The journal Études Inuit Studies is at a turning point in its existence. Approaching a significant anniversary—it will be 50 years old in 2027—it continues to publish scientific articles, research notes, and other texts in a research context undergoing a major paradigm shift. The growing presence of Inuit in academia, their perspective of the way scientific knowledge is produced, and their interest in producing new knowledge about their own society, means that we need to rethink the ways in which research is produced, and the links between researchers and communities, Inuit and non-Inuit. In this context, the death of Bernard Saladin d’Anglure, one of the founders of the journal Études Inuit Studies, prompts us to question the origins of the international Inuit Studies network and its possible future. His death on February 13, 2025, in Toulouse, France, leaves a great void for all those close to him, his family, friends, and collaborators. But it also reveals something else: the extent of his academic legacy. Bernard Saladin d’Anglure (along with Louis-Jacques Dorais) is the father of the international Inuit Studies network. In the 1960s, he gathered around him students and collaborators, both Inuit and non-Inuit, who undertook research in the Canadian Arctic, particularly in Nunavik. This small group, mainly attached to Université Laval (Québec), formed the core of the Inuksiutiit Katimajiit association, founded in 1974, whose mission was not only to undertake scientific research on Inuit language, culture, and societies, but also to disseminate the knowledge produced to the academic community and to Inuit themselves. Although research was obviously at the heart of the association’s mission, importance was given from the outset to the active participation of Inuit in the production of knowledge, and to the active dissemination of this data to Inuit, with the aim of “reinforcing their identity and supporting their economic and territorial claims.” Participatory research, the co-construction of data, and the dissemination of knowledge were thus, as early as the 1970s, practices rooted in Inuit Studies. The Inuksiutiit Katimajiit association organized a number of activities over the following decades, leading to the gradual structuring of an international network of researchers interested in Inuit societies. The first issue of Études Inuit Studies was published in 1977, and the journal has continued to publish issues containing articles in French, English, and Inuktitut ever since. From the beginning, the journal had in mind “the interest of the Inuit themselves, by providing them with material they can use according to their own preoccupations.” Bernard Saladin d’Anglure’s article for the journal’s first issue, for example, included an Inuktitut transcription of the intrauterine reminiscences of Iqallijuq, an Igloolik Elder, as well as several drawings by Leah Idlauq d’Argencourt. The first Inuit Studies Conference was held in Québec City in 1978, bringing together some 60 participants from several North American universities, as well as representatives of government and Inuit organizations. Since then, 22 congresses have been held, mainly in Canada, but also in the United States, Kalaallit Nunaat, and Europe. The very nature of these congresses has changed over the decades, evolving from gatherings of mostly North American academics interested in Inuit Studies in the 1980s to international scientific meetings in the 1990s and 2000s and including more and more Inuit who have appropriated these forums for exchange. The last conference, held in Winnipeg in 2022, was organized by Heather Igloliorte, an Inuk researcher from Labrador who was then a professor of art history at Concordia, and for the first time brought together more Inuit than non-Inuit researchers. Bernard Saladin d’Anglure’s legacy is also ethnographic and anthropological. Over the course of his career, …
