Language, power, and ethnicity in an arctic Québec community

In this study, I make use of historical analysis, a language survey, and ethnographic data to examine processes of language choice, presenting a political-economic analysis of the differential uses of Inuttitut, Cree, French, and English in the Arctic Québec settlement respectively known in these four languages as Kuujjuaraapik, Whapmagoostui, Poste-de-la-Baleine, and Great Whale River. I address the standard sociolinguistic questions of how and why minority languages persist, despite increasing pressure from dominant colonial languages; and argue that the settlement's four languages all play important roles in boundary maintenance, in defining valued material and symbolic resources, in establishing national, ethnic, and social identities, and in achieving access to education, employment, and positions of power. I also explore the development of and tension between the dominant Southern-controlled linguistic market and an alternative 'traditional' language market in which local Inuit linguistic and culturalpractices are valued. Results from interview and observational data suggest that within the dominant linguistic market in Kuujjuaraapik, French and Inuttitut are in transitional positions--positions arising from their relatively recent roles in ethnic mobilization, of the French in Québec and of the Inuit in Nunavik, respectively--and in the changing political economy of the region. Both languages have accordingly entered into competition with English, the historically established language of 'power'. In the alternative 'traditional' linguistic market, particular forms of symbolic resources are valued and employed to negotiate and define the value of other symbolic and material resources in the community. Paradoxically, Inuit participation in the dominant market appears to be dependent on the persistence of 'traditional' cultural and linguistic practices in this alternative language market, in order to justify distinct Inuit rights to control the territory of Nunavik. At the community level, this study explores the construction of ethnic groups and boundaries and how they are linked to valued material and symbolic resources.