a language in peril..

My mother just asked me if i know the word for "Hammer" in Inuttitut. She does that sometimes. She teaches teachers how to be teachers who teach Inuttitut language. So, she's kind of an expert. She's always quizzing me and correcting me. "it's 'ga', not 'ra'".. But whenever she quizzes me, she always asks what the simplest things are, like Hammer is a good example. She asked me what it was and you know what i said? I said Axe. I. said. axe.

Now, I like to think of myself as a fluent Inuttitut speaker, but this.. this one little mistake just completely humbled me and affected me more than i thought it could.

After 3 years of living in the south, I guess I could say I do have an excuse to forget words like 'Hammer', but really.. there is no excuse. I should have known, I should have remembered. I should have been speaking Inuttitut regardless of my southern surroundings. Most of my friends in school were Inuit anyway. What is it about being down south that makes Inuit speak in English, even to each other?

I should probably give you a little bit of background on the Inuttitut Language. I think, (if i am not mistaken) Inuttitut is the strongest indigenous language in the world. In my region, Nunaivk, 95% of people still speak it. Most people prefer to speak it in their daily lives. People are always talking about how proud they are of their language. But then there's the flip side, cause there's always a flip side, right? The same people who speak Inuttitut day to day, the ones who boast about the strength of their mother tongue, go to work and speak English. Right now, I am working for the municipal government while i take a break from school. Every memo, fax, email..everything i get is in English even though the person sending it is an Inuk. The mayor of my community dosent speak english. Everything he receives has to go through me for translation (and I'm not proud to say that my translation skills are not the best).

People worked hard to ensure Inuttitut has a place in business, schools and government. They sacrificed their lives, their families, everything. In every Inuit region of Canada, people fought for the right to keep their language and culture, to save it from being swallowed up by the continued colonization of their people. And now, we are the ones sabotaging it. We are ruining ourselves from the inside out.

There's no doubt that part of this problem stems from residential schooling, people were punished for speaking their language. They were physically coerced into believing that the language of their ancestors was the devil's tongue. But those people, the residential school generation still speak Inuttitut. They still know the old language... Because there is a distinction between the 'old' language and contemporary inuttitut that youth (including myself) speak today. We have simplified it, we've made it easier for us because we live in an english dominated world. Every form of media that is accessible to us is in English. Every movie, every book, every magazine and tv show. It's all in English.

We, the youth need to step up. We have to own our ignorance before we can begin to learn. We need to remember that this language, this ancient, complex, beautiful language survived hundreds of years of gradual colonization and 60 years of intense cultural genocide. One of the very few in the world that has done so and we are the ones to bring about its demise.

In the year of the Inuit, let's stop feeling sorry for ourselves, let's stop asking for help from others. We have the capacity to solve our problems and maintain our identity while simultaneously creating a place for Inuit Culture in the modern wold. We are that generation. We have no choice.

Inuttituuqattalaurta.

p.s. Hammer is ujaratsiaq and axe is ulimautik...