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A review by alanyoung
Paying the Land by Joe Sacco
5.0
I have read very few graphic novels so was fascinated to see how this literary genre would approach such a complicated subject. I found it a refreshing way of addressing issues that are complicated as the written word was augmented by visual representations of the situations and speakers.
The level of research and engagement was truly impressive as the author listened to the people whose story he subsequently told.
From other sources I have had early and admittedly superficial introduction to nomadic groups in Asia and Africa - nomadic pastoralists. Here the Dene were nomadic hunters. There is something honourable about any people so intimately enmeshed with the environment in which they live. It was evidently a hard life but an evidently sustainable one on all counts.
The bruising encounter between Canadian white cultural values and Dene values was horrific. There was some demonising of white Canadian and particularly Catholic culture. The abuses and the horrors of the residential schools were graphically described with only a few white, Christian, Catholic characters getting any affirmation. The arrogance of purveyors of Western cultural values is not a new theme for there are so many examples in the history of the last 200 years.
The widely different attitudes to the land was also quite shocking with the Dene attitude, in my view, rightly affirmed and applauded. I am ashamed of our arrogance, abuse and exploitation of nature from my own Christian world view but have to confess that such insights are relatively recent.
This is a book well worth reading for the subjects it addresses and the refreshing style by which it does it.
The level of research and engagement was truly impressive as the author listened to the people whose story he subsequently told.
From other sources I have had early and admittedly superficial introduction to nomadic groups in Asia and Africa - nomadic pastoralists. Here the Dene were nomadic hunters. There is something honourable about any people so intimately enmeshed with the environment in which they live. It was evidently a hard life but an evidently sustainable one on all counts.
The bruising encounter between Canadian white cultural values and Dene values was horrific. There was some demonising of white Canadian and particularly Catholic culture. The abuses and the horrors of the residential schools were graphically described with only a few white, Christian, Catholic characters getting any affirmation. The arrogance of purveyors of Western cultural values is not a new theme for there are so many examples in the history of the last 200 years.
The widely different attitudes to the land was also quite shocking with the Dene attitude, in my view, rightly affirmed and applauded. I am ashamed of our arrogance, abuse and exploitation of nature from my own Christian world view but have to confess that such insights are relatively recent.
This is a book well worth reading for the subjects it addresses and the refreshing style by which it does it.