1. Contemporary Dene Indians include the Chipewyans, Dogrib, Slaves (Slaveys), Hares, and Loucheux of the Mackenzie River Valley; they speak Athapascan or Dene dialects. Estimates in 1985 indicated 2,600 Dene in the Yukon and 4,376 in the NWT; in 1972, they totalled 9,440 and in 1985, over 11,000. As with the Inuit, some observers believe that figures may be seriously under-reported. Michael Asch,Home and Native Land: Aboriginal Rights and the Canadian Constitution(Toronto: Methuen, 1989). As of 1985, approximately 28,000 Inuit lived in Canada, primarily in the NWT–about 20% in Northern Quebec, and 8% in Labrador (25,390 in 1981). They speak Inuktitut; Crowe estimates that there were approximately 22,000 Inuits when Europeans first arrived. See Keith J. Crowe,A History of the Original Peoples of Northern Canada(Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1974), p. 54. Although whites are the single largest group in the north, the native people together have a vastly broader history there and constitute a slight majority. Stress is placed on the NWT and Yukon because they are currently striving for semi-autonomous status as provinces. A small number of indigenous people live in northern Quebec, Labrador and Newfoundland and both Territories contain substantial numbers of Mètis; their problems are in many ways unique and deserve separate treatment.
2. George Manuel and Michael Poslums, “The Fourth World in Canada,” in Jean Leonard Elliot, ed.Two Nations, Many Cultures: Ethnic Groups in Canada, second edition (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall, 1983), pp. 15–18.
3. Yukon Bureau of Statistics (hereafter YBS),(Whitehorse: Executive Council Office, 1986, 1988); Northwest Territories Bureau of Statistics (hereafter NWTBS),9, 4 (December 1987);
4. NWTBS,(Yellowknife: NWTBS, 1988).
5. Elliott,Two Nations, Many Cultures, p. 5.