The characteristics of Indigenous cultures in Canada prior to European colonization included permanent settlements,[8] agriculture,[9] civic and ceremonial architecture,[10] complex societal hierarchies, and trading networks.

[15] First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples of all backgrounds have become prominent figures and have served as role models in the Indigenous community and help to shape the Canadian cultural identity.

[34] In contrast to the more-specific Aboriginal, one of the issues with the term native is its general applicability: in certain contexts, it could be used in reference to non-Indigenous peoples in regards to an individual place of origin / birth.

[22] Linguistic groups of Arctic people have no universal replacement term for Eskimo, inclusive of all Inuit and Yupik across the geographical area inhabited by them.

[43] During the Wisconsin glaciation, 50,000–17,000 years ago, falling sea levels allowed people to move across the Bering land bridge that joined Siberia to northwest North America (Alaska).

The Laurentide ice sheet covered most of Canada, blocking nomadic inhabitants and confining them to Alaska (East Beringia) for thousands of years.

[45][46] Indigenous genetic studies suggest that the first inhabitants of the Americas share a single ancestral population, one that developed in isolation, conjectured to be Beringia.

[55] It is believed the inhabitants entered the Americas pursuing Pleistocene mammals such as the giant beaver, steppe wisent (bison), muskox, mastodons, woolly mammoths and ancient reindeer (early caribou).

[57] The other conjectured route is that they migrated, either on foot or using primitive boats, down the Pacific coast to the tip of South America, and then crossed the Rockies and Andes.

[64] Archaeological discoveries in the years 1979–2009 brought forward other distinctive knapping cultures who occupied the Americas from the lower Great Plains to the shores of Chile.

[67] Lower sea levels in the Queen Charlotte sound and Hecate Strait produced great grass lands called archipelago of Haida Gwaii.

[70] Sites in and around Belmont, Nova Scotia, have evidence of Plano-Indians, indicating small seasonal hunting camps, perhaps re-visited over generations from around 11,000–10,000 years ago.

[73] The vastness and variety of Canada's climates, ecology, vegetation, fauna, and landform separations have defined ancient peoples implicitly into cultural or linguistic divisions.

[81] The Pre-Columbian culture, whose members were called Red Paint People, is indigenous to the New England and Atlantic Canada regions of North America.

[82] The Arctic small tool tradition is a broad cultural entity that developed along the Alaska Peninsula, around Bristol Bay, and on the eastern shores of the Bering Strait around 2,500 BCE (4,500 years ago).

[83] These Paleo-Arctic peoples had a highly distinctive toolkit of small blades (microblades) that were pointed at both ends and used as side- or end-barbs on arrows or spears made of other materials, such as bone or antler.

[84] Evidence found in the northern Great Lakes regions indicates that they extracted copper from local glacial deposits and used it in its natural form to manufacture tools and implements.

[citation needed] Many First Nations civilizations[90] established characteristics and hallmarks that included permanent urban settlements or cities,[91] agriculture, civic and monumental architecture, and complex societal hierarchies.

[96] Prominent First Nations people include Joe Capilano, who met with King of the United Kingdom, Edward VII, to speak of the need to settle land claims and Ovide Mercredi, a leader at both the Meech Lake Accord constitutional reform discussions and Oka Crisis.

[106] Notable among the Inuit are Abraham Ulrikab and family who became a zoo exhibit in Hamburg, Germany, and Tanya Tagaq, a traditional throat singer.

[107] Abe Okpik was instrumental in helping Inuit obtain surnames rather than disc numbers and Kiviaq (David Ward) won the legal right to use his single-word Inuktitut name.

[108][109] The Métis are people descended from marriages between Europeans (mainly French)[110] and Cree, Ojibwe, Algonquin, Saulteaux, Menominee, Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, and other First Nations.

"[124][125] These attempts reached a climax in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with a series of initiatives that aimed at complete assimilation and subjugation of the Indigenous peoples.

In the 19th century, the government began to support the creation of model farming villages, which were meant to encourage non-sedentary Indigenous groups to settle in an area and begin to cultivate agriculture.

"[134]Beginning in 1874 and lasting until 1996, the Canadian government, in partnership with the dominant Christian Churches, ran 130 residential boarding schools across Canada for Indigenous children, who were forcibly taken from their homes.

[136] According to some scholars, the Canadian government's laws and policies, including the residential school system, that encouraged or required Indigenous peoples to assimilate into a Eurocentric society, violated the United Nations Genocide Convention that Canada signed in 1949 and passed through Parliament in 1952.

The five-volume, 4,000-page report covered a vast range of issues; its 440 recommendations called for sweeping changes to the interaction between Indigenous , non-Indigenous people and the governments in Canada.

[154] This policy recognizes that First Nations and Inuit have the constitutional right to shape their own forms of government to suit their particular historical, cultural, political and economic circumstances.

[citation needed] Today's political organizations have resulted from interaction with European-style methods of government through the Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians.

[172] Indigenous peoples were producing art for thousands of years before the arrival of European settler colonists and the eventual establishment of Canada as a nation state.