Inuinnait

The Inuinnait, better known as the Copper Inuit or Kitlinermiut, are the Canadian Inuit of the Coronation Gulf and lower Coppermine River country, around present-day Kugluktuk, Victoria Island and southern Banks Island, north of the tree line. Descended from the Thule, they were nomadic hunter-gatherers for some three thousand years, wintering in communal snowhouses for breathing-hole seal hunting and scattering each summer into small family bands to take caribou and fish inland.

Their defining craft was working the native copper of the Coppermine and the gulf into arrowheads, ulu blades and knives that were traded across the Arctic.

In 1771 the Chipewyan guides of Samuel Hearne massacred an Inuinnait band at Bloody Falls on the Coppermine, the first recorded encounter with Europeans, and Sir John Franklin's expeditions of 1821 and 1825 brought further contact.