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Paying the Land
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85/99
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79/99
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About This Book
The Dene have lived in the vast Mackenzie River Valley since time immemorial, by their account. To the Dene, the land owns them and it is central to their livelihood and very way of being. But the subarctic Canadian Northwest Territories are home to valuable resources, including oil, gas, and diamonds. With mining came jobs and investment, but also road-building, pipelines, and toxic waste, which scarred the landscape, and alcohol, drugs, and debt, which deformed a way of life. In Paying the Land, Joe Sacco travels the frozen North to reveal a people in conflict over the costs and benefits of development. Sacco recounts the shattering impact of a residential school system that aimed to "remove the Indian from the child"; the destructive process that drove the Dene from the bush into settlements and turned them into wage laborers; the government land claims stacked against the Dene Nation; and their uphill efforts to revive a wounded culture.
Reviews
"But I think he could have gone further, and talked to more women, especially about their day to day challenges; done what he did with his mother, perhaps, and in so doing made the experience more immediate ..."
"The powerful middle chapters collect first-person stories of the atrocity haunting Sacco's investigation ..."
"Scenes of bush life flow into one another without panels or borders, creating the feeling of a dreamscape informed by the aesthetic of a scrapbook."
"talking heads given agency to speak their truths, exquisitely detailed artwork, meticulously revealed events ..."
"Sacco takes pains to convey texture — I'm tempted to say the way he draws trees is worth the price of admission alone ..."
"Not to suggest that one of our greatest living graphic journalists should make a habit of taking that much time off (he should not), but the wait has been worth it."
"A startling depiction of an Indigenous people struggling to remain true to their traditions."
"His intensely detailed pages – a characteristic of his oeuvre – remind us that he is as much a representational artist as a cartoonist."
"Sacco also explores the ramifications of oil, gas, and diamond mining in the area, which some Dene embrace as an economic opportunity, and others find exploitative and ecologically disastrous...acco's reporting, accompanied by impressively drawn black-and-white illustrations, is occasionally overwhelmingly detailed, but with good reason: this is a vitally important story about an underrepresented people."
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