After three weeks on the road in Yellowknife doing Inuvialuktun translation for the Northwest Territories legislative assembly, Lillian Elias says she’s tired and ready to go home to Inuvik.

Elias, 82, is one of the few remaining fluent speakers of Inuvialuktun, the Inuit language of the western Arctic. She is one of only two Inuvialuktun interpreters and translators the N.W.T. government lists on its Indigenous language website.

“I could be one of the last ones who is fluent in my language,” Elias said.

In 2024, of 411 people in the territory considered “able to converse” in Inuvialuktun, more than half were over 50.

Elias, a residential school survivor who has spent years promoting, preserving and teaching Inuvialuktun, said she finds long-term assignments — like spending three weeks in Yellowknife — exhausting.

“I am not that young anymore,” she said. 

Now well past retirement age, Elias continues to work as a freelancer because she loves working in her language, and because there are few who can take over if she retired. But she said the N.W.T. government needs to do more to ensure it can provide services in Inuvialuktun.

Indigenous language translators and interpreters are hired as independent contractors, unlike French language translators, who are government employees.

That difference means Indigenous language translators aren’t eligible for government pensions or employment insurance, Elias said. Such benefits would also serve as incentives for future generations, she said.