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Fort Resolution achieved settlement status on April 1, 1988.

In the early 1980s, the community of Fort Resolution began developing programmes dedicated to preserving both the use of the Chipewyan language and the history of their elders. Although a Chipewyan language programme was established in the local school, the community council decided that they needed to record the recollections of their elders before that knowledge was lost forever. The Deninoo (Fort Resolution) Community Council then sought funding from the Local Education Authority and the Government of the Northwest Territories to finance the project. A list of all community residents over the age of 60 was compiled and people over 80 years of age, who were sick, were selected to be interviewed first. Eighteen elders were finally chosen: Harold Balsillie; Philip Buggins; Virginie Beaulieu; Virginie Calumet; Fred Dawson; Isidore Edjericon; Albert Fabien; Caroline Fabien; Joe Fabien; Rose Fabien; Judith Giroux; Pierre Hilaire; Joseph Jerome; Francois King; Mary Louise King; Victor Lafferty; George Sanderson; and Noel Yelle. A questionnaire was designed which was broken down into thirteen modules: Section I: Demography; Section II: Social and family structure; Section III: Spiritual activities; Section IV: Lifestyle; Section V: Alcohol; Section VI: Health; Section VII: Government; Section VIII: The Mission; Section IX: Wage Economy; Section X: Communications; Section XI: Legends, stories, and local wisdom; Section XII: Geography\weather; and Section XIII: Highlights. Each of the interviews was based on the format established in the questionnaire. In the summer of 1984, five interviews were conducted. In 1985, after receiving funding from the Government of the Northwest Territories, a further twelve elders were interviewed. The interviewers were Doris Beck, Mary Rose Boucher, Elizabeth Giroux, Frederick Lafferty and Dora Unka, and the translators were Mary Rose Boucher, Dora Cardinal and Frederick Lafferty. Joe Fabian eventually withdrew his consent for the release of the material gathered during the interviews with him. That material was returned to the Fort Resolution Community Education Council. From the information gathered during the interviews, a book "That's the Way We Lived" was published in 1987.

The Fort Providence Slavey Language Research Project was begun in the early 1980s. It was funded by the Department of Culture & Communications, Government of the Northwest Territories.

Fort Norman achieved hamlet status on April 1, 1984.

In the early 1980s, the Dene Community Council of Fort Good Hope established the Dene Language and Historical Research Project to gather oral histories and photographic images in the Fort Good Hope area. The aim was to create a body of research material for scholars, teachers and local residents and possibly for curriculum development. The project, co-coordinated by Cynthia Chambers, was aimed at the creation of oral histories by project workers, the accumulation of historical photographs from private collections and finally the documentation of the collected material through cataloguing. In 1988, the Council underwent a planning process to develop a plan for future community developments.

An annual summer musical event, Folk on the Rocks was first held in 1980 at Yellowknife, NWT. The Festival attracted musicians and performers from across the globe, although the majority were from the North and the rest of Canada. SENT, the Society for the Encouragement of Northern Talent, the non-profit group which organized the festival, recognized that northern musicians need opportunities to develop. Each year a handful of homegrown talent would play the festival. These included Susan Aglukark, Tracey Riley, George Tuccaro, the Komatiks, Pat Braden, Ted Wesley, Jimmy Ekho, Charlie Panagoniak and Lorna Tassoer, John Blondin's Native Theatre Group, Marc Bogan, Night Sun, Attima Hadlari, Leela Gilday, the Gumboots, Small Town Rhino, Terry Cousineau, Frank Cockney, David Gon, Joe Loutchan, Colin Adjun, Richard Lafferty, and various Inuit throat singers and Dene drummers. SENT relied mainly on donations from Northwest Territories' businesses, government agencies, and private individuals to keep the Festival afloat in the early years. Folk on the Rocks went on to become one of the premier stops on the North American festival circuit, attracting worldclass acts along the way. Buffy St. Marie, Valdy, Gordon Downie, Penny Lang, Spirit of the West, Amos Garrett, Willie P. Bennett, Fred Eaglesmith, the Holmes Brothers, Kashtin, Oscar Lopez, Moxy Fruvous, and Utah Phillips have all appeared at Folk on the Rocks.

Archibald Lang Fleming was born at Greenock, Scotland on September 8, 1883. Upon leaving school, he entered the firm of John Brown and Company, the famous shipbuilders of Clydebank and it was during his years in Glasgow that he became interested in mission work. In 1906, he went to Canada to train at Wycliffe College in Toronto. His interest in the Inuit people and mission work and an appeal from Bishop George Holmes of Moosonee for a young man to work in Baffin Island, led Fleming to establish a mission at Lake Harbour on Baffin Island in 1909. In 1912, Fleming returned to college where he was ordained a deacon in 1912 and a priest in 1913. He returned to Baffin Island in 1916, however, because of ill health was only able to undertake light work. After crossing of the Foxe Peninsula, he was made a member of the Royal Geographic Society. Until his first appointment as archdeacon of the Arctic in 1927, he served first as financial secretary and chaplain to Wycliffe College and then as rector of Old Stone Church in Saint John, New Brunswick. His travels as bishop of the Arctic earned him the title "The Flying Bishop." He was author of "The History of Saint John's Church, Saint John, New Brunswick" (1925) and "Archibald of the Arctic" (1956). He died on May 17, 1953 in Toronto, Ontario.

John Firth came to the North in the 1870s as a Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) employee. His service with the HBC included time as manager of the Fort McPherson Post. Among his experiences were varieties of conflicts among the Indigenous people, which he helped to resolve. Following John Firth's retirement in 1921, the management of his HBC post was passed on to family members, first son-in-law Jack Parsons and later John Firth's son William. Wally Firth, grandson of John Firth, was elected New Democratic Party (NDP) representative to the Canadian Federal Parliament in the 1970s and was the first Indigenous person to be elected to the Parliament of Canada.

Richard Sterling Finnie, photographer, filmmaker and writer, was born in 1906 in Dawson City, Yukon Territories. His parents were Nellie Louise Roediger and Oswald Sterling Finnie, a mining recorder and Director of the Northwest Territories and Yukon Branch from 1921 to 1931. In 1909, the family moved to Ottawa and Richard Finnie attended local schools. From 1924 to 1927, he worked as a reporter for the "Ottawa Citizen" where he wrote a number of articles about the arctic. In 1924 and 1925, Richard Finnie joined Captain J.E. Bernier's arctic expeditions as a radio operator aboard the Canadian government ship "Arctic." During these trips, he received his first training as a cinematographer from George Valiquette. Bernier gave Finnie the ship's bell which he donated to the Bernier Museum in L'Islet, Quebec. I n 1928, Finnie traveled aboard the "Beothic" and filmed the 1928 Canadian government arctic expedition, which represents his first professional film, "In the Shadow of the Pole." In all, Richard Finnie made five expeditions by ship to the eastern arctic.

During the 1930s, he spent much of his time in northern Canada including time on King William Island, a year with the Copper Inuit of the western arctic and time on Baffin and Ellesmere Islands. He served on the Burwash Expedition of King William Island, one of Canada's first air expeditions in the Arctic. In 1937, he traveled aboard the "Nascopie" and produced films, which recorded the meeting of the Nascopie and the Aklavik at Bellot Island. During these years, he wrote "Lure of the North" and a film entitled "Dogrib Treaty." In 1942, Finnie left the National Film Board after producing a final film "Canada Moves North" which he also made into a book. In that same year, he was hired by the Betchel Corporation and produced films on the construction of the Alaska Highway and the Canol project. Richard Finnie spent 25 years as official historian and film producer for the Betchel Corporation until he retired in 1968. He traveled to many places to do his filmmaking, including Libya and Beirut.

His marriage to Alyce Robert ended in 1965 with her death. After Finnie retired, he continued an active life, lecturing and publishing on the Northwest and Yukon territories. Finnie was a fellow of the Arctic Institute of North America, honorary member of the Yukon Order of Pioneers and emeritus fellow of the Explorer's Club of New York and co-founder of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter, of which he was chairman for a decade. He also was a life member of the California Academy of Sciences and an active member of the New Orleans Jazz Club of northern California. Finnie died on February 2, 1987. His second wife, Anne Ackerman Finnie, died October 25, 1995.

Poole Field was a trader, trapper and prospector in the Yukon and Nahanni Butte region. He was born near Regina in approximately 1880. He joined the Royal Northwest Mounted Police (RNWMP) as a young man and transferred to the Yukon during the gold rush in the late 1890s. After three years, Field left the RNWMP and went to Alaska for about five years. He returned to the Yukon and during this time, he met and married Mary Atkinson (nee Lafferty). Field made at least one trip into the Nahanni region in 1905 but returned to the Yukon. Mary and Poole moved to the Nahanni Butte region in approximately 1914 after coming into the possession of a letter written by Martin Jorgenson claiming he had found gold. In 1915 or 1916, Field and his companions found the remains of Jorgenson at his burned cabin near Virginia Falls. According to Dick Turner, author of the book "Nahanni", Field spoke Cree and Slavey fluently and was an excellent woodsman. In approximately 1924, Field began operating as an independent trader and ran a store at Trout Lake for three years before returning to Nahanni Butte where he operated an independent trading post from 1928 to about 1935. In the 1940s, Field worked as a river pilot during the summer and trapped during the winter seasons.

The Federated Women's Institute of Canada was founded in 1919 and was designed to discover, stimulate, and develop leadership among women. It aimed to give a voice to women in rural communities about their concerns. Gladys Vear was appointed as a field worker in the Mackenzie District for the Northern Canada Women's Institute in 1968.

The Norman Wells Federal Day School opened in 1960, and was transferred to the territorial government when it assumed responsibility for education in 1969. The school was originally a one room school located on the river bank, and classes were relocated several times, operating out of portable classrooms through most of the 1970s. It was replaced by the Mackenzie Mountain School, which opened in 1983.

The provision of western education in Nahanni Butte began when evangelist missionaries Mr and Mrs Philip Howard began instructing children in early 1957, without the approval of the Federal government. Summer (tent) school was provided in 1957 and 1958.

A one-room school building was completed around 1959, but the opening of an official Federal Day School was delayed until 1961 due to staffing and housing issues. This school was transferred to the GNWT when it assumed responsibility for education in 1969 and was eventually given the name Charles Yohin School. The school building has been replaced twice, in 1978 and 1985, with both new buildings being constructed by the people of the community.

The Fort Norman Federal Day School, also known as the Colin Campbell School, was constructed in 1949 or 1950 in the community now known as Tulita. It initially had two classrooms, with a third added in 1968/69. In 1969 the facility was taken over by the territorial government. Although the school ‘s enrolment consisted of children whose families lived in the community, for a brief period in 1971 there was a small hostel associated with it, to provide a temporary residence for children whose parents were out on the land. The school was replaced by the Chief Albert Wright School, which opened in 1980.

The Federal Department of Indian and Northern Affairs (later known as the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development or DIAND) held a research collection on Father Emile Petitot in the 1960s to the 1970s. Petitot (1838-1916), was an Oblate missionary, who spent twelve years in the Mackenzie River region between 1862 and 1874, returned to the Great Slave Lake region in 1876 and remained in the north until 1883. During his time in the north, Emile Petitot collected linguistic and ethnographic information on the Dene. His works include a dictionary of the major Dene languages,and a book of Dene legends, "Les Traditions indiennes du Canada Nord-Ouest." In addition to missionary and ethnographer, Petitot was also an explorer, mapping new territory in the north, and recording the geology, paleontology, zoology and botany of the region.

In 1969, Donat Savoie was employed by the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs to complete a study of the ethnographic material of Father Emile Petitot relating to the Northwest Territories. This collection was used in Savoie's continued employment with DIAND, as a researcher, and eventually chief of the Northern Social Research Division from 1977-1982. In association with the Northern Science Research Group (DIAND), Donat Savoie produced "The Amerindians of the Canadian north-west in the 19th century, as seen by Emile Petitot: Volume 1: the Tchiglit Eskimos; and Volume 2: the Loucheux Indians." Savoie's publications also include: "Notes on the Metis people of the North, extracted from the writings of Emile Petitot, O.M.I.", "Emile Petitot (1838-1916): missionnaire dans l'Arctique canadien, explorateur et anthropologue, cure de Mareuil-les-Meaux," and various articles on Petitot. Emile Petitot's works were also used as the basis of a two-volume publication: "L'Occupation territoriale chez les amerindiens du nord-ouest canadien au XIXc siecle selon Emile Petitot," by Rachelle Castonquay.

In 1980, the Petitot Manuscripts collection was presented to the Institute for Northern Studies, by Donat Savoie, on behalf of the Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs. This material was deposited in the Special Collections of the University of Saskatchewan Libraries in 1981upon the dissolution of the Institute. Beginning in 1977, Donat Savoie deposited Petitot research materials, consisting of copies of books, articles, maps and photographs with the Northwest Territories Archives.