[7] Some early European settlers included Antoine Perrault and Jean-Baptiste Jacques,[8] French Canadian fur traders who set up trading posts at nearby Kaipokok Bay.

Another early settler to the area was Charles McNeill, a fisherman from Glaston, Scotland, who married Wealtheness Metcalfe of Clarke's Beach, Newfoundland, and established a fishing post at Island Harbour.

Near the 1880s, some families of mixed European and Inuit origin from Cartwright and other areas of southern Labrador also established fishing posts near Makkovik.

[12] In January 2012, Makkovik received notable media attention after 14-year old Burton Winters froze to death after his snowmobile broke down on the ice just outside of the community.

[15] For three years in the late 1950s, the United States Air Force operated a remote radar base approximately 15 km (9.3 mi) north of the settlement.

[16][17] The community lies at the end of a peninsula in northern Labrador about 215 km (134 mi) northeast of Happy Valley-Goose Bay.

[4] The community is located in the Makkovik Province, a Paleoproterozoic accretionary belt which is the smallest defined tectonic component of the Canadian Shield.

Prior to the opening of the Labrador Sea the Makkovik Province lay adjacent to the Ketilidian mobile belt which currently forms part of Southwest Greenland.

Like most of Labrador, Makkovik has a subarctic climate (Köppen Dfc) with short, mild summers and very cold winters.