Who were the Indigenous peoples of Canada before European contact?

The Indigenous peoples of Canada before European contact were hundreds of distinct First Nations and Inuit communities, organised into more than 50 language families and occupying every region of what is now Canada. Archaeological evidence places continuous human occupation in Canada for at least 12,000 years, with sites such as Bluefish Caves in Yukon possibly extending that record to 24,000 years before present. Estimates of pre-contact population in the territory now called Canada range from about 500,000 to more than 2 million people in 1500.

Major linguistic and cultural groupings included the Algonquian-speaking peoples of the eastern woodlands and subarctic (Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, Innu, Cree, Anishinaabe, Algonquin), the Iroquoian-speaking peoples of the lower Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Valley (Haudenosaunee or Six Nations Confederacy, Wendat or Huron, Neutral, Petun, and St. Lawrence Iroquoians), the Siouan, Algonquian, and Athabaskan peoples of the prairies and parklands (Blackfoot Confederacy, Nakoda, Plains Cree, Tsuut'ina), the Athabaskan and Tlingit peoples of the western subarctic and Pacific Northwest interior (Dene, Tahltan, Kaska, Tutchone), the diverse Pacific coast nations (Haida, Tsimshian, Nuxalk, Heiltsuk, Kwakwaka'wakw, Nuu-chah-nulth, Coast Salish), and the Inuit of the Arctic (Inuvialuit, Inuinnait, Netsilik, Iglulik, Kivalliq, Nunavik, Labrador Inuit).

Indigenous nations developed varied political and economic systems shaped by geography. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy on the lower Great Lakes (founded between 1142 and 1450 by traditional accounts) was a sophisticated matrilineal democracy with the Great Law of Peace as its founding constitution. Pacific coast nations built substantial cedar plank houses and developed potlatch economies based on salmon, cedar, and ceremonial wealth-redistribution. Plains nations relied on bison and developed seasonal round economies. Inuit peoples developed kayaks, qajaq hunting techniques, and the qammaq winter house adapted to Arctic conditions.

The arrival of Europeans from 1497 onward triggered catastrophic demographic collapse. Smallpox, measles, influenza, and other introduced diseases killed an estimated 50 to 90 per cent of Indigenous populations by 1700, with later waves continuing into the 19th century. Canadian law today recognises three groups of Indigenous peoples under section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982: First Nations (the descendants of pre-contact peoples south of the Arctic), Inuit (the Arctic peoples), and Métis (a distinct people of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry that emerged on the western prairies from the late 1700s).