Graphic Novel Explores Dene Struggle

On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to comics journalist Joe Sacco about his new book, “Paying the Land.” In the book Sacco travels to the frozen Canadian Northwest Territories to reveal the Dene people in conflict over the costs and benefits of the resource extraction industry and development. 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.

Image from “Paying the Land” by Joe Sacco.

Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He wrote a weekly column for the progressive website Truthdig for 14 years until he was fired along with all of the editorial staff in March 2020. [Hedges and the staff had gone on strike earlier in the month to protest the publisher’s attempt to fire the Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer, demand an end to a series of unfair labor practices and the right to form a union.] He is the host of the Emmy Award-nominated RT America show On Contact.

2 comments

Congratulations to Joe, it looks like beautiful work.
I would like to see a lot more stories and historical events depicted in this form.
It would make them more accessible to folks who struggle with dense texts or quickly lose interest in wordy tomes.

You neglect to mention the American treatment of the Dene in the States. Known as the Navajo.

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On Contact: Graphic Novel Explores Struggle of Dene People of Canada

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