Delivery Areas - Nunavut

"Nunavut Sannginivut" means, in Inuktitut, "Our land, our strength" and is the motto of Nunavut, Canada's largest territory and also it’s newest since April 1st 1999. It is a territory with a population of almost 30,000 individuals whose languages include Inuktitut, Inuinnaqtun, English and French.

Perhaps rather aptly chosen is this territory’s territorial flower, the Purple Saxifrage (Saxifraga oppositifolia, Lat.), an edible plant common to the high arctic areas and found all over Nunavut covering both rock and gravel in a flowering green mat. Its flowers grow on short stalks and can either have purple or lilac petals. It is predominantly a spring flower and may continue to flourish in certain areas into late summer. It is also the county flower of County Londonderry in Northern Ireland.

The capital of Nunavut is Iqaluit and also has the largest community, consisting of a population of just over 6,000, therefore being able to claim the least populated capital city in all of Canada. It was however originally called Frobisher Bay, a name that bore evidence to the then established American airbase which was founded in 1942 and abandoned in 1963.

Although only recently formed, the territory of Nunavut boasts with human presence for the past 4,000 years, some of which may have been European as far back as 1000AD. This can perhaps be best supported with the fact that Baffin Island is often described as the Norse Helluland.

Official European contact however only came to being in 1575 when Martin Frobisher came upon Frobisher Bay (then known as Iqaluit, "many fish"), Baffin Island. The first encounter with the local Inuit was a bloody one with prisoners taken and lives lost on both sides. Subsequent European arrivals included Henry Hudson, William Baffin (after whom Baffin Island was named) as well as Robert Bylot, all of whom, like Frobisher, were in search of the rumoured Northwest Passage.

Modern history points to the relocation of the Inuit to Resolute and Grise Fiord as a part of the Government's attempt to assert its sovereignty in the High Arctic. Due to unfamiliarity with the territory and the harsh climate many of the Inuits perished. Those that survived were forced to stay. Only after a period of four decades did the Canadian government attempt to rectify the issue with a compensation payment.

A number of years later saw negotiations between the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada and the Canadian government regarding land claims on behalf of the Inuit people. The claims were subject to an electorate vote which resulted in the offering of a conditional agreement. Years later the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act and the Nunavut Act were passed in the Canadian Parliament with the process being finalised on April 1st, 1999.

The Nunavut Territory covers almost 2 million sq. km of land and more than 160,000 sq. km of water. Its area includes a part of the Arctic Archipelago. Included in its territories are a number of island that belonged to the Northwest Territories prior to the transition in 1999. These include the islands in James Bay, Hudson’s Bay and Ungava Bay.