Jean Marie River
Jean Marie River is a "Designated Authority" in the Dehcho Region of the Northwest Territories, Canada. The community is located on the Jean Marie River where it joins the Mackenzie River. The community has a small airport, Jean Marie River Airport, and is accessible by charter aircraft throughout the year and by the all-season JMR Access Road from the Mackenzie Highway.
History
The Tthek’éhdél Dene of what is today Jean Marie River First Nation were primarily nomadic people who hunted moose and caribou, trapped for beaver and fished the rivers and lakes of the Great Slave Plain.In the early 1920s, the transition from a nomadic lifestyle to sedentism began under the orders of the Elder Norwegian. This led to the formation of various permanent posts in the overall area.
By the 1950s, the settlement of Jean Marie River had begun to develop a non-traditional economy based around river transportation and logging, which had a collectivist style of living, however in the recent decades the area had various initiative to fully move towards a more intricate economic system, distancing itself from its traditional one.
Starting from the 2010s, the area started to suffer the consequences of climate change and the local way of life, including food security.
Demographics
In the 2021 Canadian census conducted by Statistics Canada, Jean Marie River had a population of 63 living in 33 of its 37 total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of 77. With a land area of, it had a population density of in 2021.In 2021, the entirety of its population was First Nations. The only languages in the community were Indigenous languages and English. The main Indigenous languages in the community are a group of Athabaskan languages called Dene Yatıé or Zhatıé / K’ashógot’įne Goxedǝ́.