Tsiigehtchic ( ; "mouth of the iron river"), officially the ''Charter Community of Tsiigehtchic'', is a Gwich'in community located at the confluence of the

Mackenzie Mackenzie, Mckenzie, MacKenzie, or McKenzie may refer to: People * Mackenzie (given name), a given name (including a list of people with the name) * Mackenzie (surname), a surname (including a list of people with the name) * Clan Mackenzie, a S ...

and the Arctic Red Rivers, in the

Inuvik Region The Inuvik Region or ''Beaufort Delta Region'' is one of five administrative regions in the Northwest Territories of Canada. According to Municipal and Community Affairs the region consists of eight communities with the regional office situate ...

of the Northwest Territories, Canada. The community was formerly known as ''Arctic Red River'', until 1 April 1994. The Gwichya Gwich'in First Nation is located in Tsiigehtchic.

Demographics

In the

2021 Census of Population The 2021 Canadian census was a detailed enumeration of the Canadian population with a reference date of May 11, 2021. It follows the 2016 Canadian census, which recorded a population of 35,151,728. The overall response rate was 98%, which is sli ...

conducted by Statistics Canada, Tsiigehtchic had a population of living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021. In 2016, 130 people identified as

First Nations First Nations or first peoples may refer to: * Indigenous peoples, for ethnic groups who are the earliest known inhabitants of an area. Indigenous groups *First Nations is commonly used to describe some Indigenous groups including: **First Natio ...

and 10 as

Inuit Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories ...

. However, only 5 people said that an Indigenous language ( Gwich’in) was their mother tongue.

Transportation

The

Dempster Highway The Dempster Highway, also referred to as Yukon Highway 5 and Northwest Territories Highway 8, is a highway in Canada that connects the Klondike Highway in Yukon to Inuvik, Northwest Territories on the Mackenzie River delta. The highway crosses ...

, NWT Highway 8, crosses the Mackenzie River at Tsiigehtchic. During winter, vehicle traffic is over the ice, during the rest of the year, traffic is carried by the ferry MV ''Louis Cardinal''. The ferry stops at Tsiigehtchic, on the eastern bank of the Arctic Red River, and on the southwestern and northeastern banks of the Mackenzie River, connecting the two legs of the Dempster Highway. The community is one of the few in the NWT not to be served by a permanent airport. Panorama Tsiigehtchic

Steppe bison carcass

In early September 2007, near Tsiigehtchic, local resident Shane Van Loon discovered a carcass of a steppe bison, which was

radiocarbon Carbon-14, C-14, or radiocarbon, is a radioactive isotope of carbon with an atomic nucleus containing 6 protons and 8 neutrons. Its presence in organic materials is the basis of the radiocarbon dating method pioneered by Willard Libby and c ...

dated to c. 13,650 cal BP. This carcass appears to represent the first

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...

mummified soft tissue remains from the glaciated regions of northern Canada (Zazula et al. 2009).

References

External links

Tsiigehtchic
at the Gwich'in Social and Cultural Institute {{Communities of Northwest Territories Charter communities in the Northwest Territories Communities in the Inuvik Region Populated places in Arctic Canada

Demographics

Transportation

Steppe bison carcass

See also

References

Further reading

External links