Yellowknife (/ˈjɛloʊnaɪf/; Dogrib: Sǫǫ̀mbak’è[8]) is the capital, only city, and largest community in the Northwest Territories, Canada. It is on the northern shore of Great Slave Lake, about 400 km (250 mi) south of the Arctic Circle, on the west side of Yellowknife Bay near the outlet of the Yellowknife River.
Yellowknife and its surrounding water bodies were named after a local Dene tribe, who were known as the “Copper Indians” or “Yellowknife Indians”, today incorporated as the Yellowknives Dene First Nation. They traded tools made from copper deposits near the Arctic Coast. Its population, which is ethnically mixed, was 19,569 per the 2016 Canadian Census.[3] Of the eleven official languages of the Northwest Territories, five are spoken in significant numbers in Yellowknife: Dene Suline, Dogrib, South and North Slavey, English, and French. In the Dogrib language, the city is known as Sǫ̀mbak’è (Som-ba Kay) (“where the money is”).[9][10] Modern Yellowknives members can be found in the adjoining, primarily Indigenous communities of Ndilǫ and Dettah.
The Yellowknife settlement is considered to have been founded in 1934,[1] after gold was found in the area, although commercial activity in the present-day waterfront area did not begin until 1936. Yellowknife quickly became the centre of economic activity in the NWT, and was named the capital of the Northwest Territories in 1967. As gold production began to wane, Yellowknife shifted from being a mining town to a centre of government services in the 1980s. However, with the discovery of diamonds north of the city in 1991,[11] this shift began to reverse. In recent years, tourism, transportation, and communications have also emerged as significant Yellowknife industries.[12]
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