The origins of the Kuukpangmiut and other ancestral
Inuvialuit lie in the distant past. Their history was never written
down, but has been preserved in stories passed down by word of
mouth from generation to generation.
A turning point in Kuukpangmiut history occurred when Europeans
began to appear in their lands. Their first documented encounter
with these outsiders – Tang’it, as Kuukpangmiut
called them – was in 1826, when they met a British
Navy expedition that was on a journey of exploration down the Mackenzie
River to the Beaufort Sea.
(“Encampment on Richards Island”,
drawn by Lieutenant E.N. Kendall) |