Cape Dorset

Cape Dorset ( by the Inuit Kinngait, high mountains, called ) is a 1,300 inhabitants Inuit settlement in the Canadian territory of Nunavut. It is located about 450 kilometers west of Iqaluit on a small island of the same name, the (part of Baffin Island south-west ) is preceded by the Foxehalbinsel.

History

Cape Dorset has an entire culture, the Dorset culture, given the name, as the anthropologist Diamond Jenness there was in 1925 crowned his search for a lost Paleo- Eskimo culture with success and prove that the region has been inhabited for thousands of years.

The Hudson 's Bay Company established a trading post here in 1913. 1938 was initially a Roman Catholic church (1960 abandoned ), 1953 an Anglican church. The first school and the first infirmary were established in 1950. The actual construction of the complex started in the early 1950s.

Culture

Exceptional importance has Cape Dorset in the field of Inuit art ( ' Inuit Art Capital ", Capital of Inuit Art). The basis for this put James and Alma Houston, 1951 for a decade settled here and saw the unusually large potential of artistic talent and creativity among the Inuit. They promoted the forms of expressive sculptures. The raw materials used, among other serpentine ( " snake stone ", Steatinit ) and serpentinite ( Serpentinschiefer ) and dolomite ( calcium magnesium carbonate ), quartz ( silicon dioxide) and other types of stone such as marble (calcium carbonate), rarely for artistic figures to soft steatite ( " soapstone "). The material comes primarily from quarries of Andrew Gordon Bay on the northern shore of Hudson Strait. But above all, led the Houston European lithography techniques ( lithography, stone carving, aquatint etching ). As the center from 1962 until the turn of the millennium by Terry Ryan as the successor to James Houston led West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative was established.

From Cape Dorset, one can foot at low tide, otherwise by boat and in winter by snowmobile to the neighboring island Mallikjuaq (translated: " big wave ") comes, on which the Mallikjuaq - territorial historical park with a variety of relics from the Thule and also the Dorset time is.

Trivia

In Frank Schätzing international bestseller The Swarm Cape Dorset place as the home of Leon Walspezialisten Anawak mention.

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