Inuvialuktun

Inuvialuktun, also known as Western Canadian Inuit, Western Canadian Inuktitut, and Western Canadian Inuktun, comprises several Inuit language varieties spoken in the northern Northwest Territories and Nunavut by those Canadian Inuit who call themselves Inuvialuit.

Inuvialuktun is spoken by the Inuit of the Mackenzie River delta, Banks Island, part of Victoria Island and the Arctic Ocean coast of the Northwest Territories – the lands of the Inuvialuit Settlement Region. It was traditionally subsumed under a broader Inuktitut, and there is no consensus which dialects belong to which language. Rather than a coherent language, Inuvialuktun is a politically motivated grouping of three quite distinct and separate varieties.

Inuvialuktun (which consists of Siglitun (Inuvialuktun proper), Inuinnaqtun and Natsilingmiutut) and Inuinnaqtun constitute two of the eleven official languages of the Northwest Territories. Inuinnaqtun is also official alongside Inuktitut in Nunavut. With the exception of Natsilingmiutut they are written in a Latin alphabet and have no tradition of Inuktitut syllabics.

Before the 20th century, the Inuvialuit Settlement Region was primarily inhabited by Siglit Inuit, who spoke Siglitun, but in the second half of the 19th century, their numbers were dramatically reduced by the introduction of new diseases. Inuit from Alaska moved into traditionally Siglit areas in the 1910s and 1920s, enticed in part by renewed demand for furs from the Hudson's Bay Company. These Inuit are called Uummarmiut – which means people of the green trees – in reference to their settlements near the tree line. Originally, there was an intense dislike between the Siglit and the Uummarmiut, but these differences have faded over the years, and the two communities are thoroughly intermixed these days.