Yellowknife

Yellowknife /ˈjɛloʊnaɪf/ (2011 population: 19,234) is the capital city and largest community of the Northwest Territories (NT or NWT), Canada. It is located on the northern shore of Great Slave Lake, approximately 400 km (250 mi) south of the Arctic Circle, on the west side of Yellowknife Bay near the outlet of the Yellowknife River. Yellowknife and its surrounding water bodies were named after a local Dene tribe once known as the 'Copper Indians' or 'Yellowknife Indians' (now referred to locally as the Yellowknives Dene (First Nation)) who traded tools made from copper deposits near the Arctic Coast. The current population is ethnically mixed. Of the eleven official languages of the Northwest Territories, five are spoken in significant numbers in Yellowknife: Dene Suline, Dogrib, South and North Slavey, English, and French. In the Dogrib language, the city is known as Sǫ̀mbak'è (Som-ba Kay) ("where the money is").

The Yellowknife settlement is considered to have been founded in 1934, after gold was found in the area, although commercial activity in the present-day waterfront area did not begin until 1936. Yellowknife quickly became the centre of economic activity in the NWT, and was named the capital of the Northwest Territories in 1967. As gold production began to wane, Yellowknife shifted from being a mining town to a centre of government services in the 1980s. However, with the discovery of diamonds north of Yellowknife in 1991, this shift has begun to reverse.

Yellowknives

The Yellowknives, Yellow Knives, Copper Indians, Red Knives or T'atsaot'ine (Dogrib T’satsąot’ınę) are Aboriginal peoples of Canada, one of the five main groups of the Dene indigenous people who live in the Northwest Territories of Canada. The name, which is also the source for the later community of Yellowknife, derives from the colour of the tools made from copper deposits.

Ethnography

The historic Yellowknives lived north and northeast of the Great Slave Lake (Tinde'e - “Great Lake”) around the Yellowknife River and Yellowknife Bay (Weledeh Cho - “Inconnu River”) and northward along the Coppermine River, northeast to the Back River (Thlewechodyeth or Thlew-ee-choh-desseth - “Great Fish River”) and east to the Thelon River (or Akilinik). They used the major rivers of their traditional land as routes for travel and trade as far east as Hudson's Bay, where early European explorers such as Samuel Hearne encountered them in the 1770s.

The Yellowknives helped lead Hearne through the arctic tundra from Hudson's Bay to the Arctic Ocean in search of the legendary copper deposits that the Yellowknives, or 'Copper Indians', had a hand in mining and trading for tools. Later European explorers who encountered and traded with Copper Indians marked on their maps the 'Yellowknife River,' which drains into Great Slave Lake from headwaters originating near the headwaters of the Coppermine River, a traditional travel corridor. In the early 1800s and 1900s, the Yellowknives were the largest and most powerful tribe in the geographic area.

Yellowknife (disambiguation)

Yellowknife usually refers to Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, a city in Canada.

It may also refer to:

Territorial electoral districts in Yellowknife

Other