Akimiski Island

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Akimiski Island
NASA image of Akimiski Island
NASA image of Akimiski Island
Waters Hudson Bay
Geographical location 53 ° 1 ′  N , 81 ° 18 ′  W Coordinates: 53 ° 1 ′  N , 81 ° 18 ′  W
Location of Akimiski Island
length 99.3 km
width 40.7 km
surface 3 001  km²
Highest elevation 34  m
Residents uninhabited
Map of Akimiski Island
Map of Akimiski Island

Akimiski Island is a Canadian island and with an extension of approximately 99.3 × 40.7 km and an area of ​​3,001 km² the largest island in James Bay , the southern branch of Hudson Bay . It is swampy and relatively flat. Its highest point is in the southwest at 34 meters above sea level.

It is only 19 km east of the coast of Ontario , and is separated from it by Akimiski Strait , but belongs to the Qikiqtaaluk region of Nunavut Territory . The island is uninhabited, but is regularly visited by groups of scientists. The name comes from the Cree word a-ka-mas-ki and means 'the land opposite', which means the view from the mainland.

Flora and fauna

The vegetation consists mainly of tundra-like vegetation. For a long time the bird populations from are Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources examines how the populations of Canada geese , the marble snipe ( Limosa fedoa ) or Hudsonian Godwit ( Limosa haemastica ). The Akimiski Island Bird Sanctuary in the east of the island has been set up for them as part of the James Bay Preserve . In 1991, 250,000 individuals of the Little Snow Goose ( Anser caerulescens caerulescens ), around a seventh of the total population in Canada, rested here in the north of the island.

In 2000, a detailed study of the island flora was carried out for the first time since 1981. There were 276 native vascular plants and thus 76 taxa in 33 families more than previously known and 5 exotic ones on the island. Thus, a total of 281 taxa in 55 families were known. 28 species are rare in neighboring Ontario, two only exist on Akimiski or further north on Hudson Bay: Potentilla crantzii and Salicornia borealis .

The polar bears , which can be found mainly in summer, represent the southernmost permanent occurrence of this species. In 1997/98 some of them were provided with transmitters to follow their migrations. In addition, it turned out that the polar bears of James Bay differ genetically from other groups and form a cluster .

Canada geese and other birds, such as the plover , use the island as a stopover.

history

Until the middle of the 20th century, it was common for trappers to slide to Akimiski from the coast. They separated from their families for about ten days and kept coming back over the next several months. In the 1944–1945 and 1946–1947 hunting seasons, around 43% of the Attawapiskat men who went trapping and hunting within a radius of 100 km hunted in this way. The rest of them moved on, and they also made more money. During the winter months, Indians moved to Lake Ontario from the north until the 19th century . Groups from the Great Whale River , Fort George, and Akimiski Island met at Moosonee , on the south end of Hudson Bay. From there it went through the Tabatibi Valley to Cochrane; Via North Bay, Orillia we continued towards Toronto. When the caribou herds didn't move south enough in summer to graze and calve here - Akimiski was the main hunting ground - more geese were hunted, as indicated by the sales in Fort Albany.

It is unclear whether the accident of the ship under the direction of Thomas James , which occurred in September 1631, took place off Akimiski. In the oral tradition of the Cree on James Bay there are memories of ship accidents, which, however, cannot be identified with certainty with those in the European sources. It appeared that the ship circumnavigated Akimiski and the men hibernated on Charlton Island for the winter . In 1674 Thomas Bayly renamed Akimiski Viner's Island, probably after the Governor of the HBC Sir Robert Viner.

Father Abanel, a Jesuit , was the first European to describe the island in 1671/72. He called her "Ouabaskou". He reported on a small bay on the island in which one could survive the winter relatively comfortably. The employees of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), however, called the island Charlton Island or, as in 1674 Thomas Bayly, also Viner's Island . He found that numerous Omushkegowak-Cree who lived on the neighboring mainland had starved to death; today's research is more likely to suggest that they had fallen victim to an illness. The British believed the region was uninhabited until the Hudson's Bay Company brought Indians to the area. Current estimates suggest that the Lowlands lived between 1,500 and 2,000 people before the epidemics of 1782 and 1783. Around half of the population is likely to have fallen victim to them, but by 1829 the number appears to have recovered and reached the level before the disaster.

Oral tradition tells of caribou hunting on the island, although in some years the herds did not go so far south and the Cree had to follow them north. In 1948, beavers were reintroduced by the HBC, which had previously disappeared due to excessive hunting. After that there was a rapid increase in the population, and the animals built numerous dams. According to members of the surrounding Attawapiskat First Nation, this in turn damaged the fish populations around the island.

Similar to the Mushkegowuk, the other Indian groups in the region today also have the problem that their traditional territory, i.e. the tail space necessary for survival, in which traditional rights and duties, practices and rituals were to be exercised, extends into the neighboring provinces. Akimiski belongs to Nunavut, the area west of James Bay to Ontario, the east to Québec.

literature

  • Louis Bird: Telling Our Stories. Omushkego Legends and Histories from Hudson Bay , eds. Jennifer SH Brown, Paul W. DePasquale and Mark F. Ruml, Broadview Press Ltd. 2005, Chapter 5: Omens, Mysteries, and First Encounters , Section: Strangers on Akimiski Island: Helping a Grounded Ship . ISBN 9781551115801
  • CS Blaney, PM Kotanen: The Vascular Flora of Akimiski Island, Nunavut Territory, Canada , in: Canadian Field-Naturalist 115.1 (2000) 88-98.
  • Lisa A. Pollock: The importance of Akimiski Island, Nunavut, as a stopover site for migrant shorebirds , Trent University 2011 (studies from 2008 and 2009).

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ The Atlas of Canada - Sea Islands ( Memento from October 6, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
  2. ^ Atlas of Canada
  3. ↑ Louis Bird, pp. 27, 168.
  4. ↑ SA Alexander, RS Ferguson, KJ McCormick: Key migratory bird terrestrial habitat sites in the Northwest Territories , Canadian Wildlife Service Occasional Paper No. 71, Ottawa, 2nd ed. 1991, 168 f.
  5. ↑ A map of polar bear occurrences with census results is available from: Map of the Polar Bear Specialist Group of the IUCN Species Survival Commission ( Memento of September 6, 2002 in the Internet Archive ).
  6. ↑ Linh P. Nguyen, Erica Nol, Kenneth F. Abraham: Nest success and habitat selection of the Semipalmated Plover on Akimiski Island, Nunavut , in: The Wilson Bulletin 115,3 (2003) 285-291.
  7. ^ William C. Wonders: Canada's changing North , McGill-Queen's University Press 2003, pp. 183 f.
  8. ^ Lawrence J. Burpee: The Search for the Western Sea: The Story of the Exploration of North Western America , New York 2005, p. 59.
  9. ↑ Louis Bird: Telling our stories , p. 173, note 28.
  10. ^ Norbert Witt: What if indigenous knowledge contradicts accepted scientific findings? - the hidden agenda: respect, caring and passion towards aboriginal research in the context of applying western academic rules , in: Educational Research and Review 2,3 (2007) 225-235, here: p. 228.
  11. ↑ Oral transmission of the Omushkego (Swampy Cree) by Louis Bird, a member of the Winisk First Nation.