Fact Sheet

The First Peoples Hall

Living with the Land

Just as there are differences in creation stories, so too was there a great variety of ways that First Peoples traditionally lived in relationship to the land.

The ancestors of the Inuit faced extreme challenges. Through ancient artifacts, carvings and prints, visitors can explore the profound spiritual connection between the Inuit and their natural environment. This relationship reached its highest expression in the rituals and symbols surrounding the hunting of the Arctic's largest animal, the bowhead whale. The exhibit Arctic Whalers demonstrates the technological accomplishments of the First Peoples of the Far North and shows how they respected their relationship to the sea and the land.

The Maritime Peoples exhibit illustrates many aspects of the seasonal and daily lives of the indigenous Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, Innu and Beothuk peoples of Atlantic Canada. Drawn from the Canadian Museum of Civilization's pre-contact archaeological collections and rich ethnographic collections of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, items of clothing, tools, canoes and other artifacts illustrate how people lived and adapted over thousands of years to the changing and varied landscape of Atlantic Canada.

The Communal Hunters of the Plains and the sub-Arctic relied on a single species of herding animals for virtually all their needs. Bison in the Plains and caribou in the sub-Arctic were hunted with communal methods that employed all members of the community to meet immediate needs and to provide a surplus for leaner times. Examples of food, clothing and tools show the ancient and continuing cultural significance of both these animals, in spite of the near extinction of the bison and threats to the caribou.

The way of life of the People of the Longhouse - Iroquoian language speakers of the Lower Great Lakes region of North America - was centred on farming. The corn, beans and squash that they grew are still known today as the Three Sisters. Visitors will appreciate that this special relationship with the land was articulated through kin relations, with women playing an important role in the social and political life of their society.

Diplomacy, ceremony, exchange and recreation were all parts of the interactive structure First Peoples used to deal with each other. In ancient times, Aboriginal peoples travelled to trade fairs to meet distant groups. The exhibit Trade Fairs highlights the complexity of trading interactions between fifteenth-century agricultural villagers and nomadic bison hunters in the Northern Great Plains and indicates how this contributed to an exchange network that spanned North America.