See also:. More Naming Conventions. Trending Here are the facts and trivia that people are buzzing about. Is Vatican City a Country? The Languages of Africa. The Mongol Empire. The Most and Least Religious Countries. FEN Learning is part of Sandbox Networks, a digital learning company that operates education services and products for the 21st century. After the completion of the study in , the Commission recommended that the NWT should not divide into two territories.
This slowed the discussion of the issue for a few years. In , the issue was re-ignited when the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada the main political Inuit organization of the time proposed the creation of Nunavut as part of the comprehensive Inuit land claim settlement, including the Inuvialuit area of the Beaufort Sea. Later that year, due to development pressure in their region, the Inuvialuit split from the ITC and pursued their own land claim. Reading Initiatives Book Clubs. To learn more about Nunavut, please see our reading list.
Nunavut Day Explore Nunavut and learn about its interesting history. We welcome your respectful and on-topic comments and questions in this limited public forum. Community-contributed content represents the views of the user, not those of Markham Public Library. Footer Menu. Contact Us Markham Public Library. Contact Us. Nunavummiut live in 25 communities spread across this vast territory, with the largest number, 7, census , in the capital, Iqaluit.
The creation of Nunavut in the region was previously part of the Northwest Territories represented the first major change to the political map of Canada since the incorporation of Newfoundland into Confederation in The Canadian Shield comprises much of the mainland, certain islands around Hudson Bay and parts of the Arctic Archipelago.
The lowlands of the Canadian Shield rest on a bed of rock that is at least 1 billion years old. They are covered by a thin layer of soil, and are often poorly drained and flat. A defining characteristic of this physiographic region are the thousands of lakes and rivers that dot the surface. The Arctic Lands physiographic region extends throughout the northern half of Nunavut.
The eastern edge of the Archipelago is a mountainous zone, with elevations approaching 2, m in the north, and a heavily fjorded coast. In sharp contrast, the central and western islands are relatively flat, with low relief.
On the northern islands, night lasts for 24 hours during the winter months, while day lasts for 24 hours during the summer. Much of the land in Nunavut is characterized as tundra , which is bare, rocky and treeless. The soil of the tundra is locked in permafrost. The Arctic is experiencing climate warming faster and more intensely than most other parts of the world. Changes in Nunavut include higher temperatures, melting permafrost, reduced sea ice, thinning and retreating glaciers and diminished ice shelves.
These changes threaten polar bears , seals , walruses , caribou and many other species on which traditional Inuit harvesting practices depend. See also Geography of Nunavut. During the last Ice Age , much of Nunavut was covered by a thick sheet of glacial ice. Between 15, and 10, years ago the glaciers covering Nunavut melted, and shortly afterward the landscape filled with caribou and muskoxen , while walrus , seals and whales moved into the channels between the islands.
While Indigenous peoples followed migrating caribou to the edge of the treeline on the mainland, they never ventured to the Arctic coastline or the islands beyond. Around 5, years ago, however, the first people began to explore the lands and sea that now make up Nunavut. In a wave of migration that likely started in Siberia, the Palaeoeskimos of the Pre-Dorset culture moved in small groups across the Arctic coastline and Archipelago, pushing through to Greenland and Labrador.
As they encountered the different ecosystems and geography of the Arctic, they adapted their hunting techniques and tool technology. In Nunavut, they hunted muskoxen and caribou with bow and arrow, and seals, fish, walruses and even small whales by throwing harpoons from the shore or sea ice.
For shelter, they crafted tents out of animal skin. The small cutting edges of their stone tools have led archaeologists to call the Pre-Dorset culture the Arctic Small Tool Tradition. The Pre-Dorset way of life transitioned to the Dorset culture 2, years ago, characterized by markedly different tool technology, including triangular blades and soapstone lamps.
The Dorset hunted sea mammals, including narwhal and walrus. Unlike their predecessors, the Dorset lived in more permanent houses made of snow, stone and turf. About 1, years ago, another wave of migration started to move from the southern Bering Sea to the eastern Arctic. These people, known as the Thule , adapted a maritime hunting culture with the tools, boats and skills required to harvest the larger whales found in the waters of the Arctic Archipelago. Advanced tool technology that included the sealskin kayak, the open skin boat known as the umiaq, harpoons, fishing spears, lances, bows and arrows, a type of knife called the ulu, soapstone lamps and pots, and snow goggles, helped the Thule to successfully travel on the land and effectively harvest the animals that sustained them.
In addition to whales, the Thule also harvested seal, fish, caribou and smaller mammals. The large volumes of food provided by the seal hunts allowed the Thule to live in larger, more permanent communities, often a dozen or more houses made of stone slabs, sod and whalebone. In these villages, people had ample leisure time to craft their sophisticated tools, often out of metal, and develop their vibrant culture, expressed in elaborate carvings, amongst other crafts.
As the Thule pushed into the Arctic Archipelago, they moved into land inhabited by the Dorset. Inuit oral tradition remembers the Dorset as the Tuniit or the Sivullirmiut the first inhabitants and describes these people as peaceful giants, taller and stronger than the Thule. While there may have been some intermarriage or conflict between the two groups, on the whole a pattern of encounter and retreat seems to have been followed, with the Dorset choosing to keep their distance from the Thule and their culture.
As the Dorset retreated into more marginal and inhospitable zones, the struggle to survive became ever more difficult. Although the idea is disputed between archaeologists, there is a chance that a small group of Dorset people known as the Sadlermiut survived in a small, isolated community on Coats , Walrus and Southampton islands in Hudson Bay near the present-day Nunavut community of Coral Harbour until they died of an epidemic in the early 20th century.
Around years ago, Thule culture changed dramatically. In response to a cooling climate, the Thule abandoned most of the northern Archipelago. In addition, their permanent villages started to break apart as the people embraced a more migratory life based on seasonal subsistence patterns shaped by local environments. The people now lived in small shifting family groups with a non-hierarchical social organization.
The shift in Thule culture ended in the emergence of the diverse Inuit societies that exist in Nunavut today.
Throughout the Kitikmeot, groups of Inuit — the Inuinnait and the Netsilingmiut — thrived in a pattern of life perfectly adapted to the environmental conditions of the central Arctic. In a seasonal cycle that repeated year after year, they lived in large iglu villages on the sea ice and hunted seals during the winter months before returning to the land in smaller groups to fish and hunt caribou in the spring and summer.
These groups were amongst the most nomadic people in the North American Arctic, and they travelled extensively in their seasonal cycle as they sought the best hunting and fishing grounds in the region. In the coastal areas of the Kivalliq, the Kivallirmiut also called Caribou Inuit adapted to life in the interior, where they hunted caribou and geese and fished for trout.
Their dependence on inland rather than coastal resources made them unique among Inuit societies. During the fall hunt, populations gathered at a few good hunting spots to replenish their food supplies for winter.
Caribou skins were used to make clothes and containers, as well as tents during the summer months and snowhouses during the winter. In the Qikiqtaaluk, the different groups of Baffin Island Inuit and the Iglulingmuit adapted to their local environments.
The people of the Qikiqtaaluk harvested walruses , seals , caribou and arctic char. Throughout Nunavut, Inuit developed rich and vibrant cultures and traditional knowledge systems strongly connected to their local environments. At the same time, they also participated in extensive trade networks, exchanging skins, driftwood, soapstone, flint, copper, clothing and tools.
See also Indigenous People: Arctic. After settling along the southwestern coast of Greenland after the year , groups of Norse intermittently ventured to the eastern fringe of the Arctic Archipelago until about CE in search of resources and trading partners.
In the first European forays into the Arctic Archipelago in the 16th and early 17th centuries, explorers searched for a commercial route to Asia, a water passageway known as the Northwest Passage linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans above northern North America.
During three expeditions in the late s, Martin Frobisher explored Greenland the Norse abandoned the area in the early 15 th century , sailed into the bay on southeastern Baffin Island that now bears his name and claimed the region for Queen Elizabeth I. Soon after, English efforts relocated to the southerly reaches of the North American archipelago, where in Henry Hudson explored the enormous bay named after him. With a great deal of assistance from Indigenous peoples and their technologies, Samuel Hearne made it to the Arctic coast by way of the Coppermine River in , stopping at what is now Kugluktuk.
Government-sponsored polar exploration provided a purpose for the Royal Navy and a testing ground for its ships and men, while adding to British power and prestige. Between and , the navy uncovered large parts of Arctic North America as it sent its ships and crews into the ice and labyrinth of islands in the Archipelago see Arctic Exploration.
As a result, the British government felt confident that a new expedition led by year-old John Franklin would finally conquer the Passage. His two ships, Erebus and Terror , were the first to sail through Peel Sound but became trapped in the ice near King William Island with the assistance of Inuit oral history, the Erebus was found in , the Terror in Franklin died in June , and the remaining crews abandoned the ships the following spring of in a fatal attempt to walk to the closest settlement, hundreds of kilometres to the south.
Everyone succumbed to starvation and exhaustion. Subsequent British searches to determine what happened to the expedition, which seemed to vanish without a trace, crisscrossed the centre of the Arctic Archipelago by ship and sledge, filling in a large part of the map and uncovering three Northwest Passages.
See also Exhibit: Arctic Exploration. The Franklin search internationalized exploration in the Arctic Archipelago. Englishman E.
Inglefield and Americans E. Kane, I. Hayes and C. In , P. Aldrich rounded the top of Ellesmere Island and named the northernmost point of what is now Canadian territory Cape Columbia. Norwegian Otto Sverdrup explored the western shore of Ellesmere Island — Meanwhile, the southern party explored much of the Kitikmeot region, contacting groups of Inuinnait and extensively studying their culture and language.
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