Millie Thrasher flips through an orange Sallirmiutun dictionary inside her home in Paulatuk, N.W.T., and points to the translation of the word mother on page 80.
“Amaamak” she reads aloud.
A few lines down are the Inuvialuktun dialect’s words for he sent it by my mother. It takes Thrasher a few tries to repeat them in her language.
“Some days, I have a hard time to try and remember a word and say it properly,” said Thrasher. “If you don’t say it properly, it’s no use to say the word.”
Sallirmiutun is one of three Inuvialuktun dialects, and is the language of people in the coastal N.W.T. communities of Paulatuk, Sachs Harbour and Tuktoyaktuk. The N.W.T. Bureau of Statistics says 411 individuals can converse in Inuvialuktun, and estimates the Sallirmiutun dialect has about 200 speakers.
Thrasher practices the language alone.
“I speak Inuvialuktun fluently, and I love it. But it’s getting more difficult because our elders are passing away and no one speaks it,” she said. Among those who’ve passed away is the sister-in-law Thrasher used to call and work on pronunciations with.
Lily-Ann Green, another elder in Paulatuk, says there may just be three or four fluent speakers left in her community. Thrasher says it’s also possible she’s the only one.
They agree the language is worth fighting for.
“I am scared of losing our language,” said Green. “The language has to be taught at home, the language has to be taught in schools. You know, we even want, even a few words in our meetings.”
Sallirmiutun is taught to every grade at Angik School in Paulatuk, according to the school’s principal.
Green says she understands Sallirmiutun, but lost the ability to speak it fluently after going to residential school as a child.
Now, she’s relearning.
‘I see some hope’
More than 360 kilometres to west in the coastal community of Tuktoyaktuk, regular gatherings in a sod house where there’s a “never ending pot of tea and coffee” are proving a successful way to teach Sallirmiutun.
Darrel Nasogaluak, the chair of the Tuktoyaktuk Community Corporation, said language classes have been happening in the community for a while — but in the last six to eight months they’ve been gaining momentum. He thinks the venue for the class is part of the reason why.
“We’ve had this sod house for a long time, but we finally started using it this fall and winter and it’s a great space,” he said. “It’s becoming a little bit of a gathering space for a few elders … a nice location to stop by during the day.”
The sod house is a re-creation of the traditional Inuvialuit dwellings that were made all across the Beaufort Delta region. The buildings were made of driftwood logs, or even whale bones as a frame, with tightly packed sod bricks all around for warmth.
Nasogaluak said the community corporation uses funding from the Inuvialuit Cultural Resource Centre for the classes. Four instructors share the responsibility of teaching on Monday and Wednesday afternoons, and between four and ten people attend.
“We’ve got a lot of elders that are coming here and they’re starting to use the language day-to-day now, because they know that the others that are here can understand them and communicate back with them.”
He said middle-aged people attend the classes — and sometimes younger people do too.
“It’s really encouraging, you know, for the first time in a long time that I see some hope of language revitalization,” he said.
‘We have to keep trying’
Emily Angulalik, the executive director of the Pitquhirnikkut Ilihautiniq — the Kitikmeot Heritage Society — said a good way of learning a language is to spend time with other people who can speak it.
One of the aims of the Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, society she leads is to revitalize Inuinnaqtun, an Inuit language spoken in Cambridge Bay, Kugluktuk, and Gjoa Haven in Nunavut as well in Ulukhaktok in the N.W.T.
She urges those interested in learning their language to find an elder who is willing to sit down for tea or coffee — much like the gatherings in Tuktoyaktuk — or to do something cultural together like baking bannock.
That, and carving time out regularly to work on the language, are among her key recommendations.
“Even if it’s an hour, even if it’s just 20 minutes, five minutes.”
Back in Paulatuk, Green and Thrasher both want to see more done in the community to revitalize Sallirmiutun. But they haven’t given up hope.
“We have to get what elders we have left with us to help us to, try and gain our language back,” said Green.
“We have to push for funding,” said Thrasher. “We can’t just give up and say they’ll never learn it again. We have to keep trying.”
