Nahanni Butte
Nahanni Butte is a "Designated Authority" in the Dehcho Region of the Northwest Territories, Canada. The community is located at the confluence of the Liard and South Nahanni Rivers in the southwestern part of the NWT.
Although it was not normally accessible by road, a winter road was constructed yearly until an all-season road was completed in October 2010 as far as the Liard River. Access from there is by river taxi in summer and ice road in winter; there are no plans for a vehicle ferry.
History
Pre-European period
The Naha and Kaska Dena roamed the area, for what sources point out to be millennia.Prior to European exposure, the Dene people were highly mobile around the Deh Cho region. Men were mainly hunters, women used to mostly stay at home and do housework. Usually, people would travel in smaller extended-family groups from one place to another, never to settle indefinitely.
The Naha tribe, used to aggressively raid settlements built by the other ethnic groups, leading to a war in an unspecified date which in turn led to the migration of a significant part of the Naha in the area now inhabited by the Navajo.
Contemporary period
During the 1800s, most Dene families left their nomadic lifestyles and settled into more permanent communities, often close to the trading posts on the banks of the river; however most of the locals only became permanently settled in the late 1950s when the federal government forcefully relocated people from nearby Netla River in the area.Due to the locals tradition of closeness to nature and sites that are rich in terms of folklore, the area over the 60s generated a folklore of its own and various myths, such as one about a Bigfoot-like creature called a Nuk-luk which was allegedly seen in the area in the year 1964. This tradition of creating rumours and myths regarding the surrounding areas though, seems to be dating as far back as the early 1900s.
Demographics
In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Nahanni Butte had a population of living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of. With a land area of, it had a population density of in 2021.In 2016, there were 80 First Nations people and 40 people speak a Slavey language.