Inuit studies: not just for Qallunaat

The Inuit studies conference, held Oct. 28 to 30, on the Val d’Or campus of the Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, attracted 170 participants who discussed the conference theme “Inuit people and the aboriginal world” in sessions touching on a variety of topics. (PHOTO/UQAT)

Pita Aatami, president of Makivik Corp., a keynote speaker at the recent Inuit studies conference in Val d’Or, stands with Donat Savoie, the honorary president of the Inuit studies conference. (PHOTO/UQAT)

Since Laval university anthropologist and linguist Louis-Jacques Dorais organized the first Inuit studies conference 34 years ago, he’s seen many changes in the gathering, which started as a small meeting of like-minded, non-Inuit Arctic researchers in Quebec City.

The most recent Inuit studies conference, held Oct. 28 to Oct. 30 on the Val d’Or campus of the Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, attracted 170 participants — and many of them were Inuit who came from Canada, the United States and Greenland to discuss the conference theme “Inuit people and the aboriginal world.”

But between then and now, the Inuit studies conference experienced some growing pains.

The 1996 conference at Memorial University in St. John’s was fraught with tension as Inuit participants Peter Irniq and Martha Flaherty contested the right of non-Inuit researchers to talk about such subjects as shamanism or sled dogs and accused some of using Inuit traditional knowledge for their own ends.

But things have changed.

“Now it’s calm,” Dorais said of the relationship between non-Inuit researchers and Inuit, adding that nearly all researchers in the social sciences now work with Inuit.

Not that the Val d’Or conference shied away from touchy topics.

There were two sessions on “Intellectual Property and Ethics,” which looked at such issues as access to data and reports after the completion of a research project, negotiating the nature and ownership of research outcomes in collaborative projects with aboriginal communities — and who owns Inuit information.

During the three-day conference, Dorais presented his most recent project on Inuit identity in Quaqtaq with co-researcher and educator Pasha Puttayuk from the Kativik School Board.

For the project Dorais, who first visited Quaqtaq in 1965 and learned to speak Inuktitut there, worked with the Uivvamiut [“People around the point”] committee of Quaqtaq, whose goal is to make young Inuit more aware of their cultural roots.

The study, “Taitsumaninitaanit Siarumut” [From what comes from the past, towards the future], wanted to learn more about how Quaqtaq youth, 16 to 25, see their identity in relation to two core foundations of Inuit culture and society: language and community life, Dorais said.

And the research involved interviews and discussion data mostly collected in Inuktitut and transcribed in English by a team of Quaqtaq students in 2007 and 2008.

It determined that young Quaqtamiut “appear decidedly modern,” finding they are interested in the same kind of music, clothing, Internet communication, electronic devices, and other products and activities as any other young people elsewhere in Canada “or, for that matter, almost anywhere else in the world.”

Besides such “manifestations of modernity,” like tattooing, partying or rock-climbing, grounded or not in traditional culture — because Inuit were known to tattoo, socialize and rock climb in the past — “the young in Quaqtaq seem to appreciate the Inuit way of life,” the study found.

“All of them, without exception, speak Inuktitut on a daily basis, and it is the common language they use spontaneously among themselves,” Dorais said.

This is very different from what is now happening in the western Arctic and Labrador, where youth use English as their only language, and from Iqaluit and eastern Nunavut, where youth know some Inuktitut but, in many cases, prefer speaking English among themselves.

“Because one’s language fashions one’s thoughts, it can be surmised that the young in Quaqtaq are still thinking like real Inuit, although they do so like 21st-century Inuit rather than as Inuit of old,” Dorais said.

Puttayuk also displayed some of the illustrated research projects that students in Quaqtaq have produced, writing in Inuktitut syllabics on such topics as dwellings and kayaks.

Other Inuit presenters at the Inuit studies conference included Aipilie Kenuayuak of Puvirnituq’s Ikaarvik school who spoke on the “issues and challenges of education,” Minnie Akparook from Puvirnituq’s Inuulitsivik Health Center, who talked about diabetes, linguist Zebedee Nungak of Kangirsuk and and Lisa Koperqualuk, a masters student at Université Laval in Quebec City.

Nungak spoofed Inuit studies in the 2006 National Film Board documentary, “Why White People are funny,” in which he played the CEO and head researcher of the mythical “Qallunaat Studies Institute.”

But Nungak came to Val d’Or to present an update on Avataq Cultural Insitute’s Inuktituurniup Saturtaugasuarninga program and a summary of the results and recommendations of “a grassroots survey” on the revitalization of Inuktitut in Nunavik.

Koperqualuk, founder and director of the Saturviit Nunavik women’s association, spoke about Nunavik women and leadership as well the original research study on Puvirniturmiut religious and political dynamics that she is doing for her masters degree in anthropology.

For her thesis — a document of nearly 100 pages, now in its final stages, Koperqualuk takes a look at how political leadership has emerged in Puvirnituq, evolving from the traditional rules of conduct, the allirusiit, through the Anglican church, which allowed a voice and structure for development, on to today.

Meeting other researchers at the conference — some of whom were working on related topics — Koperqualuk said she felt “inspired.”

Koperqualuk said she is all for non-Inuit doing social research on Inuit — but it’s best done in collaboration.

However, some subjects, like shamanism, studied and recorded by anthropologists like Bernard Saladin d’Anglure or Knud Rasmussen, are helpful to Inuit now because without their work Inuit wouldn’t have access to these stories today, she said.

“When we are in our own culture we can’t realize that there are things from our past that are important,” said Koperqualuk, an advisor to Makivik Corp..

Other highlights of the Inuit studies conference in Val d’Or included a performance by Nunavik singer and songwriter Elisapie Isaac, an art exhibit called “The Inuit: What Art Says About Us,” and the screening of “Qimmit : A Clash of Two Truths” and “Arviq! Chasing the Bowhead Whale.”

The next Inuit studies conference is scheduled to take place in 2012 in Washington, D.C..

Since the first Inuit studies conference in Quebec City, this biennial event has alternated between Arctic communities and cities in the South, meeting in Fairbanks, Alaska in 1990, in Iqaluit in 1994, and in Paris in 2006.