Hebron (Nunatsiavummiutitut: Kangerdluksoak, [1] Kangikluksoak [2] or Kangertluksoak [3] ) [4] was a Moravian mission and the northernmost settlement in Labrador. The traditional Nunatsiavummiutitut name for the area means "the Great Bay". [4] Founded in 1831, the mission disbanded in 1959. The Inuk Abraham Ulrikab and his family, exhibited in human zoos in Europe in 1880, were from Hebron. [5] [6]
Hebron has a polar tundra climate (Köppen: ET). [7] The site has an unusual sub-type of arctic (tundra) climate, characterized by relatively high average annual precipitation 798 mm (31.4 in) with half the precipitation occurring during the six coldest months (51% of the total falling from October through March). January, for example, averages -21 °C (-6 °F) and has 81 mm (3.2 in) of water-equivalent precipitation on average, perhaps the most humid air at that temperature experienced anywhere on earth.
| Climate data for Hebron, Newfoundland and Labrador | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
| Daily mean °C (°F) | −21.1 (−6.0) | −20.4 (−4.7) | −15 (5) | −7.2 (19.0) | −0.4 (31.3) | 4.2 (39.6) | 7.7 (45.9) | 8.2 (46.8) | 4.3 (39.7) | −0.7 (30.7) | −6.7 (19.9) | −15 (5) | −5.2 (22.6) |
| Average precipitation mm (inches) | 81 (3.2) | 56 (2.2) | 79 (3.1) | 43 (1.7) | 47 (1.9) | 65 (2.6) | 84 (3.3) | 70 (2.8) | 81 (3.2) | 52 (2.0) | 63 (2.5) | 77 (3.0) | 798 (31.4) |
| Mean daily daylight hours | 8.1 | 10.1 | 12.6 | 15.2 | 17.8 | 19.4 | 18.5 | 16 | 13.4 | 10.9 | 8.6 | 7.4 | 13.2 |
| Source 1: [8] | |||||||||||||
| Source 2: [7] | |||||||||||||
The area features numerous fauna such as harp seals, ringed seals, bearded seals, walruses, beluga whales, polar bears, red foxes, otters, caribou, black bears, Arctic hare, Arctic char, cod, geese, eiders, mergansers, loons and harlequin ducks. [4] [9]
Prior to European contact, Inuit from different regions used Hebron as a meeting place. [2] [4] It is used mainly as hunting and fishing grounds.
Moravians began establishing missions in Labrador in 1771. The first was located at Nain. The Moravians sought to evangelize the Inuit in Labrador.
Mission work started at Hebron in 1818, [1] a site located about 200 km (120 mi) north of Nain. It wasn't until 1827 that a small blockhouse was built as a seasonal outpost for missionaries. [2] In 1831, temporary quarters having been completed, the first permanent missionaries were appointed to Hebron. [2] The construction of the 53-meter-long, ten-metre-wide and one-storey-high building needed to house the church, the missionaries’ quarters and storage was started in spring 1835 and completed in October 1837. [2] [10] That building still dominates Hebron’s landscape.
Inuit living in Hebron primarily relied on traditional subsistence activities. They lived in sod houses constructed with whalebone or wooden frame and seal-gut window. [4] [3]
Life was hard at the settlement. Epidemics of whooping cough, influenza and smallpox ran through the community periodically. Between mid-1800s and early 1900s, the population in Hebron stayed at about 200 to 250 Inuit. [2] [4] In 1918, Moravian missionaries brought an outbreak of Spanish influenza that devastated Hebron and Okak. [11] Approximately 86 of Hebron's 100 residents died. [12] The flu epidemic of 1918 was believed to have wiped out a third of the 1,200-member Inuit population of Labrador. [13]
In July 1943, US Army received permission from the Newfoundland government to secretly construct a weather station to improve Allies' weather forecasting in North Atlantic and Arctic oceans during WWII. The American soldiers stationed at Hebron also kept watch on the Moravian missionaries who were suspected of being sympathetic towards Germany. [14] While the secret US weather station operated until February 1946, the existence of this station was made public in 2017 through the publication of a book. [4] [14]
In 1955, a member of the International Grenfell Association, an organization dedicated to the health and welfare of residents of Newfoundland and Labrador, wrote to the Government of Canada expressing concern about cramped living conditions at Hebron that had led to tuberculosis and a shortage of firewood.
After consultation with Moravian leaders, the decision was made to close the mission. The Inuit would be resettled into larger communities. "I see no other way than to suggest the Mission withdraw from Hebron this summer," said the Rev. Siegfried Hettasch. [15] By April 1959, there were 58 families at Hebron. The decision was announced at an Easter Monday service in 1959. [9] There was no consultation with community members.
By the fall of that year, half of the families had moved on their own. The remainder left soon after the Grenfell nurse was withdrawn and the community store closed in the fall of 1959. The relocation broke up extended families to different communities. Most were sent to Hopedale, Makkovik or Nain. [2] Houses were not ready when the relocatees arrived. When the accommodations were finally built, they were clustered in “little Hebron” villages, on the edges of the existing communities, reinforcing the isolation many Hebron Inuit already felt. [2]
A report written for the Canadian Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples said the forced relocation led to poverty for several of the Inuit. "They were put in places where they weren't familiar with the local environment so they didn't know where to hunt, fish or trap and aside from that, all of the best places were already claimed by people who originally lived in those communities," said the report's author, Carol Brice-Bennett. [15] [2]
The site was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1976. [16] It is frequently visited by cruise ships.
The buildings of the original mission still stand. The main mission building has been undergoing renovation by Inuit volunteers and hired carpenters, who are relocatees or their descendants, organized by Nunatsiavut government and are in reasonably good condition considering the passage of time.
In August 1999, a first reunion of the relocatees was held in Hebron. [17]
In 2005, Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams apologized to Inuit affected by the relocations of Hebron and Nutak. [18] [19] [20] In August 2009, the provincial government unveiled a monument at the site of Hebron with an inscribed apology for the site closure. [21] [22]
In May 2024, the Arctic Inspiration Prize awarded $298,000 to the Hebron and Nutak Reunions to provide an opportunity for the remaining able-bodied evictees to return to their homeland together at Hebron and Nutak/Okkak Bay in the summer of 2024. [23]
Labrador is a geographic and cultural region within the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is the primarily continental portion of the province and constitutes 71% of the province's area but is home to only 6% of its population. It is separated from the island of Newfoundland by the Strait of Belle Isle. It is the largest and northernmost geographical region in the four Atlantic provinces.
Nunatsiavut is an autonomous area claimed by the Inuit in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. The settlement area includes territory in Labrador extending to the Quebec border. In 2002, the Labrador Inuit Association submitted a proposal for limited autonomy to the government of Newfoundland and Labrador. The constitution was ratified on December 1, 2005, at which time the Labrador Inuit Association ceased to exist, and the new Government of Nunatsiavut was established, initially being responsible for health, education and cultural affairs. It is also responsible for setting and conducting elections, the first of which was executed in October 2006. An election for the ordinary members of the Nunatsiavut Assembly was held on May 4, 2010. Its incumbent president is Johannes Lampe who assumed office in 2016.
Nain is the northernmost permanent settlement in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, within the Nunatsiavut region, located about 370 km (230 mi) by air from Happy Valley-Goose Bay. The town was established as a Moravian mission in 1771 by Jens Haven and other missionaries. As of 2021, the population is 1,204 mostly Inuit and mixed Inuit-European. Nain is the administrative capital of the autonomous region of Nunatsiavut.
Hopedale is a town located in the north of Labrador, the mainland portion of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Hopedale is the legislative capital of the Inuit Land Claims Area Nunatsiavut, and where the Nunatsiavut Assembly meets. As of the 2021 census, it has a population of 596.
Mushuau Innu First Nation is a First Nations band government located in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. The band has one reserve which has been located near the community of Natuashish since 2002 when it moved from Davis Inlet. The reserve has an area of roughly 44 square kilometres.
Inuttitut, Inuttut, or Nunatsiavummiutitut is a dialect of Inuktitut. It is spoken across northern Labrador by the Inuit, whose traditional lands are known as Nunatsiavut.
Abraham Ulrikab was an Inuk from Hebron, Labrador, in the present-day province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, who – along with his family and four other Inuit – agreed to become the latest attraction in the ethnographical shows organized by Carl Hagenbeck, owner of the Tierpark Hagenbeck, a zoo in Hamburg, Germany.
Jens Haven was a Danish-Canadian Moravian missionary and the prime mover behind the founding of the Moravian missions in Labrador.
Postville is an Inuit town in the north of Labrador, Canada. It had a population of 188 as of 2021. It is located about 40 km (25 mi) inside Kaipokok Bay, 180 km (110 mi) NNE of Happy Valley-Goose Bay. Postville Airport is nearby.
Makkovik is a town in Labrador in eastern Canada. It had 365 residents in 2021. The main industry is snow crabbing and there is a fishing cooperative.
Okak is a former community located on Okak Bay in northern Labrador. It was founded in 1776 by Jens Haven, a missionary of the Moravian Church. In 1918, Moravian missionaries brought an outbreak of Spanish influenza that devastated Okak, killing 204 out of a population of 263.
Inuit are a group of culturally and historically similar Indigenous peoples traditionally inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of North America, including Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, Yukon (traditionally), Alaska, and Chukotsky District of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia. Inuit languages are part of the Eskimo–Aleut languages, also known as Inuit-Yupik-Unangan, and also as Eskaleut. Inuit Sign Language is a critically endangered language isolate used in Nunavut.
Killiniq is a former Inuit settlement, weather station, trading post, missionary post, fishing station, and Royal Canadian Mounted Police post on Killiniq Island. Previously within Labrador, and then the Northwest Territories, it is now situated within the borders of Nunavut. The community closed in 1978.
NunatuKavut is a proposed Inuit territory in central and southern Labrador. The region proposed by the NunatuKavut Community Council (NCC) extends from north of the community of Makkovik in Nunatsiavut to south of the community of Blanc-Sablon in Quebec. It also extends to the west as far as the border between Quebec and Labrador. Previous submissions by the predecessor organization to NunatuKavut included a secondary claim as far north as Nain, the northernmost community in Nunatsiavut. The NCC has had its land claim submissions rejected by the Canadian Federal Government multiple times. However, both the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples have concluded that the NunatuKavut Community Council represent a people with a credible but unproven claim to Indigenous rights.
The Moravian Church Mission Ships were a series of twelve ships that made an annual voyage from London to the Moravian Church mission stations in Labrador every summer for the 156 years between 1770 and 1926. The purpose of the voyages was to supply provisions to the church's mission stations in Labrador and to rotate mission personnel. All but one were pure sailing vessels; the final ship, Harmony #5, had an auxiliary steam engine.
Johannes Lampe is a Canadian politician who is the current President of Nunatsiavut, an autonomous Inuit region of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Jim Lyall was a Canadian politician and Inuit advocate who served as the first President of Nunatsiavut.
Angry Inuk is a 2016 Canadian Inuit-themed feature-length documentary film written and directed by Alethea Arnaquq-Baril that defends the Inuit seal hunt, as the hunt is a vital means for Inuit to sustain themselves. Subjects in Angry Inuk include Arnaquq-Baril herself as well as Aaju Peter, an Inuit seal hunt advocate, lawyer and seal fur clothing designer who depends on the sealskins for her livelihood. Partially shot in the filmmaker's home community of Iqaluit, as well as Kimmirut and Pangnirtung, where seal hunting is essential for survival, the film follows Peter and other Inuit to Europe in an effort to have the EU Ban on Seal Products overturned. The film also criticizes NGOs such as Greenpeace and the International Fund for Animal Welfare for ignoring the needs of vulnerable northern communities who depend on hunting for their livelihoods by drawing a false distinction between subsistence-driven Inuit hunters and profit-driven commercial hunters.
Josephina Kalleo was an Inuk visual artist from Nain, Newfoundland and Labrador, known for her colorful drawings of traditional Inuit life and for her book Taipsumane: A Collection of Labrador Stories (1984).
Jennie Williams is a Canadian Inuk photographer, filmmaker and throat singer from Newfoundland and Labrador. She is most noted for her short documentary film Nalujuk Night, which won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Short Documentary at the 10th Canadian Screen Awards in 2022.
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