Igloolik

Igloolik (Inuktitut syllabics: ᐃᒡᓗᓕᒃ, Iglulik, iɣ.lu.ˈlik) is an Inuit hamlet in Foxe Basin, Qikiqtaaluk Region in Nunavut, northern Canada. Because its location on Igloolik Island is close to Melville Peninsula, it is often mistakenly thought to be on the peninsula. The name "Igloolik" means "there is a house here". It derives from ᐃᒡᓗ meaning house or building, and refers to the sod houses that were originally in the area, not to snow igloos. In Inuktitut the residents are called Iglulingmiut (the suffix miut means "people of"). Information about the area's earliest inhabitants comes mainly from numerous archaeological sites on the island; some dating back more than 4,000 years. First contact with Europeans came when the British Royal Navy ships HMS Fury and HMS Hecla, under the command of Captain William Edward Parry, wintered in Igloolik in 1822. The island was visited in 1867 and 1868 by the American explorer Charles Francis Hall in his search for survivors of the lost Franklin Expedition. In 1913, Alfred Tremblay, a French-Canadian prospector with Captain Joseph-Elzéar Bernier’s expedition to Pond Inlet, extended his mineral exploration overland to Igloolik, and in 1921 a member of Knud Rasmussen’a Fifth Thule Expedition visited the island. The first permanent presence by southerners in Igloolik came with the establishment of a Roman Catholic Mission in the 1930s. By the end of the decade, the Hudson's Bay Company had also set up a post on the island. Non-indigenous establishments, such as Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) stations, day schools, and clinics, were here before they came to be in surrounding communities. The Igloolik Research Centre focuses on documenting Inuit traditional knowledge and technology, as well as climatology and seismic data research. Anthropologically, Iglulik Inuit are usually considered to be the Iglulingmiut, the Aivilingmiut, and the Tununirmiut, the Inuit from northern Baffin Island, on Southampton Island, and in the Melville Peninsula.