Inuvialuktun (part of Western Canadian Inuit/Inuktitut/Inuktut/Inuktun) comprises several Inuit language varieties spoken in the northern Northwest Territories by Canadian Inuit who call themselves Inuvialuit. Some dialects and sub-dialects are also spoken in Nunavut.
Inuvialuktun is spoken by the Inuit of the Mackenzie River delta, Banks Island, part of Victoria Island and the Arctic Ocean coast of the Northwest Territories – the lands of the Inuvialuit Settlement Region. It was traditionally subsumed under a broader Inuktitut. Rather than a coherent language, Inuvialuktun is a politically motivated grouping of three quite distinct and separate varieties. It consists of Sallirmiutun (formerly Siglitun; Inuvialuktun proper), the Kangiryuarmiutun dialect of Inuinnaqtun on Victoria Island in the East and the Uummarmiutun dialect of Iñupiaq around Inuvik and Aklavik in the West.
Inuvialuktun, Inuinnaqtun and Inuktitut constitute three of the eleven official languages of the Northwest Territories. Inuinnaqtun is also official alongside Inuktitut in Nunavut.
The Inuvialuktun dialects are seriously endangered, as English has in recent years become the common language of the community. Surveys of Inuktitut usage in the NWT vary, but all agree that usage is not vigorous. According to Statistics Canada's 2016 Census 680 (22%) of the 3,110 Inuvialuit speak any form of Inuktitut, and 550 (18%) use it at home. Considering the large number of non-Inuit living in Inuvialuit areas and the lack of a single common dialect among the already reduced number of speakers, the future of the Inuit language in the NWT appears bleak.
Before the 20th century, the Inuvialuit Settlement Region was primarily inhabited by Siglit Inuit, who spoke Siglitun, but in the second half of the 19th century, their numbers were dramatically reduced by the introduction of new diseases. Inuit from Alaska moved into traditionally Siglit areas in the 1910s and 1920s, enticed in part by renewed demand for furs from the Hudson's Bay Company.
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Yellowknife (ˈjɛloʊnaɪf; Dogrib: Sǫǫ̀mbak’è) is the capital, largest community, and only city in the Northwest Territories, Canada. It is on the northern shore of Great Slave Lake, about south of the Arctic Circle, on the west side of Yellowknife Bay near the outlet of the Yellowknife River. Yellowknife and its surrounding water bodies were named after a local Dene tribe, who were known as the "Copper Indians" or "Yellowknife Indians", today incorporated as the Yellowknives Dene First Nation.
Inuit (ˈɪnjuᵻt; ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, ᐃᓄᒃ, dual: Inuuk, ᐃᓅᒃ) are a group of culturally similar Indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, and Alaska. Inuit languages are part of the Eskimo–Aleut languages, also known as Inuit-Yupik-Unangan, and also as Eskaleut. Inuit Sign Language is a critically endangered language isolate used in Nunavut.
The Inuvialuit (sing. Inuvialuk; the real people) or Western Canadian Inuit are Inuit who live in the western Canadian Arctic region. They, like all other Inuit, are descendants of the Thule who migrated eastward from Alaska. Their homeland – the Inuvialuit Settlement Region – covers the Arctic Ocean coastline area from the Alaskan border, east through the Beaufort Sea and beyond the Amundsen Gulf which includes some of the western Canadian Arctic Islands, as well as the inland community of Aklavik and part of Yukon.