Paying the Land

By Joe Sacco

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” (The 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Jul 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781250790415

Joe Sacco

Joe Sacco is the author of Footnotes in Gaza, for which he received the Ridenhour Book Prize and the Eisner Award, as well as Paying the Land, Palestine, Journalism, Safe Area Goražde, and War on Gaza, both also Eisner Award winners. His comics reporting has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Guardian, and Harper’s Magazine. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Book preview

[rhysbabkin23 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

cried. 10/10 very educational and engaging. must-read for every Canadian

[darthdeverell · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Joe Sacco’s Paying the Land tells the story of the Dene around the Mackenzie River Valley, whose livelihoods are threatened by the oil, gas, and diamond industries in the Canadian Northwest Territories. Industrial and economic changes transform the landscape while dividing communities between traditionalists, those who embrace the new systems, and people who remain conflicted but undecided. Elements of the environmental story and its impact on the locals resemble Kate Beaton’s recent book, Ducks, though the indigenous perspective sets Paying the Land apart. Sacco interviews members of the Dene in order to bring their words to the world. In addition to the costs of resource exploitation, Sacco recounts how the residential school system represented an institutional effort to destroy First Nations cultures (pg. 121-149).

Like his other graphic novel journalism projects, Sacco acknowledges the observer’s paradox and how his entry into these communities and interviews only capture his own perspective or others’ perspectives filtered through him and the limitations that process involves. He notes that his interviews are another form of extraction similar to the oil industry on Dene land (p. 107). He also acknowledges that processing First Nations’ experiences through a western medium can repeat – albeit on a smaller scale – the cultural genocide of the residential schools and their efforts to force Euro-Canadian culture upon the Dene. Despite these concerns and his somewhat disarming portrayal of himself in a self-deprecating manner reminiscent of R. Crumb or Harvey Pekar, he strives to illuminate stories that might not receive as much attention in the standard press. Sacco concludes with a look at different efforts for decolonization work that members of the Dene are undertaking. The result is the type of work that Sacco’s readers expect and that sheds light on the lingering effects of colonization.

[thistornimage · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Paying The Land is a book about the Dene, a Native American group that resided in the Mackenzie River Valley since anyone could remember. Joe goes about collecting information from various Dene to give an account of what their lives are like, and how things have changed over time. It does not seem to push any certain agenda, and in fact shows differing viewpoints from several different Dene on resource extraction. While this book is about very deep topics from what it was like in the bush to modern leadership within the different “tribes” of Dene, the writing didn’t feel overly complicated to understand. Something I realized that this book brought up multiple times was the usage of drugs and alcohol to “sort out problems” that people had, and how it usually lead to abuse or, in some cases, death. Overall, the book seems to do a good job of painting a picture of the Dene people, what their ancestors were like, and what the newest generation is like, though it spent more time, I feel, on the middle generation. I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to others.

[questbird · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Joe Sacco meticulously examines the lives of Native Canadians in the Northwest Territories: their deep connection to their native land, and the impact of extraction and development. He interviews many locals and documents the collective trauma caused by treaty negotiations with wily governments, pollution and especially removal of children from their families to put them in Catholic-run schools. This last, executed by the Canadian government, caused intergenerational trauma, loss of language, alcoholism, depression and abuse. It is similar to the state-based Stolen Generations of aboriginal Australians. I found it moving and informative, not least because the English playbook of subjugating and dividing local native people has also been applied in Africa, America, India, New Zealand and Australia.

[villemezbrown · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Joe Sacco produces another of his terrific documentary graphic novels, this one focused on the Dene people of the Northwest Territories in Canada. While he starts out with an environmental slant regarding the controversies around fracking in the remote northern regions of Canada, Sacco soon brings his gaze onto the cultural genocide practiced by the Canadian government for decades by means of treaties, residential schools, and capitalism.

There are lots of heartbreaking things in here, but there is hope too to be found in the resilience and determination of some of the people he interviewed for this project. A great and human introduction to a vast and complex situation.