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In this study, we present findings from a collaborative ethnographic study with urban Inuit in Ottawa, Canada. We investigate “talk around objects” as a meaningful learning activity and a prism of human-object relationships. Focusing on Inuit clothing – namely the Inuit-made parka (winter coat) and amauti (a traditional Inuit baby carrier) – we examine the impact of everyday objects on social interaction, with a particular emphasis on the effects of materiality on talk. More specifically, we explore the role of objects and object design in mobilizing particular forms of narratives, which project meaning across contexts of time, space, activity, and generations. Accordingly, we conceptualize the impact of objects as “joins” in trans-contextual meaning-making and point to their significance in Inuit learning and in serving to shape human-object relationships. We see the contribution of this article to this special issue as twofold. Not only does it explore “talk around objects” as an instance of co-agency, ...

The establishment of cities in Canada has played a pivotal role in the displacement, dispossession, and marginalization of Indigenous peoples. Yet, more than half of the Indigenous population now resides in cities, and urbanization continues to increase. This paper addresses a specific aspect of Inuit mobility—namely, migration and the dynamic use of Inuit language and knowledge in the city of Ottawa. Drawing on community-based participatory research in collaboration with an Ottawa Inuit literacy centre, we investigate a range of Inuit-led educational practices that emerged from collaborative work with a group of Inuit women. Suggested activities drew on semiotic resources—including objects and language—that involved retracing the migrational trajectories of Inuit between cities and between nonurban communities, particularly those in their Arctic “homelands.” Such practices appear to cut across the “urban-rural divide,” particularly since cities were rarely mentioned, a fact that seems to signal the irrel...

This paper addresses language policy and policy-making in Canada as forms of discourse produced and reproduced within systems of power and racial hierarchies. The analysis of indigenous language policy to be addressed here focuses on the historical, political and legal processes stemming from the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (1963–1969) to the 1982 Canadian Constitution and its aftermath. Through a critical historical and discursive analysis, we demonstrate how racial hierarchies and language ideologies favoured French and English dominance and reinforced the marginalisation of indigenous groups defined in terms of the socially constructed and assigned category of race. We relate these race-based language policies to contemporary indigenous language struggles in Canada, including the Task Force Report on Aboriginal Languages and Cultures (2005), and describe the logic imposed by colonial constitutional arrangements on indigenous language promotion, revitalisation and mobilisation in ...

This study investigates the intersection of family language policy with Indigenous multiliteracies and urban Indigeneity. It documents a grassroots Inuit literacy initiative in Ottawa, Canada and considers literacy practices among Inuit at a local Inuit educational centre, where maintaining connections between urban Inuit and their homeland linguistic and cultural practices is a central objective. Using data from a participatory, activity-oriented, ethnographic project at an Inuit family literacy centre, we argue that state-driven language policies have opened up spaces for Indigenous-defined language and literacy learning activities that can shape and be shaped by family language policies. This has permitted some urban groups in Canada to define their own literacy needs in order to develop effective family language policies. Drawing on two Inuit-centred literacy activities, we demonstrate how literacy practices are embedded in intergenerational sharing of Inuit experience, cultural memory, and stories and how these are associated spatially, culturally, and materially with objects and representations. We thus show how Inuit-centred literacy practices can be a driving force for family language policy, linking people to an urban Inuit educational community centre and to their urban and Arctic Inuit families and homelands.

This paper provides a framework for understanding the social complexity of the linkages between language, identity, and territoriality (or attachments to place). Drawing on qualitative research among Inuit in the Canadian Arctic and in Ottawa, it discusses Inuit identities in relation to the role played by local, regional, national, and global processes in constructing Inuitness and the transformation of Indigenous identities nationally and globally. The paper argues that although Inuktitut is being supported by institutional and political structures in Nunavik and Nunavut, English and French have become increasingly important in daily Northern life. At the same time, Inuit migration to Southern cities has offered new challenges and established new priorities in the fostering of the plurilingualism necessary for urban Inuit life., Cet article offre un cadre pour comprendre la complexité sociale des liens entre la langue, l’identité et la territorialité (ou l’attachement au lieu). Reposant sur une recherche qualitative faite parmi les Inuits de l’Arctique canadien et d’Ottawa, j’y discute des identités inuites en relation avec le rôle joué par les processus locaux, régionaux, nationaux et mondiaux dans la construction de l’« Inuitness » et la transformation des identités indigènes sur les plans national et mondial. Cet article mettra en lumière que, bien que l’inuktitut soit soutenu par des structures institutionnelles et politiques au Nunavik et au Nunavut, l’anglais et le français sont devenus de plus en plus importants dans la vie quotidienne nordique. En même temps, la migration inuite vers les villes du Sud a présenté de nouveaux défis et a établi de nouvelles priorités dans la formation du plurilinguisme nécessaire à la vie inuite urbaine.