‘How many Eskimo words for ice?’ Collecting Inuit sea ice terminologies in the International Polar Year 2007–2008

• Published in: The Canadian Geographer / Le Géographe canadien
• Main Author: Krupnik, Igor
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2011
• Subjects: Arctic; Bering Sea; Greenland; Athabascan; Chukchi; East Greenland; eskimo*; International Polar Year; inuit; IPY; Sámi; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1541-0064.2010.00345.x; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2Fj.1541-0064.2010.00345.x; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1541-0064.2010.00345.x

Inuit knowledge of the sea ice environment has been praised by generations of early explorers, arctic travellers, natural scientists, anthropologists, and popular writers. Surprisingly little has been done to systematically document and analyze the richness of the Inuit sea ice nomenclatures until quite recently. This article reviews the history of Inuit (Eskimo) sea ice terminology collection, including efforts undertaken in 2005–2009 for the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007–2008. Altogether, a database of 35 indigenous ice nomenclatures from the Bering Sea to East Greenland has been created, displaying the richness of over 1,500 terms for sea ice in all Inuit/Eskimo languages and most regional dialects, as well as in other indigenous northern languages (Chukchi, Dena’ina Athabascan, and Sámi). Processing these vocabularies, analyzing the origins and historical geography of the Inuit sea ice nomenclatures, and returning the data to participating communities as educational, heritage, and language materials may become one of the lasting contributions of the IPY 2007–2008 program .