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Okak | |
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 Okak before 1919 | |
  Okak | |
| Coordinates: 57°33′44.6″N61°59′03.3″W / 57.562389°N 61.984250°W |
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. [1] In 1918, Moravian missionaries brought an outbreak of Spanish influenza that devastated Okak, killing 204 out of a population of 263.
In 1771 George III of the United Kingdom gave a land grant to the Moravian Church to establish missions for the local Inuit in northern Labrador. In the 18th century, Jens Haven and his followers built missions at Nain (1771), Okak (1776) and Hopedale (1782). These missions also served as trading posts. Later on, other Moravian settlements were established at Hebron (1830), Zoar (1865), Ramah (1871), Makkovik (1896) and Killinek in Nunavut (1904). [2]
Money and personnel to run the infrastructure were provided by the Unity Mission Board in Saxony and the Niesky Mission Training School. However, this assistance was hampered by the effects of World War I and the devastation of the German economy.
In 1918, Moravian missionaries brought an outbreak of Spanish influenza that devastated Okak, killing 204 out of a population of 263. [3] [4] [5] [6]
Shortly thereafter, the Moravians sold their trading post at Okak to the Hudson's Bay Company. In 1956 the settlement was abandoned when the remaining inhabitants were compelled by the Canadian government to relocate to other communities in Labrador. [7] Today, all that remains of Okak are a graveyard and ruins of the former mission.
Okak was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1978, due to the former Moravian mission and the existence of sixty archaeological sites in the area, dating from 5550 BCE and representing of habitation from Maritime Archaic to Labrador Inuit. [8]
In 1985, a 24-minute documentary was made about the influenza outbreak, entitled "The Last Days of Okak". [9]
The Okak National Historic Site of Canada contains over 60 archaeological sites dating from 5550 BCE to the present. These sites are located on Okak Bay off the northern coast of Labrador. Okak was designated as a national historic site of Canada in 1978 because it features a series of archaeological sites that represent a long record of habitation from Maritime Archaic (beginning about 6000 years ago) to recent Labrador Inuit. It is the location of the second oldest Moravian mission in Labrador, founded in 1776 and abandoned in 1919 after most of the people died due to the 1918 flu pandemic. [10]
The archaeological remains found at Okak span more than 6000 years, including its occupation by Maritime Archaic (5550 B.C.E.- 1550 B.C.E.), Paleo-Eskimo including Pre-Dorset (1850 B.C.E. – 250 B.C.E.), Intermediate Indian (1550 B.C.E. – 250 B.C.E.), Dorset (550 B.C.E. – 1450 C.E.) and Labrador Inuit (1200 C.E. – present) cultures. [10]
The cultural material consists primarily of stone tools and flakes documenting changes in tool form, manufacturing techniques, and raw material sources among the various cultural periods. The oldest archaeological finds date from the Maritime Archaic period on Cut Throat Island. [10]
In 1776, Moravian Missionaries established a mission site on Okak Island, just off Okak Harbour. It was the second successful mission to be established by the Moravian Missionaries on the Labrador Coast, the first being founded at Nain, 400 km (250 mi) to the south in 1771. The Okak Mission was prefabricated at Nain, and then transported north to Okak, along with a provisions house and bake house. Inuit houses were also constructed here as families gradually relocated to be closer to the mission. Changing hunting patterns and the Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918-1919 caused the mission to be abandoned in 1919. Foundations of buildings, walkways and a wharf remain from the mission era. [10]
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.
The 1918–1920 flu pandemic, also known as the Great Influenza epidemic or by the common misnomer Spanish flu, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was March 1918 in the state of Kansas in the United States, with further cases recorded in France, Germany and the United Kingdom in April. Two years later, nearly a third of the global population, or an estimated 500 million people, had been infected in four successive waves. Estimates of deaths range from 17 million to 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million, making it one of the deadliest pandemics in history.
Edmund James Peck, known in Inuktitut as Uqammaq, was an Anglican missionary in the Canadian North on the Quebec coast of Hudson Bay and on Baffin Island. He founded the first permanent mission on Baffin Island, Nunavut. He developed Inuktitut syllabics, derived from the Cree syllabary and the first substantial English-Inuktitut dictionary.
Kuujjuaq, formerly known as Fort Chimo and by other names, is a former Hudson's Bay Company outpost at the mouth of the Koksoak River on Ungava Bay that has become the largest northern village in the Nunavik region of Quebec, Canada. It is the administrative capital of the Kativik Regional Government. Its population was 2,668 as of the 2021 census.
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.
The Moravian Church, or the Moravian Brethren, formally the Unitas Fratrum, is one of the oldest Protestant denominations in Christianity, dating back to the Bohemian Reformation of the 15th century and the Unity of the Brethren founded in the Kingdom of Bohemia, sixty years before Luther's Reformation.
Hebron was a Moravian mission and the northernmost settlement in Labrador. 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.
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.
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.
The Maritime Archaic is a North American cultural complex of the Late Archaic along the coast of Newfoundland, the Canadian Maritimes and northern New England. The Maritime Archaic began in approximately 7000 BC and lasted until approximately 3500 BC, corresponding with the arrival of the Paleo-Eskimo groups who may have outcompeted the Maritime Archaic for resources. The culture consisted of sea-mammal hunters in the subarctic who used wooden boats. Maritime Archaic sites have been found as far south as Maine and as far north as Labrador. Their settlements included longhouses, and boat-topped temporary or seasonal houses. They engaged in long-distance trade, as shown by white chert from northern Labrador being found as far south as Maine.
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.
Mikak, also known as Micock, Mycock, or Mecock, was born in Labrador, Canada and died at Nain, Newfoundland and Labrador. She was one of several Inuit to travel to Europe in the 18th century and return to North America, although many Inuit who had travelled to Europe subsequently died from diseases, especially smallpox, before returning.
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.
Spanish flu research concerns studies regarding the causes and characteristics of the Spanish flu, a variety of influenza that in 1918 was responsible for the worst influenza pandemic in modern history. Many theories about the origins and progress of the Spanish flu persisted in the literature, but it was not until 2005, when various samples of lung tissue were recovered from American World War I soldiers and from an Inupiat woman buried in permafrost in a mass grave in Brevig Mission, Alaska, that significant genetic research was made possible.
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.
Ramah was a small mission run by the Moravian Church in northern Labrador from 1871 until 1908. It was located on Ramah Bay.
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.
New Britain as a historical term of limited usage referred in its day to the poorly mapped lands of North America north of 17th-century New France. The name applied primarily to today's Nunavik and Labrador interiors, though in the 18th century this had grown to include all of the mainland shores of Hudson Bay and James Bay north of the Canadas. British visitors came to sub-divide the district loosely into the territories of New South Wales, New North Wales and Labrador. The name Labrador predates mention of the other names by more than a century.
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.
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