In a Warming Arctic, a Fight Brews Over the Fabled Northwest Passage

The Inuit of the far north helped solve the mystery of a doomed 19th-century expedition. Now Canada needs them to strengthen its claim to this newly contested region.

Landscapes around the Inuit hamlet of Gjoa Haven, in the Canadian Arctic.

In a Warming Arctic, a Fight Brews Over the Fabled Northwest Passage

The Inuit of the far north helped solve the mystery of a doomed 19th-century expedition. Now Canada needs them to strengthen its claim to this newly contested region.

Norimitsu Onishi

Visuals by Renaud Philippe

Reporting from Gjoa Haven, Canada, north of the Arctic Circle

• Oct. 20, 2025

For centuries, death and disaster met those searching for the fabled Northwest Passage. The promise of a shorter sea lane between Europe and Asia, somewhere through the icelocked labyrinth of Canada’s Arctic Archipelago, lured explorers like Sir John Franklin to their doom.

Today, with sea ice melting fast, the Northwest Passage is open long enough to welcome thousands of tourists annually aboard large cruise ships. Nine are expected to dock this year at Gjoa Haven, an Inuit hamlet whose history is tied to the passage’s past and could help secure its future.

“The Northwest Passage goes through our communities, our land,” said Raymond Quqshuun, Gjoa Haven’s mayor.

A Northwest Passage navigable several months a year is one of the warming Arctic’s biggest prizes — and potential sources of conflict. The United States and several other nations reject Canada’s claim of sovereignty over the Northwest Passage and consider it an international waterway, even though it traverses Nunavut, a vast Canadian territory home to Gjoa Haven and two dozen other sparsely populated Inuit hamlets.

As global warming makes the Arctic — and its immense natural resources — more accessible, it is fueling a superpower rivalry not seen since the Cold War. Russia is beefing up its military positions in the region, sometimes in cooperation with China, a self-described “near-Arctic state” that is also expanding commercial and scientific activities.

President Trump is threatening to annex Canada and force a sale of Greenland. He wants to build a $175 billion “Golden Dome” defense shield to intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles flying over the Arctic.

In the middle of Gjoa Haven’s summer, daylight doesn’t completely disappear.

Canada is rushing to avoid becoming a bystander, despite having more Arctic land than any other nation except Russia. Prime Minister Mark Carney recently announced Canada’s biggest jump in military spending since World War II and has promised enormous infrastructure projects to strengthen Canada’s hold on the region.

But securing the Far North also means turning to the Inuit, the only people to have lived in Canada’s Arctic for centuries.

The Canadian government has long asserted Arctic sovereignty by relying on the Inuit’s continuous presence. Its claim is based on the legal concept of “historic title, founded in part on the presence of Inuit and other Indigenous peoples since time immemorial,” according to a government statement.

And perhaps no one is more central to that claim than the people of Gjoa Haven, whose ancestors lived for centuries in the region and whose history is intimately tied to that of the Northwest Passage.

Gjoa Haven is on the southeastern tip of King William, a flat, sandy island a couple of hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle.

In recent years, hamlet residents helped solve one of the greatest mysteries in the history of Arctic exploration, displaying their unparalleled knowledge of a region still partly unmapped. Thanks to their oral history, they helped quickly find Franklin’s two long-lost sunken ships — after decades of futile efforts by outsiders.

Mr. Trump’s threats have deepened anxieties among many in Gjoa Haven already worried about the region’s changing climate.

For Mr. Quqshuun, the moment of truth came last winter, on a day of near total darkness, he recalled. Switching on the television, the mayor heard “Trump saying Canada should be another state.” Right away, he asked a friend to send him a baseball cap with the message “Canada is not for sale.”

“We have our own country here, and we want to keep it that way,” Mr. Quqshuun said.

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“The Northwest Passage goes through our communities, our land,” said Raymond Quqshuun, Gjoa Haven’s mayor.

But he sounded less confident about Canada’s capacity to deter encroachment by bigger rivals. “It’s mainly us people up here who are kind of, like, I don’t know, protecting our sovereignty?” he said, referring to the Inuit.

The nomadic Inuit had long gathered in the region. But Gjoa Haven — on the southeastern tip of King William, a flat, sandy island a couple of hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle — became a settlement with the opening of a Hudson’s Bay trading post in 1927 and the establishment of government services in the 1960s. Some recall living in tents and igloos until houses were built in the 1970s. Today, the population has swelled to about 1,500 and includes outsiders from as far away as Ghana and Nigeria.

The ice on the Northwest Passage separating Gjoa Haven from the mainland has been receding, resulting in three to four ice-free months a year, twice as long as a few decades ago. Ice becomes less thick in winter and melts without breaking into the pack ice that endangers ships.

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The sea near Gjoa Haven is ice-free for several months a year. Snow melts earlier than a generation ago, and rivers break up and run sooner.

Grizzlies venture regularly from their traditional habitats in the south to Gjoa Haven, rubbing shoulders with polar bears. Shrubs grow taller and greener across the tundra.

“Maybe in 50 years, we’ll have palm trees,” Mr. Quqshuun said.

Cruise ships venturing through the Northwest Passage first came to Gjoa Haven in the early 2000s, bringing a small number of passengers. Nearly 1,700 guests were expected this season.

“Maybe one day there will be ice for only a few months a year,” said Allen Aglukkaq, 65, a retired schoolteacher. “And there will be lots of ships in the Northwest Passage.”

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Allen Aglukkaq with portrait of his grandmother, Joanne Hummahuk, who died in 1972. A keeper of the island’s oral history, she told younger people the story of their forebears’ encounter with the Franklin expedition but warned them not to speak of it to outsiders.

Many in Gjoa Haven — dotted with simple houses and crisscrossed by unpaved roads — still retell stories of the Franklin expedition whose crew members died after their ships became locked in ice.

Europeans had already been in search of the Northwest Passage for centuries by the time Franklin, a British Royal Navy officer, led 128 men aboard two ships on a mission in 1845. The ships, the Erebus and the Terror, were trapped near the northwestern shore of King William Island, later drifting south.

According to the oral history of Gjoa Haven’s Inuit, their ancestors encountered Franklin’s crew members who, despite their dire situation, kept their distance.

“Our ancestors knew that the people in those ships were starving,” said Peter Akkikungnaq, 80, one of Gjoa Haven’s oldest men. “They talked about trying to offer them raw meat, fish and seal meat. But they refused to eat, even though they were down to the bone.”

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Peter Akkikungnaq at his home in Gjoa Haven.

In 1848, surviving crew members abandoned the ships and began walking down the island trying to reach the mainland. But all died — from cold, disease and starvation. Some resorted to cannibalism.

The Franklin expedition became the biggest disaster in the history of Arctic exploration and, in recent years, a morality tale of a rigid colonial mind-set.

Many had long kept silent about the tragedy of Franklin — especially with outsiders. There was deep distrust of the Canadian government and its official discrimination in the past toward the Inuit and other Indigenous people.

The Inuit, whose ancestors have lived in the region for millennia, learned to thrive in the Arctic.

A keeper of Gjoa Haven’s oral history, Joanne Hummahuk, passed on information about the Franklin expedition — and the possible location of a sunken ship — to younger Inuit. But Ms. Hummahuk, who died in 1972, forbade talking about it to outsiders.

“She told me that if I tell the story, maybe I’ll die,” said Mr. Aglukkaq, the retired schoolteacher and one of her grandsons. “They would have found the ship long ago, but the people that knew kept it quiet. It was a taboo.”

The taboo was shattered by one of Ms. Hummahuk’s great-grandsons, Louie Kamookak, who showed intense interest in the Franklin expedition as a boy and became one of Canada’s great Inuit historians.

Josephine Kamookak, 64, his widow, said her husband was haunted by the fact that Franklin’s grave, his ships and most crew members had never been found.

“He knew how it would be, being away from family and never coming back to their hometowns,” Ms. Kamookak said. “He felt they should all be found and sent back.”

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Josephine Kamookak, the widow of the Inuit historian Louie Kamookak. She said he was haunted by the fact that Franklin’s grave, his ships and the remains of most crew members had never been found.

Reluctant at first, many elders eventually opened up, recalled Ms. Kamookak, who worked alongside her husband, writing down their memories. The couple also created a map of the region with traditional Inuit names, Ms. Kamookak said, unfolding a large, laminated map on the floor of her home.

Countless explorers and researchers had searched fruitlessly for Franklin’s ships.But the Canadian government launched another search in 2008, with a new approach: For the first time, it would turn to Inuit oral history, noting that “local Inuit involvement has been absent in previous searches.”

It took until 2014 to find the Erebus. But Mr. Kamookak was not surprised by its location, south of King William Island, his widow said. It was found where his great-grandmother had told him, next to an islet with the traditional Inuit name of “Umiaqtalik,” or “There is a boat there.”

“You couldn’t get any closer,” said Adrian Schimnowski, who participated in the search as the leader then of the Arctic Research Foundation, a private organization. “It was right there. It was in 40 feet of water, hiding in the shoals.”

Two years later, Mr. Schimnowski was leading a crew aboard a repurposed fishing trawler to search for Franklin’s other ship, the Terror. They had been heading toward Cambridge Bay, about 450 miles west of Gjoa Haven, when Mr. Schimnowski began talking with an Inuk man he had picked up in Gjoa Haven: Sammy Kogvik, a former reservist for Canada’s military in the North.

The land where the men of the Franklin Expedition perished remains harsh and unforgiving.

Aboard the boat, Mr. Kogvik and Mr. Schimnowski clicked, and Mr. Kogvik told him that he knew where the Terror could be found.

Years earlier, on a fishing trip off the southwest shore of King William Island with his father-in-law, Mr. Kogvik had seen a mast sticking out of the ice, both men recalled in an interview at Mr. Kogvik’s home in Gjoa Haven.

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Ben Putuguq, left, and Sammy Kogvik provided the information that led to the discovery of the HMS Terror, the second Franklin expedition ship to be found.

The father-in-law, Ben Putuguq, 81, said he was not surprised: He had grown up listening to his own father’s stories of finding relics from the boat and human skulls in the area.

Mr. Kogvik, 67, who had heard those stories from Mr. Putuguq, was not surprised either. “That’s the ship they’ve been searching for,” he recalled saying out loud at the spot.

But at the time, he kept quiet about the discovery.

Mr. Schimnowski, who had been headed in the opposite direction, turned the boat around.

“I heard Sammy’s story in the afternoon and less than 24 hours later, we found the shipwreck,” Mr. Schimnowski said. “You’re wondering, why didn’t anyone listen before?”

“That’s what the Franklin men ran into — that pride,” he added. “They thought they knew better than Indigenous people who were thought of as lesser beings.’’

Artifacts recovered from Franklin’s ships on display in Gjoa Haven.

Though Canada now looks to the Inuit to shore up its Arctic sovereignty assertion, its claim also needs to be supported by building in a region long an afterthought for Canada,said Tony Akoak, who represents Gjoa Haven in Nunavut’s legislature.

Like most other Inuit hamlets, Gjoa Haven lacks paved roads and adequate housing; it depends on an annual sea lift of diesel for its power supply.

Bigger airports, deeper ports and more docks would help the region grow economically, increase Canada’s military capacity and help fend off foreign designs on the Northwest Passage, Mr. Akoak said.

“We need to build more infrastructure in Nunavut, and that’s because of Trump’s attitudes toward Canada,” Mr. Akoak said.

Gjoa Haven lacks needed infrastructure, its mayor said.

Norimitsu Onishi reports on life, society and culture in Canada. He is based in Montreal.

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