The Evolution of Inuktut Dictionary-Making: From Historical Documentation to Inuit Authorship and Collaborations

• Published in: Dictionaries (Terre Haute, Ind.) Ind.), 2023, Vol.44 (2), p.7-27
• Main Authors: Murasugi, Kumiko, Patrick, Donna
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0197-6745; 2160-5076; 2160-5076
• DOI: 10.1353/dic.2023.a915063

This paper examines the history of dictionary-making for the Inuktut (Inuit) language in Canada from the nineteenth century until today, ranging from those created by missionaries and linguists to projects led by Inuit or through collaborations between Inuit and non-Inuit language specialists. We propose four stages or phases of Inuktut dictionary-making, adapting Czaykowska-Higgins's (2009) model of linguistic fieldwork. The first phase, Inuit as informants (working on Inuit and Inuktut language), focuses on the work of missionaries, linguists, and anthropologists who gathered wordlists and learned the language during their sojourns in the Arctic from the eighteenth century well into the 1970s. The second phase, Inuit as beneficiaries (working for Inuit), includes the awareness to document language use by Inuit in the development of literacy, publications, education, and revitalization efforts in general. The third phase involves Inuit as primary authors (work by Inuit) in dictionary-making projects. Lastly, there are new collaborative projects that involve working with Inuit as partners (working with Inuit), particularly in the fields of digital mapping, online dictionaries, and digital databases. We trace all four of these dictionary-making trajectories, recognizing that some of these phases overlap (temporally and functionally) and highlighting the political and economic goals and agency of Inuit over the past two centuries to retain and secure more control over their land and languages.