Before the Roads Before the Mines

Before the Roads Before the Mines is a narrative-based ethnohistory of a Denesu?iné community also known as the Chipewyan Kesyehot’ine 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 largely replaced the traditional livelihoods of these subarctic hunter-fishers with wage labor in mining 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 mines existed—when young and old alike spoke the Denesu?iné 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 Denesu?iné informants 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.