Indigenous peoples of Nunavut

The Indigenous peoples of Nunavut refer to the inhabitants of Canada's northernmost territory whose descendants lived in the region before the arrival of European settlers. The Canadian government considers Indigenous peoples to be members of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit. First Nations refers to groups of Indigenous peoples who share a language and a government. Métis are the mixed-race descendants of Indigenous people and Europeans. The Indigenous population of Nunavut is almost exclusively Inuit, an Indigenous people of the northernmost regions of North America. About 31,390 Nunavut residents are Indigenous. This number represents more than 80 percent of the territory's total population, the highest Indigenous percentage of any of Canada's thirteen provinces or territories.

Demographics

Nunavut, which means "our land" in the Inuktitut language of the region's Inuit, is one of three territories in Canada. Unlike provinces, territories are not granted power under their own constitutions but receive authority through the federal government in Ottawa. Nunavut is the largest territory in the nation with a total area of 808,186 square miles (2.1 million square kilometers). The territory includes a section of mainland Canada and an archipelago of islands that stretch deep into the Arctic Circle. Nunavut shares land borders with the Northwest Territories to the west and southwest and Manitoba to the south. It is separated from the province of Quebec by the Hudson Straight to the southeast and from Greenland by Baffin Bay to the east. The northernmost point in Canada, Cape Columbia on Nunavut's Ellesmere Island, is about 470 miles (756 kilometers) from the North Pole.

Much of Nunavut is located above the edge of the northern forests, and many of the territory's islands are covered year-round in ice and snow. The lake-dotted southern reaches of Nunavut have average January temperatures of about -20 degrees Fahrenheit (-29 degrees Celsius) with July averages reaching about 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius). In the far north, winter averages are about -30 degrees Fahrenheit (-34 degrees Celsius) and can often drop below -50 degrees Fahrenheit (-46 degrees Celsius). Average summer temperatures in the region struggle to reach 40 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius).

According to the 2021 census, Nunavut has the smallest population of any province or territory with 36,858 people. The 2021 census reported 30,860 people as claiming Inuit status; 180 people claiming a First Nations' identity, 115 identifying as Métis, with the remaining claiming other Indigenous identities. Nunavut is the most sparsely populated region in Canada with the Inuit population spread out over twenty-five communities across the territory in 2021. The largest community in Nunavut is its capital, Iqaluit, a city of 7,429 on Baffin Island to the east. Only four other Nunavut communities—Rankin Inlet, Arviat, Igloolik, and Baker Lake—have populations of more than 2,000.

Background

While the first humans are believed to have migrated to North America across the Bering Strait land bridge between 13,000 to 15,500 years ago, people did not settle in the region of Nunavut for thousands of years. The glaciers that had covered the continent receded about 10,000 years ago allowing Indigenous peoples to spread out across modern-day Canada, but few traveled north of the forested regions into the Arctic. About 5,000 years ago, a group of people called Paleo-Eskimos crossed over from modern Siberia and moved into the far northern regions from Alaska to Greenland. The first settlements were established in Nunavut about 4,500 years ago. These were a semi-nomadic people known as the Pre-Dorset culture, a name taken from an archeological site at Cape Dorset on Baffin Island. The Pre-Dorset people hunted muskoxen and caribou with bows and arrows and speared seals and fish with harpoons.

About 500 BCE, the more settled Dorset culture developed in the region. The Dorset people lived in houses made of snow, stone, and turf and heated them with soapstone oil lamps. Their more advanced tools allowed them to hunt larger prey such as whales and walruses. In Inuit tradition, the Dorset were known as Tuniit or Sivullirmiut, a name that means "first inhabitants." They were said to be a race of peaceful giants who were easily frightened.

The Dorset culture thrived until about 1000 CE when a new group of people began to sweep east across the Arctic. The Thule were technologically superior to the Dorset and by about 1400 had taken control of the Nunavut region. The direct ancestors of the modern Inuit, the Thule used sealskin kayaks and open hide-covered boats called umiaq to hunt whales and seals in the Arctic waters. Their prowess at hunting led to the construction of larger settlements. These settlements of whalebone and sod houses were sometimes used by as many as fifty people. Archeologists believe the Thule and the Dorset may have been the first peoples of Nunavut to have contact with Europeans. After establishing settlements in Greenland about 980, Norse explorers began traveling westward, getting as far as Baffin Island, which they referred to as Helluland. Evidence suggests the Norse engaged in some trade with the native people of the region after the year 1000.

A period of global cooling known as the Little Ice Age forced the Thule to abandon their permanent villages in the northern islands and begin to retreat south around the sixteenth century. The climate shift led to the birth of modern Inuit culture, as the settled lifestyle of the Thule was replaced by a more migratory existence. In winter, the Inuit would travel north to their traditional seal- and whale-hunting grounds on the sea ice; during the summer, they would travel south to fish and hunt caribou.

Overview

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, another wave of European explorers entered the region looking for an open sea passage to the Pacific Ocean. The frozen northern seas proved impassable, but the European excursions opened the way for whalers, fur traders, and Christian missionaries to have contact with the Inuit. For much of the nineteenth century, the Inuit worked with European and American whalers in the eastern Arctic regions. When the whaling industry collapsed in the early twentieth century, the Inuit turned to fur trapping, an industry that was beginning to thrive in the region. With the ability to trade furs for money and goods, many Inuit no longer needed to rely on seasonal hunting for their livelihood and began to settle in the eastern coastal communities of Nunavut.

When the Canadian fur trade ended in the 1930s, the Inuit received some financial assistance from the federal government while maintaining their self-sufficient hunting and fishing lifestyle. At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s, the Canadian government began constructing an early-warning radar system in its Arctic territories to guard against a possible attack from Soviet aircraft. The influx of military contractors to the region created jobs for the Inuit and led to another shift away from their semi-nomadic substance lifestyle to a more settled, wage-based existence. However, when the project ended, many of the jobs vanished, leading to a high rate of unemployment. Some returned to the fur trade while others sought work with federal agencies or lived off government assistance. Many modern Inuit continue to live off the land, hunting whales, walruses, seals, and caribou for food. Others have adapted their traditional hunting and fishing ways into the modern economy, working in commercial fisheries and making arts and crafts from whalebone, antler, and other natural resources.

The territory of Nunavut was part of Canada's Northwest Territories since the latter joined the national confederation in 1870. In the 1970s, Inuit political activists filed a series of land claims against the Canadian government and began a push to create a new Inuit territory. The eastern portion of the Northwest Territories was made into a legislative district called Nunatsiaq in 1979, and Peter Ittinuar became the first person of Inuit descent elected to the House of Commons. After more than a decade of discussion, a land-claim agreement was reached in 1990 and three years later, the Canadian government agreed to create the territory of Nunavut. Nunavut officially separated from the Northwest Territories in 1999 to become Canada's newest territory.

The Nunavut Land Claims Agreement was the largest Indigenous settlement in the history of Canada. It granted the Inuit exclusive land rights to about 135,000 square miles (350,000 square kilometers) of the territory's total area and mineral rights to another 13,500 square miles (35,000 square kilometers). The government agreed to pay $1.17 billion in compensation for the remaining land along with a share of royalties from any oil, gas, or mineral development on government property. The Inuit were also granted the right to handle wildlife management and harvest the territory's wildlife for traditional use. Nunavut's government was adapted to mirror the traditional Inuit system—it was a government based on consensus rather than on political parties, the type of government used in Ottawa and most of the provinces.

The 30,860 Inuit in Nunavut are part of a wider population of about 145,000 that resides across the Arctic regions from Russian Siberia to Greenland. In 2021, an estimated 58,220 Canadian Inuit lived in a region called Inuit Nunangat. This traditional Inuit homeland comprises an area in northern Labrador, the Nunavut territory, and parts of the Northwest Territories and Yukon. Nunavut's twenty-five Inuit communities are divided into three administrative districts. Many communities are isolated and can only be reached by air or sea travel. The largest administrative district is Qikiqtaaluk, which includes Iqaluit and twelve other communities in the eastern and southern island regions of Nunavut. The Kivalliq district encompasses most of the mainland portion of Nunavut west of the Hudson Bay. The Inuit of this region are called the Kivallirmiut, or Caribou Inuit. Cut off from the Arctic seas, the Kivallirmiut developed a culture based on trout fishing and hunting caribou and geese. Kitikmeot is the smallest region and includes seven communities in the western islands and parts of the western mainland.

Like many Indigenous people of North America, traditional Inuit spirituality was animistic, the belief that spirits inhabited the animals and objects of the natural world. An important figure among the Inuit was the shaman, a human representative who acted as an intermediary between the people and the spirit world. Among Inuit myths is the tale of Sedna, a young girl who angered her father and was cast into the sea. Sedna gave birth to all the animals of the sea and was revered by the Inuit as the goddess of the ocean. With the arrival of missionaries in the nineteenth century, many Inuit abandoned their traditional ways and converted to Christianity. By the twenty-first century, more than 90 percent of the population of Nunavut identified as Christian.

The Inuit language is part of the Eskimo-Aleut language family spoken by people across the Arctic and into the islands of southern Alaska. The people of the more populated southern portion of Baffin Island speak a dialect known as East Inuktitut. This is the most spoken dialect in Canada and is shared by Inuit in northern Quebec and Labrador. The remainder of the Inuit in Nunavut speak West Inuktitut, a dialect also spoken in the Northwest Territories. While the Inuit language is endangered in many places, it has thrived in Nunavut. According to the 2021 Canadian census, some form of Inuktitut was spoken by 40,320 people in Canada, including about 21,277 people in Nunavut. Both East and West Inuktitut are mutually intelligible and can be easily understood by speakers of the other.

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