GÉTIC, Université Laval (Québec, Canada)
First memories in Inuvialuit narratives
While editing over 200 English translations of archival material and interviews done with Inuvialuit elders during oral history projects, I started to note peculiarities in the manner they talked about their first memories. It seems that for the Inuvialuit elders, the first memories are linked to what I call an "awareness of one's perceptions." Indeed, the Inuvialuit elders often started to tell about their life by using expressions that were translated in English by "when I came to my senses," "when I first woke up," or "when I became aware," as if before that precise moment, the child could not remember anything since his/her consciousness was not totally awaken. Futhermore, the use of "could" and "start" in the English translations ("when I first could remember"; "when I first start remembering") reinforced my perception that in Inuvialuktun, the process of remembering might be thought as starting in the past and not from present to the past as understood in English language. Wondering if my interpretations were distorted since I had been using English translations, I then looked at original Inuvialuktun transcriptions, and isolated words that are linked to talking about first memories. In this paper, I discuss the results of my research on the English translations and Inuvialuktun transcriptions of Inuvialuit narratives about first memories.