Nunavut is the largest and northernmost territory of Canada. It was separated from the Northwest Territories in 1999, via the Nunavut Act and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act, which provided this territory to the Inuit for self-government. The boundaries were drawn in 1993. The creation of Nunavut resulted in the first major change to Canada's political map in half a century since the province of Newfoundland, known as Newfoundland and Labrador since 2001, was admitted in 1949.
Nunavut comprises a major portion of Northern Canada and most of the Arctic Archipelago. Its vast territory makes it the fifth-largest country subdivision in the world. Nunavut's capital and Canada's smallest capital by population, Iqaluit, formerly "Frobisher Bay", on Baffin Island in the east, was chosen by the 1995 Nunavut capital plebiscite. Other major communities include the regional centres of Rankin Inlet and Cambridge Bay.
Nunavut includes Ellesmere Island in the far north, the eastern and southern portions of Victoria Island in the west, and all islands in Hudson Bay, James Bay and Ungava Bay, including the western portion of Killiniq Island in the southeast and Akimiski Island far to the south of the rest of the territory. Nunavut is Canada's only geopolitical region that is not connected to the rest of North America via the Pan-American Highway.
Nunavut is the least densely populated major country sub-division in the world, not considering Antarctica, being even less densely populated than Greenland. With a population of 36,858 as of the 2021 Canadian census, up from 35,944 in 2016, consisting mostly of Inuit, and a land mass almost as large as Mexico, Nunavut's land area of has a population density of .
Alert, Nunavut, is the world's northernmost continuously inhabited place. Eureka, a weather station on Ellesmere Island, has the lowest average annual temperature of any Canadian weather station.
History
Early history
The region which is now mainland Nunavut was first populated approximately 4,500 years ago by the Pre-Dorset, a diverse Paleo-Eskimo culture that migrated eastward from the Bering Strait region.
The Pre-Dorset culture was succeeded by the Dorset culture about 2,800 years ago. Anthropologists and historians believe that the Dorset culture developed from the Pre-Dorset.
Helluland, which Norse explorers described visiting in their Sagas of Icelanders, has been associated with Nunavut's Baffin Island. Claims of contact between the Dorset and Norse are controversial.
The Thule people, ancestors of the modern Inuit, began migrating from Alaska in the 11th century into the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. By 1300, the geographic extent of Thule settlement included most of modern Nunavut.
The migration of the Thule people coincides with the decline of the Dorset. Thule people genetically and culturally completely replaced Dorset some time after 1300.
European exploration
The earliest written historical account of the area is dated to 1576, an account by English explorer Martin Frobisher. While leading an expedition to find the Northwest Passage, Frobisher thought he had discovered gold ore around the body of water now known as Frobisher Bay on the coast of Baffin Island."Nunavut: The Story of Canada's " , Maple Leaf Web The ore turned out to be worthless, but Frobisher made the first recorded European contact with the Inuit. Other explorers in search of the elusive Northwest Passage followed in the 17th century, including Henry Hudson, William Baffin and Robert Bylot.
20th and 21st centuries Cornwallis and Ellesmere Islands featured in the history of the Cold War in the 1950s. Concerned about the area's strategic geopolitical position, the federal government, as part of the High Arctic relocation, relocated Inuit from Nunavik (northern Quebec) to Resolute and Grise Fiord. In the unfamiliar and hostile conditions, they faced starvation but were forced to stay.McGrath, Melanie. The Long Exile: A Tale of Inuit Betrayal and Survival in the High Arctic. Alfred A. Knopf, 2006. Hardcover: Paperback: Forty years later, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples issued a 1994 report titled The High Arctic Relocation: A Report on the 1953–55 Relocation. The government paid compensation to those affected and their descendants. On August 18, 2010, in Inukjuak, the Honourable John Duncan, PC, MP, previously Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians, formally apologized on behalf of the Government of Canada for the High Arctic relocation.
Discussions on dividing the Northwest Territories along ethnic lines began in the 1950s, and legislation to achieve this was introduced in 1963. After its failure, a federal commission recommended against such a measure.
In the 1970s, activism increased among the Inuit, First Nations, and Innu peoples for recognition of their forced assimilation. In 1976, as part of the land claims negotiations between the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (then called the "Inuit Tapirisat of Canada") and the federal government, the parties discussed division of the Northwest Territories to provide a separate territory for the Inuit. On April 14, 1982, a plebiscite on division was held throughout the Northwest Territories. A majority of the residents voted in favour and the federal government gave a conditional agreement seven months later.
The land claims agreement was completed in September 1992 and ratified by nearly 85% of the voters in Nunavut in a referendum. On July 9, 1993, the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act and the Nunavut Act were passed by the Canadian Parliament. The transition to establish Nunavut Territory was completed on April 1, 1999. On January 18, 2024, the federal and territorial governments signed the Nunavut Lands and Resources Devolution Agreement; it gives the government of Nunavut control over the territory's land and resources.
In 2020, Nunavut imposed strict travel regulations in order to prevent an outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The government barred entry to almost all non-residents. On November 6, 2020, Nunavut confirmed its first case in Sanikiluaq, having previously been the only place in North America to have had no cases of COVID-19.
Geography
Nunavut covers of land and of water in Northern Canada. The territory includes a substantial part of the mainland, most of the Arctic Archipelago, and the waters and islands of Hudson Bay, James Bay, and Ungava Bay; this includes the distant Belcher Islands and Akimiski Island, which were part of the Northwest Territories from which Nunavut was separated. This makes it the fifth-largest subnational entity or administrative division in the world. If Nunavut were a country, it would rank 15th in area.See List of countries and dependencies by area
Nunavut has long land borders with the Northwest Territories on the mainland and a few Arctic islands, and with Manitoba to the south of the Nunavut mainland; it also meets Saskatchewan to the southwest at a quadripoint, and has a short land border with Newfoundland and Labrador on Killiniq Island. It has very small land borders with Ontario and Quebec via exclaves on the James Bay coast. The boundary with the Northwest Territories roughly approximates the tree line in Canada.
Nunavut shares maritime borders with the provinces of Quebec, Ontario, and Manitoba. These run along the shoreline of those provinces to include the entirety of the involved bays under Nunavut jurisdiction, rather than the usual arrangement of running through the middle of a body of water. With Greenland, a constituent country of the Danish Realm, it shares a primarily maritime international border that includes a short land border on Hans Island.
Nunavut's highest point is Barbeau Peak () on Ellesmere Island. The population density is , one of the lowest in the world. By comparison, Greenland has approximately the same area and nearly twice the population.
Climate
Nunavut has a polar climate in most regions, owing to its high latitude and lower continental summertime influence than areas to the west. In more southerly continental areas, very cold subarctic climates can be found, due to July being slightly milder than the required .
+Average daily maximum and minimum temperatures for selected locations in NunavutCityJuly (°C)July (°F)January (°C)January (°F) High Low High Low High Low High Low Alert 6 1 43 33 −29 −36 −20 −33 Baker Lake 17 6 63 43 −28 −35 −18 −31 Cambridge Bay 13 5 5541 −29−35 −19−32 Eureka 93 4937 −33−40 −27−40 Iqaluit 124 5439 −23−31 −9−24 Kugluktuk 166 6043 −23−31 −10−25 Rankin Inlet 156 5943 −27−34 −17−30
Demography
Nunavut had a population of 36,858 in the 2021 census. In 2021, 30,865 people identified as Inuit (84.3% of the total population), 180 as First Nations (0.5%), 120 as Métis (0.3%), 230 with multiple or other Indigenous responses (0.6%), and 5,210 as non-Indigenous (14.2%).
+ Most populous communitiesMunicipality202120162011Change2011–2021Iqaluit7,4297,7406,699 10.9%Rankin Inlet2,9752,8422,557 16.2%Arviat2,8642,6572,060 39.0%Baker Lake2,0612,0691,728 19.3%Igloolik2,0491,7441,538 33.2%CambridgeBay1,7601,7661,452 21.2%Pond Inlet1,5551,6171,315 18.3%Pangnirtung1,5041,4811,325 13.5%Kinngait1,3961,4411,363 2.4%Kugluktuk1,3821,4911,302 6.1%
The population growth rate of Nunavut has been well above the Canadian average for several decades, mostly due to birth rates significantly higher than the Canadian average—a trend that continues. Between 2011 and 2016, Nunavut had the highest population growth rate of any Canadian province or territory, at a rate of 12.7%. The second-highest was Alberta, with a growth rate of 11.6%. Between 2016 and 2021, the population growth increased by 2.5% (the third lowest), a decrease of 10.2 percentiles from the previous census.
Language
Official languages are the Inuit language (Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun), known as Inuktut, English, and French. and Your Linguistic Rights at the Office of the Language Commissioner of Nunavut
In his 2000 commissioned report ( Language of Instruction Research Paper) to the Nunavut Department of Education, Ian Martin of York University said that a "long-term threat to Inuit languages from English is found everywhere, and current school language policies and practices on language are contributing to that threat" if Nunavut schools follow the Northwest Territories model. He provided a 20-year language plan to create a "fully functional bilingual society, in Inuktitut and English" by 2020.
The plan provided different models, including: "Qulliq Model", for most Nunavut communities, with Inuktitut to be the main language of instruction. "Inuinnaqtun Immersion Model", for language reclamation and immersion to revitalize Inuinnaqtun as a living language. "Mixed Population Model", mainly for Iqaluit (possibly for Rankin Inlet), where the population is 40% , or non-Inuit, and may have different requirements.
Of the 34,960 responses to the census question concerning "mother tongue" in the 2016 census, the most commonly reported languages in Nunavut were: + Mother tongue Rank Language Number of respondents Percentage 1Inuktitut22,07063.1% 2English11,02031.5% 3French5951.7% 4Inuinnaqtun4951.4% At the time of the census, only English and French were counted as official languages. Figures shown are for single-language responses and the percentage of total single-language responses.
In the 2016 census, it was reported that 2,045 people (5.8%) living in Nunavut did not know either of the official languages of Canada (English or French).Population by knowledge of official language, by province and territory (2006 Census) . Statistics Canada. Retrieved January 15, 2010. The 2016 census also reported that of the 30,135 Inuit in Nunavut, 90.7% could speak either Inuktitut or Inuinnaqtun.
Religion