Innu — Innu-aimun (language page)
Status: Researched draft — cultural review pending
How to read this entry: Documented fact = published record cited in Sources. The Collection's standing = what the Sacred Name Collection's recovery shelf actually holds, stated on the page's face — held, partial, or not held — audited 2026-10-30. The Innu nation's own institutions lead the living language; this page links to them and copies nothing from them. A register discipline note stands on this page's face: the recovered Le Goff Katolik deneya (1890), shelved in this encyclopedia's Dene doorway, prints its language as "montagnaise" but is Dëne Sųłıné, not Innu — the two languages and peoples are kept apart everywhere in this programme, and nothing in that Dene witness belongs to this page.
The Innu are the people of Nitassinan — some 24,000 in Québec and 3,500 in Labrador. Their language, Innu-aimun, is one of the strongest in the Canadian set: about 11,000 speakers, and in the strongest communities children still enter school speaking Innu-aimun first.
The Collection's standing — NOT HELD, stated on the face
- NOT HELD. No Innu-aimun text stands on the Collection's recovery shelf and no register entry exists. The audit's verdict stands on this page: this is a shelf gap, not a language emergency — the language is carried by its own institutions, and the printed documentary record (Clarke and MacKenzie's grammatical work; the pan-Innu dictionary, 2013, Innu–English–French, all dialects) is deep, held under its makers' rights and named here as scholarship, never copied.
- Class: RECOVERABLE WITH LIVING HOLDERS — a recovery pass, when the programme's order reaches it, runs under the register's public-domain law and in step with the nation's own institutions.
The nation's own institutions — linked, never copied
- Institut Tshakapesh (Uashat, est. 1978) — the Innu cultural and educational institute, holding the language's teaching and standardisation work, including its catalogue of Innu publications.
- The Innu Language Project's resources — dictionaries, texts and teaching materials, including the Tshakapesh catalogue: Innu-aimun resources.
- The Naskapi of Kawawachikamach are the sister people and language line of the same country, carried on their own page in the programme's order.
Sources
- Canada Nations Language Audit (this programme, 2026-10-30), §6.3 — population, speaker count, institute and dictionary record, the Le Goff register-discipline note.
- Innu Language Project (innu-aimun.ca) — resources standing, accessed 2026-10-30.
Weakest-sourced points in this entry (flagged): (1) Population and speaker figures stand at the audit's summary depth (census lines of the programme record). (2) The Naskapi line is named as a sister line only; its own page is owed.