Before the Roads, Before the Mines

Before the Roads, Before the Mines is a narrative-based ethnohistory of a Denesuin community, also known as the Chipewyan, Kesyehotine, or Poplar House People. The discovery of high-grade uranium deposits in northern Saskatchewan, Canada, in the mid- to late 1970s ushered in an era of mining and roadbuilding that would largely replace the traditional livelihoods of these subarctic hunter-fishers with wage labor in mines, construction, and related industries. The advent of new communications technologies and consumer goods, and a road to the outside world, created ruptures in the social fabric of the community. Robert Jarvenpa highlights the historical experiences of middle-aged and older individuals who vividly recall a time before the roads and mineswhen young and old alike spoke the Denesuin language and when entire families lived in a seasonally nomadic fashion in the bush. They continually invoke the past in the problematic present, a ritualized form of communication integral to resisting or adapting to the erosive changes of a rapidly industrializing resource-extraction frontier. Jarvenpa showcases the spoken words of the Denesuins as a means of documenting and interpreting their historical past in the face of contemporary peril as the subarctic permafrost recedes and multinational corporations eye Indigenous lands for their minerals.