| Summary: | Professor Tim Pasch spent his summer in the Canadian arctic researching and recording voices of the Inuit Timothy Pasch, UND Communication program professor, did not spend his summer like most. He packed his bags and took to the Arctic ice to help preserve the language and culture of the Inuit. He brought with him his digital media tools and expertise in the areas of still image and video, audio, social media, web- and mobile app design to preserve and broadcast the voices of the Inuit. With citizenship in two countries ? Canada and the United States ? Pasch understands the role communication plays within a culture. "I came to realize that the ability to speak different languages is a great treasure of life, and that culture is inextricably linked to language," said Pasch, who speaks French and Japanese fluently. While working on his Ph.D. at the University of Washington, Pasch had the opportunity from a FLAS grant to study the Inuit language of Inuktitut near the Arctic Circle of Canada ? the first person to receive this type of grant to study a First Nations language. "First Nations" is the Canadian equivalent term for Native Americans. Pasch lived with an Inuit family in the Nunavik community of Inukjuak, a part of Arctic Quebec, to research the effects of social networking on the Inuktitut language. Pasch discovered that communities across the Canadian Artic were experiencing dramatic changes: languages and cultural identities were vanishing. Pasch researched the history of the Canadian Artic, only to find a recent past filled with social upheavals. Pasch theorizes that teaching digital communication technologies in the Arctic may help prevent certain human rights concerns from reoccurring there. "Having seen how quickly language can be lost, and how challenging it can be to teach language, I became focused on adapting technologies for endangered language learning; through recording and broadcasting cultural knowledge and awareness," said Pasch. For Pasch, communication is an important facet of cultural ...
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