You may consider budgeting for a professional to do the transcribing. Or think about partnering with another group of adults or older students who are highly literate in Inuktitut or Inuinnaqtun.

If your time is limited or you don’t have the necessary equipment, consider working with existing oral history recordings and transcriptions – instead of doing your own interviews. Everyone will still benefit from hearing the Elders’ knowledge. Your group can do a project based on the information, but you won’t have to be responsible for interviewing, recording, transcribing and cataloguing.

Keep Elders informed about the progress of the project.

Ask for their advice and give them updates about your project. When the project is complete, invite them to tea and to view your display, presentation, artwork, play or video. Give them a copy of your writing or other productions.

“In the oral tradition words are sacred; they are intrinsically powerful and beautiful... Nothing exists beyond the influence of words. Words are the names of Creation... Every word spoken, every word heard, is the utterance of prayer. Thus, in the oral tradition, language bears the burden of the sacred, the burden of belief. In a written tradition, the place of language is not so certain.”

N. Scott Momaday, Kiowa American First Nations author

From Spoken Here by Mark Abley, published by Random House Canada, 2003