Avataq.
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THERRIEN Michèle, 2004, "How Semantic information can contribute to shed light on concepts we want to investigate", Dynamics and Shifting Perspectives Arctic Societies and Research in Michèle Therrien (dir.), Proceedings of the First IPSSAS Seminar, Nuuk 2002, Nuuk, Ilisimatusarfik University of Greenland, p. 241-252.
THERRIEN Michèle, 2006, "Résister à l'essentialisme. Cinq années d'exercice du pouvoir au Nunavut (Arctique canadien)", in Christian Gros et Marie-Claude Strigler (dir.), Être indien dans les Amériques, spoliation et résistance, mobilisations ethniques et politique du multiculturalisme, Paris, Éditions de l'Institut des Amériques, p. 295-303.
TRUDEL François (dir.), 2002, "Mémoires du Nord", Anthropologie et sociétés, dossier thématique, 26(2-3). VAR. AUT., 1999 sq., Interviewing Inuit Elders/Innarnik apiqsuqattarniq, Iqaluit, Nunavut Arctic College.
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