Tracking and Unlocking the Past: Documentation of Arctic Indigenous Languages

This chapter considers the types of materials available in libraries, archives, special collections, and shoeboxes for studying and understanding Arctic Indigenous languages. Indigenous peoples account for approximately 12.5% of the overall Arctic population and, for centuries, have been in contact with non-Indigenous peoples (e.g., explorers, colonists, traders, and other visitors). Until recently, these ‘outsiders’ were the ones who created most of the records about Arctic languages, documenting language forms and linguistic practices from their own distanced perspectives. There is no single archive or repository for Arctic Indigenous languages, nor is there a centralized catalogue which lists what resources exist and where they are located. The resources are scattered, not only across the Arctic but also many important recordings are in the archives or personal holdings of the people who made them. We map out existing records and provide information about how to work with them, and then provide a close analysis of the holdings in one archive located in Yakutsk, Russia to exemplify the possibilities of finding language materials in regular archives.