The Inuit, also known as Eskimos, are the indigenous peoples of Greenland and the Arctic regions of Canada and the American state of Alaska. In around 2000 BC, the Inuit split from the Aleuts and other northeastern Siberian migrants and spread eastwards across the Arctic, settling in Greenland by 1100. The Inuit established contact with Basque whalers in Labrador in the mid-16th century, and Martin Frobisher's 1576 expedition to the Northwest Passage led to contact with the Inuit at their city of Iqualuit. It was not until the early 20th century that the European settlers had taken an interest in the Inuit hinterlands, contacting all of the Inuit tribes by the 1920s and systematically converting them to Christianity, initating a series of assimilatory relocations in the 1950s, and forcing the Inuit into year-round permanent settlements during the 1960s. During the 1960s and 1970s, Inuit political activism grew in Canada, fighting for indigenous rights. In Greenland, the Inuit were extended European Union citizenship as Danish citizens. By 2018, there were around 148,863 Inuit in the world, with 65,025 living in Canada, 50,787 in Greenland, 16,470 in Denmark, and 16,581 in the USA.