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Ce texte traite du concept de « littératie de mobilité » et explore le cas des Inuit urbains à Ottawa au Canada, à titre d’exemple d’une communauté indigène trans-nationale. Le texte met en évidence des pratiques de littératie telles que conçues par la communauté Inuit au sein d’un centre communautaire (OICC, Ottawa Inuit Children Centre). L’étude met l’accent sur le rôle des objets dans des interactions au sein d’évènements de littératie et interroge le potentiel d’objets pour retracer des trajectoires de migration et relier différents mondes de vie. Cette étude se veut une contribution aux New Literacy Studies et propose une forme d’analyse innovante qui peut servir à éclairer les processus de migration et leur impact sur les pratiques locales de littératie. En misant sur le contexte de la communauté Inuit urbaine, notre étude met en lumière les pratiques d’une communauté autochtone qui partagent des concepts et repères culturels différents par rapport à beaucoup de cultures occidentales, ce qui soulève plus généralement des questions par rapport à la notion de littératie. The text explores the concept of “literacy of mobility” and looks at urban Inuit in Ottawa/Canada as a case study of a trans-national indigenous community. The text illuminates literacy practices generated by the Inuit community in the context of an Inuit community centre, the Ottawa Inuit Children Centre (OICC). The study examines in particular the role of objects in interactions which are embedded in literacy practices, and investigates their potential for retracing migrant trajectories and connecting different institutional and life worlds. This study contributes to the field of New Literacy Studies and presents a novel approach into understanding the processes of migration and locally generated literacy practices. Focusing on Urban Inuit, this study examines an indigenous community whose cultural foundation differs from many Western cultures. This poses questions for what counts as literacy. Der Text betrachtet das Konzept der “Litteratie der Mobilität“, welches am konkreten Beispiel der städtischen Inuit in Ottawa, einer indigenen Minderheit in Kanada mit Migrationshintergrund untersucht wird. Er befasst sich mit jenen literalen Praktiken, die von den Inuit selbst entwickelt und im Rahmen eines kommunitären Zentrums, des Ottawa Inuit Children Centre, umgesetzt werden. Die Studie ergründet im Besonderen die Rolle von Objekten und deren Potential, Migrationsbiographien nachzuzeichnen bzw. unterschiedliche Territorien und Lebenswelten miteinander zu verknüpfen. Dieser Ansatz stellt einen neuen Zugang im Rahmen der New Literacy Studies dar, der Einsichten gewährt in Migrationsprozesse und lokal gestiftete literale Praktiken. Die Studie nimmt eine Gruppe in den Blick, deren kulturelle Konzeption der Welt erheblich von westlichen Vorstellungen differiert. Dies stellt die Frage neu, was als Literalität gilt und wie dieser Terminus vor dem Hintergrund nicht-westlicher Kulturen gedeutet werden muss.

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 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.

Canada is home to a great variety of indigenous languages, which comprise 11 language families. Keywords: endangered languages; language maintenance; language revitalization; sociolinguistics

Bilingualism, and the ideologies associated with it, are closely tied to social, political and economic circumstances. This is both because the linguistic practices that characterize bilingualism arise out of particular social conditions, which lead people to interact in particular ways in order to live together, and because bilingual practices in turn shape new social identities and new ways of interacting socially, culturally, politically and economically. This understanding of bilingualism can shed light not only on such well-studied cases as that of French-English bilinguals in Canada or Catalan-Spanish bilinguals in Spain, but also on the lesser-known cases that are the subject of this chapter: those involving Indigenous groups around the world. These groups speak both their ‘traditional’ language and a ‘dominant’ language, associated with a current or former colonizing power. This chapter will provide an analysis of this form of bilingualism, which has arisen in situations of language contact between Indigenous and larger colonizing or dominant languages.

One of the major preoccupations of Aboriginal educators and of a growing number of linguists is the plight of indigenous languages internationally. Given the consequences of colonization and globalization, many of the world’s minority languages appear to be threatened by the increasing use of English, French, Spanish, or other dominant languages within particular nations (Crystal 2000; Dorian 1989; Fishman 2001; Grenoble and Whaley 1998; Krauss 1992; Nettle and Romaine 2000). In Canada, where fifty or so aboriginal languages are still spoken, only four (Cree, Ojibwe, Dakota, and Inuktitut) are said to be “truly viable” (Kinkade 1991). A more optimistic estimate places this figure at seven, due largely to the language revitalization efforts that took hold in the 1990s. Whatever the actual number, Aboriginal language use in Canada has been rapidly decreasing, and many local community leaders and educators have become involved in language revitalization and maintenance initiatives specific to the circumstances of their communities.