Sayisi Dene

They are members of the Sayisi Dene First Nation (formerly known as Churchill Indian Band), located at Tadoule Lake (58°42′43″N 98°28′50″W / 58.71194°N 98.48056°W / 58.71194; -98.48056), and are notable for living a nomadic caribou-hunting and gathering existence.

[3] While some Chipewyan bands chose to become fur trader and fur hunters in response to the Hudson's Bay Company's expansion to Churchill, Manitoba, the existence of Duck Lake Dene continued to be centered around hunting caribou whose migratory populations varied between decades.

Duck Lake Dene, called "Caribou-eater Chipewyan" by Europeans, were inaccurately blamed for the decline.

[6] In addition the Hudson's Bay Company wished to close its nearby post which had served the band and was not as financially lucrative as it once was.

[8] Around 1967, the Canadian government developed a housing project for them called "Dene Village", Ottawa-designed homes that were incapable of dealing with the climate.

[10][11][12] In 1969, some Duck Lake Dene began discussing the possibility of becoming self-reliant and returning to the ancestral life-style.

The Sayisi, with a population of around 360 people, have found it difficult, but not impossible, to return to ancestrally traditional hunting and trapping ways.

[6] [18] But, she (Ila Bussidor, Chief of the Sayisi Dene) says in this book: for my people, the impact of the relocation had the same effect as genocide.

[19] On August 16, 2016, Carolyn Bennett, the Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs, offered an apology to the Sayisi Dene people for their forced relocation from Little Duck Lake to Churchill, MB in 1956.