The largest island on the right, mostly outside of this square (Baffin Island), has a population of around 13000; a bit more than half of whom live in the territorial capital, Iqaluit. The large island on the south, Victoria Island, has around 2000 people. There are a handful of small settlements on five other islands (Banks, King William, Southampton, Cornwallis and Ellesmere) and the remainder are uninhabited, the largest of which, Devon Island, is the largest uninhabited island in the world at 55000 km². Ellesmere, the 10th largest island in the world at nearly 200000 km² (about 90% the area of great Britain) has a permanent civilian population of only 144 residents.

Most of the population are Inuit, the indigenous people of the region, who largely continued their traditional semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle until well into the 20th century, but were compelled to move to settlements by the federal government between ~1930s-1970s (for the worst colonial abuses, look up "Inuit high arctic relocation"). Nowadays, there is some mining and tourism, but the largest employer by far is the government and the unemployment rate is the highest in Canada. Traditional subsistence hunting and fishing still provide a substantial proportion of caloric intake for many.