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43-555: The Inuit Circumpolar Council ( ICC ; Greenlandic : Inuit Issittormiut Siunnersuisooqatigiiffiat ; formerly the Inuit Circumpolar Conference ) is a multinational non-governmental organization (NGO) and Indigenous Peoples' Organization (IPO) representing the 180,000 Inuit and Yupik (sometimes referred to as Eskimo ) people living in Alaska (United States), Canada, Greenland ( Kingdom of Denmark ), and

86-657: A 100% literacy rate. As the Western Greenlandic standard has become dominant, a UNESCO report has labelled the other dialects as endangered, and measures are now being considered to protect the Eastern Greenlandic dialect. Kalaallisut and the other Greenlandic dialects belong to the Eskimo–Aleut family and are closely related to the Inuit languages of Canada and Alaska . Illustration 1 shows

129-462: A counsellor in the review process of the education system of Northern Quebec. This work led to the 1992 report on the educational system in Nunavik, Silaturnimut - The Pathway to Wisdom. Watt-Cloutier also contributed significantly to the youth awareness video Capturing Spirit: The Inuit Journey. Watt-Cloutier has been a political representative for Inuit for over a decade. From 1995 to 1998, she

172-508: A number of documentaries and profiled by journalists from all media. Watt-Cloutier sits as an adviser to Canada's Ecofiscal Commission . She is also a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation . Sheila Watt-Cloutier was born in Kuujjuaq , Nunavik , Northern Quebec , Canada. Her mother was known as a skillful healer and interpreter throughout Nunavik, and her father

215-671: A petition, along with 62 Inuit hunters and Elders from communities across Canada and Alaska, to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights , alleging that unchecked emissions of greenhouse gases from the United States have violated Inuit cultural and environmental human rights as guaranteed by the 1948 American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man . Although the IACHR decided against hearing her petition,

258-584: A position she would hold until 2006. Most recently, her work has emphasised the human face of the impacts of global climate change in the Arctic . On 7 December 2005, based on the findings of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment , which projects that Inuit hunting culture may not survive the loss of sea ice and other changes projected over the coming decades, she launched the world's first international legal action on climate change:

301-567: Is ergative-absolutive , but verbal morphology follows a nominative-accusative pattern and pronouns are syntactically neutral. The language distinguishes four persons (1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th or 3rd reflexive (see Obviation and switch-reference ); two numbers (singular and plural but no dual , unlike Inuktitut); eight moods (indicative, interrogative, imperative, optative, conditional, causative, contemporative and participial) and eight cases (absolutive, ergative, equative, instrumental, locative, allative, ablative and prolative). Greenlandic (including

344-655: Is a Canadian Inuk activist. She has been a political representative for Inuit at the regional, national and international levels, most recently as International Chair for the Inuit Circumpolar Council (formerly the Inuit Circumpolar Conference). Watt-Cloutier has worked on a range of social and environmental issues affecting Inuit, most recently, persistent organic pollutants and global warming . She has received numerous awards and honours for her work, and has been featured in

387-435: Is contrastive only in loanwords . The alveolar stop /t/ is pronounced as an affricate [t͡s] before the high front vowel /i/ . Often, Danish loanwords containing ⟨b d g⟩ preserve these in writing, but that does not imply a change in pronunciation, for example ⟨baaja⟩ [paːja] "beer" and ⟨Guuti⟩ [kuːtˢi] "God"; these are pronounced exactly as /p t k/ . The broad outline of

430-530: Is fronted to [ʉ] between two coronal consonants. The allophonic lowering of /i/ and /u/ before uvular consonants is shown in the modern orthography by writing /i/ and /u/ as ⟨e⟩ and ⟨o⟩ respectively before ⟨q⟩ and ⟨r⟩ . For example: The palatal sibilant [ʃ] has merged with [s] in all dialects except those of the Sisimiut – Maniitsoq – Nuuk – Paamiut area. The labiodental fricative [f]

473-421: Is the most innovative by further simplifying its structure by eliding /n/ . The Greenlandic three- vowel system, composed of /i/ , /u/ , and /a/ , is typical for an Eskimo–Aleut language. Double vowels are analyzed as two morae and so they are phonologically a vowel sequence and not a long vowel. They are also orthographically written as two vowels. There is only one diphthong, /ai/ , which occurs only at

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516-472: Is the most innovative of the Greenlandic dialects since it has assimilated consonant clusters and vowel sequences more than West Greenlandic. Kalaallisut is further divided into four subdialects. One that is spoken around Upernavik has certain similarities to East Greenlandic, possibly because of a previous migration from eastern Greenland. A second dialect is spoken in the region of Uummannaq and

559-624: Is the only word that is required in a sentence. Since verbs inflect for number and person of both subject and object, the verb is in fact a clause itself. Therefore, clauses in which all participants are expressed as free-standing noun phrases are rather rare. The following examples show the possibilities of leaving out the verbal arguments: Sini-ppoq sleep- 3SG / IND Sini-ppoq sleep-3SG/IND "(S)he sleeps" Angut man. ABS sinippoq sleep- 3SG / IND Angut sinippoq man.ABS sleep-3SG/IND Sheila Watt-Cloutier Sheila Watt-Cloutier OC (born 2 December 1953)

602-622: Is the policy of "Greenlandization" of Greenlandic society that began with the home rule agreement of 1979. The policy has worked to reverse the former trend towards marginalization of the Greenlandic language by making it the official language of education. The fact that Greenlandic has become the only language used in primary schooling means that monolingual Danish-speaking parents in Greenland are now raising children bilingual in Danish and Greenlandic. Greenlandic now has several dedicated news media:

645-690: The Chukchi Peninsula ( Chukotka Autonomous Okrug , Russia). ICC was accredited by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and was granted special consultative status (category II) at the United Nations in 1983. The Conference, which first met in June 1977 in Barrow, Alaska (now Utqiaġvik), initially represented indigenous circumpolar peoples from Canada, Alaska and Greenland. In 1980

688-614: The Disko Bay . The standard language is based on the central Kalaallisut dialect spoken in Sisimiut in the north, around Nuuk and as far south as Maniitsoq . Southern Kalaallisut is spoken around Narsaq and Qaqortoq in the south. Table 1 shows the differences in the pronunciation of the word for "humans" in the two main dialects and Inuktun. It can be seen that Inuktun is the most conservative by maintaining ⟨gh⟩ , which has been elided in Kalaallisut, and Tunumiisut

731-508: The number and person of its subject and object . Both nouns and verbs have complex derivational morphology. The basic word order in transitive clauses is subject–object–verb . The subordination of clauses uses special subordinate moods. A so-called fourth-person category enables switch-reference between main clauses and subordinate clauses with different subjects. Greenlandic is notable for its lack of grammatical tense ; temporal relations are expressed normally by context but also by

774-472: The object of a transitive verb in one way, but the subject of a transitive verb in another. For example, " he plays the guitar" would be in the ergative case as a transitive agent, whereas "I bought a guitar " and "as the guitar plays" (the latter being the intransitive sense of the same verb "to play") would both be in the absolutive case. Nouns are inflected by one of eight cases and for possession. Verbs are inflected for one of eight moods and for

817-404: The 1700s. Greenlandic's first orthography was developed by Samuel Kleinschmidt in 1851, but within 100 years, it already differed substantially from the spoken language because of a number of sound changes . An extensive orthographic reform was undertaken in 1973 and made the script much easier to learn. This resulted in a boost in Greenlandic literacy , which is now among the highest in

860-658: The Commission invited Watt-Cloutier to testify with her international legal team (including lawyers from Earthjustice and the Center for International Environmental Law ) at their first hearing on climate change and human rights on 1 March 2007. Her book The Right to Be Cold , about the effects of climate change on Inuit communities, was published by Allen Lane - Penguin Random House in 2015. Her memoir The Right to Be Cold: One Woman's Story of Protecting Her Culture,

903-669: The General Assemblies. At the 2002 General Assembly in Kuujjuaq , Nunavik, Canada, the Chair passed from Greenland, where it had been held for the previous seven years by Aqqaluk Lynge , now a member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues , to Canada, where Sheila Watt-Cloutier , formerly the President of ICC Canada, took the position. In 2006, the Chair passed to ICC Alaska at

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946-671: The General Assembly in Barrow , and was then occupied by Patricia L. Cochran , formerly executive director of the Alaska Native Science Commission . At that Assembly, ICC also voted to change its name to Inuit Circumpolar Council as there has been perennial confusion over an organizational name that sounds more like a past meeting. The leadership of the ICC was initially organized with one president and three regional vice presidents. A fourth vice-president

989-494: The Greenlandic National Radio, Kalaallit Nunaata Radioa , which provides television and radio programming in Greenlandic. The newspaper Sermitsiaq has been published since 1958 and merged in 2010 with the other newspaper Atuagagdliutit/Grønlandsposten , which had been established in 1861 to form a single large Greenlandic language publishing house. Before June 2009, Greenlandic shared its status as

1032-507: The Greenlandic grammar is similar to other Eskimo languages, on the morpholological and syntactic plan. The morphology of Greenlandic is highly synthetic and exclusively suffixing (except for a single highly-limited and fossilized demonstrative prefix). The language creates very long words by means of adding strings of suffixes to a stem. In principle, there is no limit to the length of a Greenlandic word, but in practice, words with more than six derivational suffixes are not so frequent, and

1075-495: The average number of morphemes per word is three to five. The language has between 400 and 500 derivational suffixes and around 318 inflectional suffixes. There are few compound words but many derivations. The grammar uses a mixture of head and dependent marking . Both agent and patient are marked on the predicate, and the possessor is marked on nouns, with dependent noun phrases inflecting for case. The primary morphosyntactic alignment of full noun phrases in Kalaallisut

1118-510: The charter and by-laws of ICC were adopted. The Conference agreed to replace the term Eskimo with the term Inuit. This has not however met with widespread acceptance by some groups, most pre-eminently the Yupik (see Background section below). The goals of the Conference are to strengthen ties between Arctic people and to promote human, cultural, political and environmental rights and polities at

1161-767: The eastern Tunumiisut variety) is the only Eskimo language having lost its dual. Verbs carry a bipersonal inflection for subject and object. Possessive noun phrases inflect for both possessor and case. In this section, the examples are written in Greenlandic standard orthography except that morpheme boundaries are indicated by a hyphen. Greenlandic distinguishes three open word classes : nouns , verbs and particles . Verbs inflect for person and number of subject and object as well as for mood. Nouns inflect for possession and for case. Particles do not inflect. Oqar-poq say- 3SG / IND Oqar-poq say-3SG/IND "(S)he says" Angut man. ABS Angut man.ABS "A man" Naamik No Naamik No "No" The verb

1204-428: The ends of words. Before a uvular consonant ( /q/ or /ʁ/ ), /i/ is realized allophonically as [e] , [ɛ] or [ɐ] , and /u/ is realized allophonically as [o] or [ɔ] , and the two vowels are written ⟨e, o⟩ respectively (as in some orthographies used for Quechua and Aymara ). /a/ becomes retracted to [ɑ] in the same environment. /i/ is rounded to [y] before labial consonants. /u/

1247-468: The first Greenlandic dictionary in 1750 and the first grammar in 1760. From the Danish colonization in the 1700s to the beginning of Greenlandic home rule in 1979, Greenlandic experienced increasing pressure from the Danish language. In the 1950s, Denmark's linguistic policies were directed at strengthening Danish. Of primary significance was the fact that post-primary education and official functions were conducted in Danish. From 1851 to 1973, Greenlandic

1290-558: The international level. ICC holds a General Assembly every four years. ICC is one of the six Arctic indigenous communities to have the status of Permanent Participant on the Arctic Council . The Inuit population includes the following groups and regions: All of these peoples are sometimes collectively referred to by the exonym , Eskimo, the use of which is frowned upon by many of the Inuit, especially in eastern Canada. ICC uses

1333-441: The locations of the different Inuit languages, among them the two main dialects of Greenlandic and the separate language Inuktun ("Avanersuaq"). The most prominent Greenlandic dialect is Kalaallisut, which is the official language of Greenland. The name Kalaallisut is often used as a cover term for all of Greenlandic. The eastern dialect ( Tunumiit oraasiat ) , spoken in the vicinity of Ammassalik Island and Ittoqqortoormiit ,

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1376-410: The nations, make up the eight-member ICC Executive Council. The Executive Council is presided over by an International Chair (formerly International President—the title was changed in 2002). ICC holds a General Assembly every four years, bringing together Inuit from across the northern circumpolar region to discuss issues of international importance to their communities, provide direction for the work of

1419-542: The official language in Greenland with Danish. Since then, Greenlandic has become the sole official language. That has made Greenlandic a unique example of an indigenous language of the Americas that is recognized by law as the only official language of a semi-independent country. Nevertheless, it is still considered to be in a "vulnerable" state by the UNESCO Red Book of Language Endangerment . The country has

1462-577: The organization over the next four years, and divide responsibility for issue areas between the national offices. Assembly delegates appoint an international chair from the General Assembly host-country, along with the members of the Executive Council, and develop policies and resolutions for the coming term. The General Assembly, and thus the International Chair position, rotates between the four Inuit nations quadrennially at

1505-562: The spokesperson for indigenous peoples in the Arctic during the negotiation of the Stockholm Convention banning the manufacture and use of persistent organic pollutants (POPs), including Polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs) or DDT . These substances pollute the Arctic food chain and accumulate in the bodies of Inuit, many of whom continue to subsist on local country food. In 2002, she was elected International Chair of ICC,

1548-615: The term Inuit to refer to them all, which has its own problems. One of those is administrative: an Inuk in the United States could be considered " Native American ," " Alaskan Native " or " Aboriginal American ." The Yupik of both Alaska and Russia generally prefer being called Yupik. Inuit is currently used in Alaska but it is not a word in the Yupik languages , nor a word which they traditionally used to describe themselves. Eskimo, which

1591-808: The use of temporal particles such as "yesterday" or "now" or sometimes by the use of derivational suffixes or the combination of affixes with aspectual meanings with the semantic lexical aspect of different verbs. However, some linguists have suggested that Greenlandic always marks future tense . Another question is whether the language has noun incorporation or whether the processes that create complex predicates that include nominal roots are derivational in nature. When adopting new concepts or technologies, Greenlandic usually constructs new words made from Greenlandic roots, but modern Greenlandic has also taken many loans from Danish and English . The language has been written in Latin script since Danish colonization began in

1634-532: The world . Greenlandic was brought to Greenland by the arrival of the Thule people in the 1200s. The languages that were spoken by the earlier Saqqaq and Dorset cultures in Greenland are unknown. The first descriptions of Greenlandic date from the 1600s. With the arrival of Danish missionaries in the early 1700s and the beginning of Danish colonization of Greenland, the compilation of dictionaries and description of grammar began. The missionary Paul Egede wrote

1677-550: Was Corporate Secretary of Makivik Corporation , the Canadian Inuit land-claim organization established for Northern Quebec (Nunavik) under the 1975 James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement . In 1995, she was elected President of Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) Canada, and re-elected in 1998. ICC represents internationally the interests of Inuit in Russia , Alaska , Canada and Greenland . In this position, she served as

1720-413: Was added when Russia/Chukotka joined the ICC. The president later came to be unknown as chairperson or international chairperson. Greenlandic language Greenlandic is a polysynthetic language that allows the creation of long words by stringing together roots and suffixes . The language's morphosyntactic alignment is ergative , treating both the argument (subject) of an intransitive verb and

1763-739: Was an officer for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police . For the first ten years of her life, Sheila was raised traditionally, travelling on the land by dog sled , before she was sent away for school in Nova Scotia and Churchill , Manitoba in the Canadian Indian residential school system . In the mid-1970s, she worked for the Ungava Hospital as an Inuktitut translator and strove to improve education and health conditions. From 1991 to 1995, she worked as

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1806-547: Was formerly used in Alaska is generally dying out. The main goals of the organization are to strengthen unity among Inuit, to promote their human ( Indigenous and Linguistic rights ) and interests, and to ensure the development of Inuit culture . Structurally, the organization is made up of four separate offices in each of the four Inuit homelands, chartered individually under their national rules. The Presidents of ICC Chukotka, ICC Alaska, ICC Canada, and ICC Greenland, along with one Executive Council Member elected from each of

1849-435: Was written in a complicated orthography devised by the missionary linguist Samuel Kleinschmidt . In 1973, a new orthography was introduced, intended to bring the written language closer to the spoken standard, which had changed considerably since Kleinschmidt's time. The reform was effective, and in the years following it, Greenlandic literacy has received a boost. Another development that has strengthened Greenlandic language

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