Endangered Languages Profile: Kalaallisut/Tunumiisut (Western & Eastern Greenlandic)

Figure 1: Map of Greenland with place names in Kalaallisut/Tunumiisut (Greenlandic) and Dutch

 

Today’s blog post will feature an endangered language but with a twist.  Typically, when endangered languages are discussed in this medium the tone is very somber and grave, but in the case of Kalaallisut and Tunumiisut (known in English as Western/Eastern Greenlandic) the situation is not as dire.  This blog post will explore what this language is, where it is spoken, and how it may be removed from the endangered list.

 

Kalaallisut and Tunumiisut are part of the same language subgroup of the larger language family of which it belongs, which is the Inuit language family.  Many linguistic scholars often refer to these as separate languages, but the Inuit prefer and have requested that all languages within the Inuit language family be considered dialects, which is how they will be referred to herein.  The reason for this request is related to the active misinformation and extermination of Inuit identity over the decades, and by recognizing these as dialects of one Inuit language (and identity) better efforts at preserving the language, its dialects, and Inuit identity can be realized.

 

Kalaallisut and Tunumiisut are spoken throughout Greenland (Figure 1), and they are considered the official language of the country.  These dialects are classified as a polysynthetic, noun-incorporating language.  Put simply, speakers add prefixes, suffixes, and even combine nouns to create multiple meanings in short phrases.  These very large nouns can be very difficult for adult learners to catch onto and learn because the morphology and grammar of the language is so widely different from Indo-European languages.  You can hear how the language is spoken and how daunting it may seem to pick up here.

 

Because Greenland was a Dutch colony until the 1950s and did not become independent until the 1970s Dutch is still widely spoken within Greenland, as well as serves as the primary language of government, commerce, and higher education.  This adds a barrier to learning Kalaallisut and Tunumiisut because they are not seen as important as Dutch or other languages of commerce and politics.  However, the government of Greenland has put forth efforts to encourage the learning of Kalaallisut and Tunumiisut.  They are making efforts to translate government documents into Kalaallisut and Tunumiisut, as well as renaming places throughout the country with Kalaallisut and Tunumiisut names (as seen in Figure 1).  There are also efforts to create words and phrases for science and industry to entice outsiders to learn Kalaallisut and Tunumiisut.  Lastly, there is an active Kalaallisut and Tunumiisut media that provides information and news via written and oral format, with there being newspapers, news channels, and radio programming dedicated to only being delivered in these dialects.  This means that there is hope to remove this language from the endangered languages list if these efforts continue and are fully successful.

 

Works Cited

Endangered Languages Project. "Kalaallisut." n.d. Endangered Languages Project. Electronic. 6 May 2022.

Grenoble, Lenore. "Kalaallisut." n.d. Sorosoro. Electronic. 6 May 2022.

Yoder, Kate. "As ice melts and seas rise, can endangered languages survive?" 12 October 2016. Grist. Electronic. 5 May 2022.

 

World’s Oldest Mummification Practices Revealed

Figure 1: Mummification process Mesolithic people may have used prior to burying their dead (Source: Peyroteo-Stjerna et al., 2022) 

 

For several decades now researchers who have worked in southern Peru and northern Chile have had the privilege to say that the world’s oldest mummification practices began among the Chinchorro people.  Now they will have to modify that claim to note that the world’s oldest known anthropogenic (artificially made) mummification practices come from this region of the world.  It appears that the world’s oldest mummification practices as related to intentional mortuary treatment may have actual began in Europe, and this blog post will detail how this conclusion was reached and its implications.

 

In the 1960s and several decades later excavations in the Sado Valley took place.  The Mesolithic sites of Arapouco and Poças de S. Bento provided a wealth of information concerning mortuary traditions from over 8,000 years ago.  Researchers have been fortunate to have access to the human remains and been able to study them to learn more about these individuals and their lives.  Unfortunately, though, the initial 1960s excavation notes and records had gone missing, leaving out some very important information that could have been gleaned from them about Mesolithic mortuary practices. 

 

All was not lost, however.  An accidental discovery of undeveloped rolls of film led to an extraordinary discovery.  They contained images of the original burials in situ, allowing scholars to study the burials as they were initially discovered in the 1960s.  What they discovered surprised them, to say the least.  They realized that there was evidence of potential mummification of the at least two of the individuals prior to burial.  They reached this conclusion based on several factors, largely revolving around the position of the bodies and bones.  The bodies were buried in very tight, flexed positions that demonstrated no movement of bones, particularly the hands and feet, that regularly and easily move due to their small size and light weight.  The movement of these bones is related to the decomposition process of the body, which cause the body’s soft tissues to expand, contract, and literally rot away, taking with them the small, lightweight bones and moving them away from their original location within the body.  There was also a lack of sediment between the long bones, which should have been present as a result of the soft tissues decomposing and leaving space that dirt would have filled in.

 

The scholars opted to test their hypotheses and traveled to a forensic research facility in Texas.  There they used donated bodies to replicate the Mesolithic burials, first allowing them to naturally mummify prior to burying them.  They also buried unmummified bodies to compare to the mummified ones to see if and what differences may exist.  Remarkable, the mummified burials were more similar to the Mesolithic burials than the unmummified burials, supporting their hypothesis.  They ultimately concluded that the Mesolithic people would have intentionally mummified their dead by wrapping them up and leaving them out in natural climatic conditions that spontaneous mummified the dead (Figure 1).  Upon successful mummification the bodies would have been moved to their final resting place at Arapouco and Poças de S. Bento.  While it unknown why Mesolithic individuals proceeded with mummifying their dead prior to burial there are a few ideas that the scholars put forward, including a situation of having to move bodies to a designated resting place.  If the deceased died too far from the burial site and needed to be moved then mummifying them would have made traveling with a dead body much easier.  This idea cannot be tested at this time, but it makes plausible sense when one considers the weight and decomposition stages of a body.  At the present time, however, it is unclear if this was the motivation for mummification or not.  What is clear, however, is that natural mummification of Portugal predates that which is already known in Peru, Chile, and Egypt, and this discovery also opens up new avenues of research regarding Mesolithic mortuary traditions.

 

References

Peyroteo-Stjerna, R., Nilsson Stutz, L., Mickleburgh, H., & Cardoso, J. (2022). Mummification in the Mesolithic: New Approaches to Old Photo Documentation Reveal Previously Unknown Mortuary Practices in the Sado Valley, Portugal. European Journal of Archaeology, 1-22. doi:10.1017/eaa.2022.3

Applied Anthropologist Profile: Anuli Akanegbu, Scholar Practitioner, Social Media Consultant, and Producer & Host of the BLK IRL Podcast

It is with great pleasure that I get to discuss the projects and success of applied anthropologist and doctoral student, Anuli Akanegbu, Scholar Practitioner, Social Media Consultant, and Producer & Host of the BLK IRL Podcast.  Akanegbu is not an anthropologist by training, but she is currently pursuing her doctorate in sociocultural anthropology at New York University.  Her doctoral research, which is about the intersections of race, class, ethnicity, and gender in “influencer culture” in social media, was both inspired by and currently draws upon her extensive marketing background where she worked closely with many multinational corporations (e.g., Unilever and Ebay).  Her goals are to use her doctoral research to add not only to the academic scholarship but also be applied directly to and for individuals, particularly Black and other people of color, interested in breaking into this industry. 

 

Aside from pursuing her doctoral research Akanegbu is dedicated to producing and hosting her podcast, BLK IRL.  The name was derived from conversations she had with friends wherein they discussed the commodification and fetishization of Black people within American popular culture.  She was further inspired to create the podcast to showcase how people live two different lives/identities.  She noticed how people may convey one identity online, particularly through social media, but act in different manner or maintain a dissimilar lifestyle in real life.  Rather than discuss this contradiction solely in the academic literature Akanegbu took to podcasting.  She felt familiar with this medium from her previous marketing experience, but also feels strongly in the reach of the platform to larger and largely nonacademic audiences.  She sees podcasting as an effective means of storytelling, which can and does include providing informative content to the audience.  The listeners can and often are more connected to the information provided through listening to the speaker’s words, tone, and pitch.  The melody of the voice can keep the listener’s attention and create and foster a deeper connection.

 

Akanegbu remarks often that there are several parallels between the work she previously did in marketing and the work she is now completing as an anthropology student.  She notes how the methods used by both are extremely similar-both have to study their subjects carefully to know where best to begin producing new content/information/products.  For a marketer understanding consumer trends requires research about people, their cultures, their values, their beliefs, etc., which is very much the same as anthropologists seeking to understand a group of people and/or their culture.  She states that the connections between her marketing experience and anthropological scholarship enable her to best utilize her skills and knowledge to better realize her doctoral research and her podcast production. 

 

Works Cited

Akanegbu, Anuli. "An Interview with Anuli Akanegbu about Podcasting and BLK IRL." Practicing Anthropology 2021. Electronic.

—. Anuli. 2022. Electronic. 9 March 2022.

—. "Podcasts as a Form of Scholarship." 29 April 2021. American Anthropologist. Electronic. 9 March 2022.