Joe Sacco’s newest book is nothing short of brilliant. A measured, even look at the struggles of the Dene Nation (the indigenous tribes that make up the Mackenzie River Valley in northwestern Canada), Sacco’s remarkable skills as a journalist are matched by his deftness at the drawing board. This is a work of profound nuance in the hands of a capable master of the craft.
Written and Illustrated by Joe SaccoCover by Joe Sacco
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 worldThe 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.
Throughout my two read-throughs of “Paying the Land” I marveled at how well Sacco juggled the duties he’s put forth in front of him: how to tell the story of an entire nation, and how to present it. Part documentary, part travel-diary, and part history lesson, “Paying” excels when it presents its story, that of the Dene Nation, from the mouths of its own people. Though Sacco does sometimes insert himself into the narrative as a curious but clearly out-of-his-element outsider, the story’s impact is much more forceful when coming from the Dene themselves. This framing mimics that of a documentary, and Sacco’s charming and realistic depictions of his interviewees brings their narratives to life. Though I’ve been a fan of Sacco for some time, it’s nice to see that his skills have only seemed to hone over the course of his career. As the realistic portraits of Dene activists and leaders overlap with widescreen panels depicting the awe-inspiring yet brutal landscape of the frozen North, Sacco guides readers into the story with a master’s touch.
Quite possibly my favorite book by Joe Sacco is his collaboration with Chris Hedges, the moving and disquieting look at American poverty- “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt.” The book is, in equal doses, a haymaker swung and the ills of capitalism, and a sobering look at the “sacrifice zones” that American excess has created in its wake- cities and communities utterly devastated by corporate greed. Hedges’ polemic is unmistakingly angry, and rightfully so, but the anger is tempered by Sacco’s masterful eye for saying much without having to say much at all. The communities that are the focus of the various essays are drawn in vivid detail- the effects brought upon them by the money drying up clearly evidenced by the images and voices of those affected most by them. Sacco, time and again with uncanny precision, cuts to the heart of the matter with his art- a simple panel of a dormant scrapyard, or an entire side of a mountain ripped away and abandoned after its resources are depleted, speak volumes about exploitation and capital while remaining wordless.
All this to say that Sacco, in “Paying the Land,” has widened his lens to another “sacrifice zone,” or “zones,” perhaps, when talking about the various tribes and peoples of the First Nation, and the land they belong too. It would seem to me a monumental task, but one Sacco is up for, as the subjects he interviews, such as former member of the Legislative Assembly for the Northwest Territories, Jim Antoine, to artist Eugene Boulanger, a member of the Dene Nahjo (a group of younger generation Dene looking to reclaim lost traditions) present viewpoints that differ greatly about where the Dene are (culturally and economically speaking) and where they could be heading. Again, Sacco weaves in and out of narratives, switching between the viewpoints of different Dene with such a remarkable touch as to be exhilarating.
However, while Sacco is most certainly sublime in his craft, the material he is covering is, as you can imagine, at times, profoundly sad. The colonization of the Americas is a tale written in blood, and while the Dene Nation’s inclusion into the “Modern World” was not as blood-soaked as other unfortunate indigenous peoples, their story is no less heart-breaking. A Land of The People, the Northwest Territories that the Dene call home is rich in minerals and other resources (it was first the furs Europeans were after), and the colonizers divided and conquered up the Dene by indoctrinating their children through religious and cultural assimilation. What followed was a brutal, nearly 100 year history of breaking down the indigenous way of life. The “residential school system,” essentially a method by which young Dene were ripped from their families and sent sometimes hundreds of miles away to boarding schools, were a hotbed of abuse, both sexual and physical, and had a trickle-down effect of self-loathing, alcoholism, loss of identity, and generational disconnect still being felt today. The chapters dealing with these sometimes first-hand accounts of the abuses are gut-wrenching, and furthermore, alarming reminders that this happened in OUR lifetimes. The colonization of the American continents are not a history lesson, but a perpetual machine, enacting itself even today.
There is hope, though, in Sacco’s work. His time with the Dene brought the author closer to the people, and to the land, and us with it. While the future is uncertain for the Dene as much as anyone these days, guided by the connection they have to the land of their ancestors, there is a willful self-determination in the Dene people that is inspiring. As the struggle for nations to acquire resources continues, and eating up the land, and its peoples, in the process, the Dene remind us that we cannot own the land. In fact, it is the land that owns its people. Once again, Joe Sacco has given us a window into a world many of us have never known, or perhaps have forgotten. It is a world, and a people, we would do well to remember, and we should be thankful we have this book to do so.
