Mining and communities in northern Canada: History, politics, and memory

Mining and Communities in Northern Canada traces the history and legacies of the region’s encounter with industrial mining in the twentieth century. With chapters spanning Canada’s territorial north (and two provincial norths), this book aims to place the contemporary mineral boom (and accompanying hyperbolic rhetoric) into a critical historical context, as well as documenting the tremendous environmental, economic, and socio-cultural changes wrought by this transformative industry. Certainly the northern mining industry imported many significant historical tensions and contradictions worthy of their own book-length analyses, not least the ongoing conflict between capital and a labour force composed largely of outsiders. However, the studies in this volume focus largely on the often-neglected historical experiences of northern Native communities and their encounters with mineral development. Addressing the paucity of detailed historical studies on mining in the region, this volume represents an important collective contribution to our understanding of northern history, industrial development, and environmental change in the north, even as the region stands on the brink of another transformative period.