**NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE GUARDIAN,
THE BROOKLYN RAIL, THE GLOBE AND MAIL, POP MATTERS, COMICS BEAT,
AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
From the "heir to R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman" (Economist), a
masterful work of comics journalism about indigenous North America,
resource extraction, and our debt to the natural world**
The Dene have lived in the vast Mackenzie River Valley since time
immemorial, by their account. To the Dene, the land owns them, not the
other way around, 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. The
mining boom is only the latest assault on indigenous culture: 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.
Against a vast and gorgeous landscape that dwarfs all human scale,
Paying the Land lends an ear to trappers and chiefs, activists and
priests, to tell a sweeping story about money, dependency, loss, and
culture--recounted in stunning visual detail by one of the greatest
cartoonists alive.
