Ivujivik
| Ivujivik | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Location in Quebec | |||
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| State : |
 Canada
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| Province : | Quebec | ||
| Administrative region : | North du Quebec | ||
| MRC or equivalent : | Nunavik | ||
| Coordinates : | 62 ° 25 ′ N , 77 ° 54 ′ W | ||
| Area : | 36.59 km² | ||
| Residents : | 349 (as of 2006) | ||
| Population density : | 9.5 inhabitants / km² | ||
| Time zone : | Eastern Time ( UTC − 5 ) | ||
| Postal code : | J0M 1H0 | ||
| Mayor : | Casey Mark | ||
| Website : | www.nvivujivik.ca | ||
Ivujivik (or Notre-Dame-d'Ivugivic ), located on the northwest corner of the Ungava Peninsula , is the northernmost Inuit settlement of the Nunavik region , administrative region of North du Québec , about 2,000 kilometers from Montréal , and has about 300 Residents.
"Ivujivik" is an Inuktitut word that means "place where strong currents accumulate ice" and indicates that the currents of Hudson Bay and Hudson Strait meet here. On the Ungava plateau, which crowns the cliffs that surround Ivujivik , hardly any plants can grow due to the rough weather conditions, and so on the rocky tundra you can almost only find different types of lichen . The cliffs of Cape Wolstenholme , about 30 kilometers northwest of Ivujivik, form one of the largest nesting sites on earth for thick-billed lemurs .
People have been populating the area for around 4,000 years. The first European to show up here was the Englishman Henry Hudson , who landed in 1610 in search of the Northwest Passage at the Ivujivik offshore Digges Islands and named Cape Wolstenholme after one of the financiers for his expedition. Looking for trade opportunities, Captain Pierre LeMoyne D'Iberville was the first Frenchman to land on the Cape in 1697. In 1909 the Hudson's Bay Company established a trading post at Cape Wolstenholme, but in 1947 moved it to the site of today's settlement Ivujivik, where a Roman Catholic missionary station was established in 1938. However, this mission was abandoned in the 1960s. The Inuit living in their camps in the region saw no reason to settle in the immediate vicinity of the trading post and the mission station. Only after the Canadian government began to develop administrative activities in the 1960s did the Inuit increasingly move here. In 1967 they founded a cooperative and opened their own "Co-op Store".
Together with the residents of Puvirnituq and 49% of the population of Salluit , the Inuit of Ivujivik refused in 1975 to sign the Baie James and North Quebec Agreement, whereby the remaining Inuit of Nunavik acquired certain land claims and rights and in return the provincial government enabled the ambitious Baie James hydropower project to be carried out. Instead, they formed their own interest group ("Inuit Tungavinga Nunamini").