Jacques Cartier makes his first contact with aboriginal peoples in what is now Canada.

Jacques Cartier was a French maritime explorer from Brittany. Jacques Cartier was the first European to describe and map the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the shores of the Saint Lawrence River, which he named "The Country of Canadas" after the Iroquoian names for the two big settlements he saw at Stadacona and at Hochelaga.

In anthropology, first contact is the first meeting of two communities previously without contact with one another. Notable examples of first contact are those between the Spanish Empire and the Arawak in 1492; and the Aboriginal Australians with Europeans in 1788 when the First Fleet arrived in Sydney.

Indigenous peoples in Canada are the Indigenous peoples within the boundaries of Canada. They comprise the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis, representing roughly 5.0% of the total Canadian population. There are over 600 recognized First Nations governments or bands with distinctive cultures, languages, art, and music.