Michèle Therrien, 1945-2017: teacher, defender of Inuit language and culture

Michèle Therrien, who died Oct. 16 at the age of 72, first learned Inuktitut in Salluit in 1969. The Inuit language, culture and people continued to be her passion as a professor for more than 30 years in Paris. (PHOTO COURTESY OF ASSOCIATION CIRAS)

FREDERIC LAUGRAND

It is with great sadness that we learned of the death of Michèle Therrien, a linguist and anthropologist, in Paris, during the night of Oct. 15 to Oct. 16.

Michèle Therrien, 72, died of a fast-spreading cancer that had reached her liver.

A Canadian by birth and Parisian by adoption, Therrien was well-known to many in Canada’s North.

After spending 1969 in the Nunavik community of Salluit, where she was a teacher, Therrien later defended a doctoral thesis in Paris which produced a remarkable work, Le corps inuit [The Inuit Body], published in 1987.

For more than 30 years, Therrien taught Inuit language and culture at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales, France’s national institute which teaches languages that span Central Europe, Africa, Asia, America, and Oceania.

In the late 1990s, she played a large role in a collaboration between Nunavut Arctic College, INALCO, Laval university and the university of Leiden.

This partnership under the leadership of the late Susan Sammons and Alexina Kublu lasted several years and involved bringing elders into the classroom to teach history and culture to the younger generation. It resulted in publications in several Nunavut Arctic College series with Sammons and Jarich Oostens, now also deceased.

Therrien also started a very fruitful program which, from the end of the 1980s, consisted of exchanges between French and Inuit, between Europe and Nunavut.

Each year, Inuit travelled to Paris and Leiden in the Netherlands to teach language and culture. We young students benefited greatly from the knowledge of these professors, who included Oleepeeka Ikkidluak, Jay Arnakak, Alexina Kublu, Makee Kakee, Aaju Peter, Susan Enuaraq, Myna Ishulutak, and many others.

All these Inuit continue to do remarkable work for the preservation and transmission of Inuit knowledge.

Therrien was always very close to her students, whom she followed with great interest—and not only in their academic careers.

At INALCO, Therrien had us read and translate the encyclopedic dictionary of Taamusi Qumaq that she loved so much.

She defended the Inuit point of view against all odds, not shrinking from anything. Socially and intellectually committed, critical and humorous, she would wear fur clothing in Paris, displaying her solidarity with the Inuit in the defense of the seal hunt.

Therrien contributed to the Études Inuit Studies journal where she sat for a long time on the editorial board. She was also a founding member of IPSSAS, the International PhD School for Studies of Arctic Societies.

To these activities are added many others, such as her work at the CNRS (France) or for various scientific commissions.

Therrien served as the interpreter for French President Jacques Chirac during his visit to Nunavut in 1999.

And she never ceased to contribute to terminology debates in which she was particularly fond of showing the dynamics of the Inuit language.

During her career, Therrien worked with many colleagues and Inuit from Nunavut, Nunavik and Greenland.

Her scientific publications include Le printemps inuit (1999), Les langues escaléoutes (with N. Tersis, 2000); Kakoot (2000); Perspectives on Traditional Health (with F. Laugrand, 2001); Paroles interdites (2008) and Les Inuit (Paris, 2012).

At the end of the 1990s, I had the chance to organize two workshops on health practices with Therrien in which Elisapee Ootoova, Tipuula Qaapik Atagutsiak, Tirisi Ijjangiaq, Jaikku Pitseolak, Aalasi Joamie, Akisu Joamie and Malaija Papatsie participated.

These workshop exchanges were published in English, Inuktitut and French.

Therrien particularly liked an image evoked by Akisu Joamie: “We elders seem to be hiding in the stem of a pipe. We only come out when we are asked to come back to the pipe again. We need to write our traditions down, even though in the past we passed them on orally.”

Therrien undoubtedly contributed a lot to the Inuit language, history and culture. But more than that, she tirelessly defended the oral history and voice of the Inuit.

Therrien was accompanied right to the end by her two great friends, Marie Mauzé and Michka Sachnine.

Her funeral takes place Oct. 25 at the crematorium of Père-Lachaise in Paris.

Frédéric Laugrand is a professor of anthropology at Université Laval.