Nunavut ᓄᓇᕗᑦ
Coat of arms of Nunavut Flag Coat of arms
Motto: ᓄᓇᕗᑦ ᓴᙱᓂᕗᑦ (Nunavut Sannginivut) (Inuktitut: "Our land, our strength")
Capital	Iqaluit
Largest city	Iqaluit
Largest metro	Iqaluit
Official languages	Inuit Language (Inuktitut, Inuinnaqtun), English, French[1]
Demonym	Nunavummiut, Nunavummiuq (sing.)[2]
Government
Type
Commissioner	Edna Elias
Premier	Eva Aariak (consensus government)
Legislature	Legislative Assembly of Nunavut
Federal representation	In Canadian parliament
House seats	1 of 308 (0.3%)
Senate seats	1 of 105 (1%)
Confederation	April 1, 1999 (13th)
Area [3]	Ranked 1st
Total	2,038,722 km2 (787,155 sq mi)
Land	1,877,787 km2 (725,018 sq mi)
Water (%)	160,935 km2 (62,137 sq mi) (7.9%)
Proportion of Canada	20.4% of 9,984,670 km2
Population [3]	Ranked 13th
Total (2011)	31,906
Density (2011)	0.02 /km2 (0.052 /sq mi)
GDP	Ranked 13th
Total (2006)	C$1.213 billion[4]
Per capita	C$39,383 (8th)
Abbreviations
Postal	NU
ISO 3166-2	CA-NU
Time zone	UTC-5, UTC-6, UTC-7
Postal code prefix	X
Flower	Purple Saxifrage[5]
Tree	n/a
Bird	Rock Ptarmigan[6]
Website	www.gov.nu.ca
Rankings include all provinces and territories

This article contains Canadian Aboriginal syllabic characters. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of syllabics.

Nunavut /ˈnuːnəˌvʊt/ (from Inuktitut: ᓄᓇᕗᑦ [ˈnunavut]) is the largest and newest federal territory of Canada; it was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the Nunavut Act^[7] and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act,^[8] though the actual boundaries had been established in 1993. The creation of Nunavut resulted in the first major change to Canada's political map since the incorporation of the new province of Newfoundland in 1949.

Nunavut comprises a major portion of Northern Canada, and most of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, making it the fifth-largest country subdivision in the world. The capital Iqaluit (formerly "Frobisher Bay") on Baffin Island, in the east, was chosen by the 1995 capital plebiscite. Other major communities include the regional centres of Rankin Inlet and Cambridge Bay. Nunavut also includes Ellesmere Island to the north, as well as the eastern and southern portions of Victoria Island in the west and Akimiski Island in James Bay to the far south.

Nunavut is both the least populous and the largest in area of the provinces and territories of Canada. One of the most remote, sparsely settled regions in the world, it has a population of 31,906,^[3] mostly Inuit, spread over an area the size of Western Europe. Nunavut is also home to the northernmost permanently inhabited place in the world, Alert. However, the nearby weather station Eureka is slightly colder than Alert and has the lowest average annual temperature of any weather station in Canada.^{[citation needed]}

Etymology[link]

Nunavut means "our land" in Inuktitut.

Geography[link]

Nunavut covers 1,877,787 km² (725,018 sq mi)^[3] of land and 160,935 km² (62,137 sq mi)^{[citation needed]} of water in Northern Canada. The territory includes part of the mainland, most of the Arctic Archipelago, and all of the islands in Hudson Bay, James Bay, and Ungava Bay (including the Belcher Islands) which belonged to the Northwest Territories. 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.^[9]

Nunavut has land borders with the Northwest Territories on several islands as well as the mainland, Manitoba to the south of the Nunavut mainland, Saskatchewan to the southwest (at a single four-corner point) and a tiny land border with Newfoundland and Labrador on Killiniq Island. It also shares maritime borders with the provinces of Quebec, Ontario, and Manitoba and with Greenland.

Nunavut's highest point is Barbeau Peak (2,616 m (8,583 ft)) on Ellesmere Island. The population density is 0.015 persons per square kilometre, one of the lowest in the world. By comparison, Greenland has approximately the same area and nearly twice the population.^[10]

History[link]

Inuit women at Ashe Inlet, 1884.

The region now known as Nunavut has supported a continuous indigenous population for approximately 4,000 years. Most historians identify the coast of Baffin Island with the Helluland described in Norse sagas, so it is possible that the inhabitants of the region had occasional contact with Norse sailors.

In September 2008, researchers reported on the evaluation of existing and newly excavated archaeological remains, including yarn spun from a hare, rats, tally sticks, a carved wooden face mask depicting Caucasian features, and possible architectural material. The materials were collected in five seasons of excavation at Cape Banfield. Scholars have determined these are evidence of European traders and possibly settlers on Baffin Island not later than 1000 CE. They seem to indicate prolonged contact, possibly up to 1450. The origin of the Old World contact is unclear; the article states: "Dating of some yarn and other artifacts, presumed to be left by Vikings on Baffin Island, have produced an age that predates the Vikings by several hundred years. So [...] you have to consider the possibility that as remote as it may seem, these finds may represent evidence of contact with Europeans prior to the Vikings' arrival in Greenland."^[11]

The written historical accounts of Nunavut begin in 1576, with an account by an English explorer. Martin Frobisher, while leading an expedition to find the Northwest Passage, thought he had discovered gold ore around the body of water now known as Frobisher Bay on the coast of Baffin Island.^[12] 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.

Cornwallis and Ellesmere Islands feature in the history of the Cold War in the 1950s. Concerned about the area's strategic geopolitical position, the federal government relocated Inuit from the High Arctic of northern Quebec to Resolute and Grise Fiord. In the unfamiliar and hostile conditions, they faced starvation^[13] but were forced to stay.^[14] Forty years later, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples issued a report titled The High Arctic Relocation: A Report on the 1953–55 Relocation.^[15] The government paid compensation to those affected and their descendants, but it did not apologize.^[16]