Mining and Communities in Northern Canada : History, Politics, and Memory

For indigenous communities throughout the globe, mining has been a historical forerunner of colonialism, introducing new, and often disruptive, settlement patterns and economic arrangements. Although indigenous communities may benefit from and adapt to the wage labour and training opportunities provided by new mining operations, they are also often left to navigate the complicated process of remediating the long-term ecological changes associated with industrial mining. In this regard, the mining often inscribes colonialism as a broad set of physical and ecological changes to indigenous lands.

Mining and Communities in Northern Canada examines historical and contemporary social, economic, and environmental impacts of mining on Aboriginal communities in northern Canada. Combining oral history research with intensive archival study, this work juxtaposes the perspectives of government and industry with the perspectives of local communities. The oral history and ethnographic material provides an extremely significant record of local Aboriginal perspectives on histories of mining and development in their regions.

Arn Keeling is an associate professor in the Department of Geography at Memorial University of Newfoundland. His research and publications focus on historical and contemporary encounters of northern Indigenous communities with large-scale resource developments, domestic and industrial pollution, environmental politics, and the history of the conservation/environmental movement.

John Sandlos is an associate professor in the Department of History at Memorial University of Newfoundland. His recent research examines the conflict between state wildlife managers and resource harvesters in the hinterland regions of Canada. His book, Hunters at the Margin: Native People and Wildlife Conservation in the Northwest Territories, won a Clio Prize.