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Features

Archaeology documents the first arrival of people to the area 8,000 years ago, shortly after the retreat of the continental glacier. Paleoeskimo caribou hunters moved here around 1500 BC after climatic changes in the Arctic closed the ice leads on the Arctic Ocean, making seal hunting impossible. Ancestors of modern Dene peopled the Thelon valley around 2,500 years ago, and then around AD 1000, Thule Inuit whale hunters moved east across the Arctic islands from Alaska in pursuit of the bowhead whale. These people, too, were ultimately attracted by the caribou and muskoxen of the Thelon valley, and by the trees and driftwood they found there.

The modern Inuit descendants of the Thule continued to draw on the sanctuary's resources. The area around Beverly Lake and the middle Thelon River was home to the Akilinirmiut, so named because of the Akiliniq hills on the north side of Beverly Lake. Their historical life, based mainly on caribou hunting, is much in evidence here in the form of stone features such as tent rings, meat caches and inuksuit.

This part of the sanctuary has also drawn Inuit inland from such far-flung areas as Bathurst Inlet, the Back River/Chantrey Inlet, and the Kazan River. All sought the valuable driftwood brought to the shores of Beverly Lake by the Thelon and Dubawnt rivers. These trips were made by dogteam during winter, and likely involved many chance meetings of Inuit from distant and diverse areas of Nunavut. These occasions were opportunities to exchange material goods and information, and it has been recorded that Akiliniq was a trade centre for the central Arctic.

The land of the Akilinirmiut was not visited by Euro-Canadians until 1893, when brothers Joseph and James Tyrrell, in the employ of the Geological Survey of Canada, descended the Dubawnt River. A return trip in 1900 convinced James Tyrrell to lobby for the creation of a game sanctuary to protect the muskox population, whose numbers had been drastically reduced due to the trade in muskox hides. Tyrrell's idea was not acted upon until the Department of the Interior sent John Hornby and Captain J. C. Critchell-Bullock to assess the area's resources in 1924-25. These men added their voices to the call for a protective sanctuary.

Established as the Thelon Game Sanctuary in 1927, the boundary of the original 39,000 square kilometres was changed in 1956 to accommodate mining interests in the southwest portion, and the sanctuary grew to 56,000 square kilometres.

From the beginning, hunting was off limits. Billy Hoare, the sanctuary's first and last warden, journeyed inland with warden A. J. Knox of Wood Buffalo National Park to spend many arduous months hauling equipment and supplies from Great Slave Lake to the Thelon, although always availing themselves of the opportunity to inform the local Dene of the rules of the sanctuary. A warden outpost was established at what is now known as Warden's Grove near the Hanbury-Thelon junction in October 1928. Canoeists today can still view the log structures built by Hoare and Knox.

After Hoare's tenure as warden ended in 1932, the RCMP continued the task of informing native people that the sanctuary was off limits for hunting. These warnings were taken seriously by Inuit, and their self-restraint, in addition to a few arrests for hunting, caused much hardship and ill will.

Although the sanctuary was imposed on its aboriginal inhabitants, it did succeed in its purpose. A muskox population once limited to the area of the sanctuary has flourished and expanded beyond the Kazan River to the east. The 1993 Nunavut Land Claims Agreement required that the Territorial Government coordinate the preparation of a management plan to jointly conserve and manage the Thelon Game Sanctuary.

The management plan, developed by the Akiliniq Planning Commission (a community-based committee) is a long-range plan intended to define the values to be protected in the Sanctuary and to provide the foundation upon which the structures and processes needed to protect these values can be established. To this end, the Plan includes a vision for the Sanctuary and associated conservation goals, recommendations on the establishment of ‘Special Management Areas' adjacent to the sanctuary needed to support the area's conservation goals, and management/advisory structures by which the plan can be implemented.

In 2001, the Akiliniq Planning Commission, set up to coordinate the development of the plan, approved the Management Plan. In June 2003, following reviews and approvals by the Kivalliq Inuit Association and Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., the Government of Nunavut presented the plan to the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board, and subsequently to the Minister of the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, who approved the plan in August 2005. Though the Sanctuary straddles the Nunavut/NWT boundary, the Government of the Northwest Territories has decided not to become a signatory to the plan based on interventions by the Métis Tribal Council, but intends to abide by the spirit and intent of the plan and has encouraged implementation of the plan.