Hardwood Forest Conifer Forest Northern Territory The Keepers of the North»» The Last Resting Place of the Trees Knowledge, Know-how

NORTHERN TERRITORY: TAIGA AND TUNDRA The Keepers of the North The Inuit, Cree, Innu and Naskapi have always chosen the North for its unequalled white expanses in winter and its myriad of colour in summer. These peoples are known as the Inuit, Iyiyuu, Innuat, or "Aboriginals, human beings", and Naskapi, or "The people of the place beyond the horizon", as though the vast country they inhabit could not exist without the presence of human beings or their inscription on the land. The Inuit belong to the Eskimo-Aleut cultural family that extends from Greenland to Siberia, via Alaska. They live beyond the forests, in the tundra, with its short, sparse vegetation growing on base rock. The Cree, Inuit and Naskapi, the most northerly representatives of the Algonquian family, live below the tree line, in the taiga, with its open black spruce forest and its spongy soil covered by lichen and moss. The Inuit, in scattered villages along the coast, still hunt seal and caribou, fish salmon and trout and pick blueberries and crowberries. In the taiga and forest tundra, in the hinterlands and along the coast, the Algonquian harvest the caribou, beaver, black bear, pike and salmonidae, and gather small fruit under the forest canopy.

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