Inuktitut translation of the Greenlandic tale on climate change Sila by Lana Hansen
Indigenous languages are a formidable reservoir of ideas and concepts that can help humanity find sustainable ways to interact with the rest of the living world, and thus find a way to survive. Sila, Sedna and nuna testify through their complexity to the richness and unity of Inuit cultures around the pole. These related concepts, difficult to translate into Western languages, bring humans back into a whole where they no longer occupy the center of the world. Nuna, territoriality; sila, the source of all movement and change; Sedna, the mother of the sea, at the heart of an incredibly wide mythology and cosmogony adapted to new times, as demonstrated by the present "tale of climate change" written by the Greenlandic Lana Hansen.
The translation of this tale by Greenlandic Lana Hansen is one of the first literary translations between two Inuit languages, here from Greenlandic to Inuktitut.
Lana Hansen's tale has been published by the International Laboratory for Research on Images of the North, Winter and the Arctic in cooperation with the Avataq Cultural Institute. It contains a presentation by Lisa Qiluqqi Koperqualuk, an introduction by Daniel Chartier and drawings by Georg Olsen. It has been translated into Inuktitut by Lisa Qiluqqi Koperqualuk.
The book is available in printed format, sold by the Presses de l'Université du Québec and Prologue, and in digital format which can be downloaded for free.