Bedrock stories: a critical geography of radium and uranium mining in the Sahtu region, Northwest Territories

摘要

This thesis is aimed at answering two questions: how did uranium mining in the Sahtuudregion of the Northwest Territories contribute to the normalization of northernudindustrialization in the Canadian imagination? And, how is this historical normalizationuditerated in current policy decisions and negotiations around health and environmentaludassessments near radioactively contaminated sites in the Sahtu? Through a criticaludgeography of visual representations and the discursive production of an industrial north,udand employing visual methodologies, I unpack the rise of an industrial discourseudsurrounding Northern Canada in the twentieth century. Through an anti-colonial and decolonizingudtheoretical framework I follow this discourse into current Sahtúot'ine (SahtuudDene)-state negotiations around impact assessments of Port Radium and map theudtransactions of this controversy between the Délı̨nę First Nation and the Canadianudgovernment. In the first half of this thesis I examine how representations of uranium andudthe Sahtu have worked not only to paint the region as a terra nullius, but, moreudimportantly, how these representations have worked to confine the Sahtu region within auddiscourse of industrial development. I conduct a close study of A.Y. Jackson's paintingsudof Port Radium and argue that the institutionalized dissemination of Port Radiumudminescapes has facilitated the emergence of a national discourse in Canada that privilegesudthe interests of the mining industry, while marginalizing Sahtu Dene and 'non-scientific'udknowledge systems and ways of being. In Chapter 3, I turn to a consideration of howudthese discourses are implicated in the ongoing controversy around the historical,udenvironmental, and health legacies surrounding uranium mining in the Sahtu. I map theudcontours of the controversy around ionizing radiation and explore how scientific knowledge claims have collided with Sahtúot’ine experience and claims to knowledgeudthroughout negotiations over mine site remediation at Port Radium and redress for theudhealth impacts of the mine. The focal point of this controversy is the competingudknowledge claims about the health effects of radiation exposure at Port Radium: whileudmany Sahtúot'ine, former residents and workers at the mine attest to a drastic increase inudcancer and death rates after living and working at Port Radium, government and thirdudparty reports continually discount these claims with epidemiological and statisticaludevidence. Examining both the historical origins and the contemporary iterations ofudindustrial colonialism in the Sahtu, this thesis uses images, maps, and policy documentsudto understand the processes that have oppressed Sahtúot'ine knowledge in industrialuddevelopment and in Sahtúot'ine-state negotiations around environmental and healthudassessment over the past century.