History of the Northwest Territories
Prior to European colonization, the lands that encompass present-day Northwest Territories were inhabited for millennia by several First Nations.
By the 17th century, the British laid claim to both the North-Western Territory and Rupert's Land; and granted the Hudson's Bay Company a commercial fur trade monopoly over the latter region.
Major adjustments to the boundary of the territory during this period includes severing of its western portions to form the Yukon Territory in 1898, severing its south-western portions to form the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan in 1905, and transferring its remaining lands south of the 60th parallel north and the District of Ungava to the provinces of Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec in 1912.
Long before the Europeans arrived, Inuit and First Nations peoples inhabited the land area which became the Northwest Territories.
In 1610, Henry Hudson, while looking for the Northwest Passage, landed briefly on the western shore of the bay that bears his name.
[2] Fur trade explorer Peter Pond lead the way through the Methye Portage into the vast territory of the north-west where the rivers flowed north rather than east.
[4] In 1771, Samuel Hearne was the first European to reach the shore of the Arctic Ocean by an overland route via the Coppermine River.
[5] In the early 1800s, perhaps 1810, the North West Company established a post at Tulita (Fort Norman) at the junction of the Mackenzie and Great Bear Rivers.
The British expedition was organised by the Royal Navy as part of its attempt to discover and map the Northwest Passage.
He travelled to the mouth of the Mackenzie River and then spent the winter at Fort Franklin, now Deline, on Great Bear Lake.
George Back, a British naval officer, naturalist and artist, served under John Franklin in his first expedition to the Arctic in 1818.
After the Deed of Surrender was enacted, the United Kingdom transferred ownership of Rupert's Land and the North-Western Territory from the Hudson's Bay Company to the government of Canada.
Although the District of Keewatin was given back to the territories, the population dropped from approx 160,000 to 17,000, of which 16,000 were aboriginal and had no right to vote under Canadian law.
The Tłı̨chǫ groups that signed this treaty were then known as the "Dog Rib Rae Band" (Helm, 7: 1994), constituting the majority of the Tłįchǫ population.
11 overlap in several of their boundaries, and continue to cause conflict between the two separate treaty bands (nowadays two First Nations).
In 1925, based upon the sector principle, Canada became the first country to extend its maritime boundaries northward to the North Pole.
[13] In the summer of 1935, nearly 1000 men grouped into 188 surveying parties covered a wide range of Canada looking for precious minerals.
The most valuable discovery was made in the Yellowknife district where nearly 3,000 square miles of good gold prospecting territory was located.
[15] During World War II, the Canadian company Eldorado Gold Mines Ltd., which produced uranium as a byproduct of gold and radium production using ore from its mine at Port Radium in the Northwest Territories, was recruited by the Canadian government to assist in procuring uranium for the Manhattan Project.
Canada's north-west infrastructure developed quickly and the social impact of 40,000 military people affected lives throughout.
In 1953–1955, during the Cold War, Canada sent Inuit families to the far north in the High Arctic relocation, partly to establish territoriality.
[18] In 1967, the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, the Honourable Arthur Laing, announced that Yellowknife would be the capital of the Northwest Territories.
Commissioner Stuart Milton Hodgson, and eighty-one employees of the Government of the Northwest Territories, arrived in Yellowknife on board a chartered DC-7.
In April 1982, a majority of Northwest Territories' residents voted in favour of a division of the area, and the federal government gave a conditional agreement seven months later.
After a long series of land claim negotiations between the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada and the federal government (begun earlier in 1976), an agreement was reached in September 1992.
