Tuktuuyaqtuuq

Tuktoyaktuk

Tuktuuyaktuuq, 2013. Photo credit: Adam Jones, Creative Commons Attributio-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Our community of Tuktuuyaqtuuq (Tuktoyaktuk), or “Tuk” for short, sits in Kugmallit Bay on the Beaufort Sea coast, at the mouth of Kuukpak (Mackenzie River). Tuktuuyaqtuuq is the “place resembling caribou” in our local Sallirmiutun dialect. As a natural harbour, Tuk has long been a popular place for fishing, beluga hunting and trade. Today, about 1000 residents live in Tuk. Since the opening of the Inuvik-Tuk Highway in 2018, tourism has become a growing part of our local economy. The view from our town is a unique Arctic landscape of ocean, lakes, tundra, and pingos, the ice-cored hills scattered throughout the area. Our hamlet is being significantly impacted by coastal erosion caused by climate change and we are working to address these impacts by relocating some houses and monitoring erosion rates.

End of the Ice Age

00 10 Suaangan Drum Dance Festival 2000 at Kiti Hall in Tuktoyaktuk H 264

Our Community Today

Community Quotes

When we see the ocean, we know we’re home, we’re safe.

– Anonymous Community Member
2024

Some people said to me, “why you don’t put the money in the bank and save it for future?” I should have told him that time, “The north is my bank.”

– Bertram Pokiak
Tuktuuyaqtuuq, 1976, Berger Inquiry Transcripts

In traditional times, good harvesters in our community—the hunters, fishers, and trappers—were also good leaders of the people. They had knowledge, the ability to organize and lead by example. With the IFA, we had to diversify our types of knowledge and experience.

– Anonymous Community Member
2024

Each moon (month) had a name: fawning season, geese season, whale season, and so on.

– Bertram Pokiak
Tuktuuyaqtuuq, 1976, Berger Inquiry Transcripts

Wealth, for us, is about knowledge and experience—you were once wealthy if you ran 7 to 10 dogs and were able to go out and get caribou for your family and community. Harvesters still play this vital role in our community.

– Anonymous Community Member
2024

Long ago especially in the spring when it got warmed the peoples used to eat together…Then in the evening after they settled down, they always used to tell stories to one another.

– Felix Nuyaviak
Tuktuuyaqtuuq, 1976, Berger Inquiry Transcripts

Tuktuuyaqtuuq means ‘place resembling a caribou’. Tuktu is caribou in Sallirmiutun. The story goes that a group of caribou were about to cross to a point of land near where Tuk is today. A young woman was sick and people told her not to look at the caribou because something might happen to them. The caribou started to swim across to the point and the woman couldn’t help herself – she peeked, and the caribou turned to stone. You can still see those rocks shaped like caribou today when the water is low. And that’s how Tuktuuyaqtuuq got its name.

– Anonymous Community Member
2023

Long ago when you have to keep fish for the winter, you have to bury in the ground, that’s what you call pit fish.

– Emmanuel Felix
Tuktuuyaqtuuq, 1976, Berger Inquiry Transcripts

This land is the last frontier. We do not want it to become polluted, spoiled, wasted or destroyed. For it is the air we breathe, the water we drink, the land we feed off. If polluted, spoiled or destroyed, we have not much left of what it used to be.

– Elsie Andreason
Tuktuuyaqtuuq, 1976, Berger Inquiry Transcripts

We have been living here in Tuk, but every spring we go to where my dad used to hunt, where his old hunting grounds are, and we go there every spring for hunting…[F]rom all his travels, my father liked that place called Nanaluk on Liverpool Bay.

– Persis Gruben
Tuktuuyaqtuuq, 1976, Berger Inquiry Transcripts

Our Community in the Past

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