The northern review 

About: The northern review is an academic journal. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Arctic & Indigenous. It has an ISSN identifier of 0387-2661. Over the lifetime, 300 publications have been published receiving 1362 citations.

Toxic Legacies, Slow Violence, and Environmental Injustice at Giant Mine, Northwest Territories

Abstract: For fifty years (1949–99) the now-abandoned Giant Mine in Yellowknife emitted arsenic air and water pollution into the surrounding environment. Arsenic pollution from Giant Mine had particularly acute health impacts on the nearby Yellowknives Dene First Nation (YKDFN), who were reliant on local lakes, rivers, and streams for their drinking water, in addition to frequent use of local berries, garden produce, and medicine plants. Currently, the Canadian government is undertaking a remediation project at Giant Mine to clean up contaminated soils and tailings on the surface and contain 237,000 tonnes of arsenic dust that are stored underground at the Giant Mine. Using documentary sources and statements of Yellowknives Dene members before various public hearings on the arsenic issue, this paper examines the history of arsenic pollution at Giant Mine as a form of “slow violence,” a concept that reconfigures the arsenic issue not simply as a technical problem, but as a historical agent of colonial dispossession that alienated an Indigenous group from their traditional territory. The long-term storage of arsenic at the former mine site means the effects of this slow violence are not merely historical, but extend to the potentially far distant future.

Subsistence and the Social Economy of Canada's Aboriginal North

Abstract: This paper explores the complex social, economic, and political interplay that takes place between subsistence and wage economies, sharing and reciprocity, and regulatory regimes that now mediate Aboriginal community access to wildlife resources. By focusing on subsistence, with its equally important social and economic attributes, this article argues that the harvesting, processing, and distribution of wild foods and resources continues to be a central component of Canada's northern social economy. This article concludes by arguing that any attempt to develop effective northern policy in the future must account for the complexity and heterogeneity of northern subsistence economies, and remain open to the plurality of forms they may take.

Siida and Traditional Sámi Reindeer Herding Knowledge

Abstract: The siida is a Sami local community that has existed from time immemorial. The reindeer herding siida has formed as an adaptation of ancient siida principles to large-scale nomadic reindeer herding. It is the prerequisite and basic organizational unit for carrying out large-scale herding. Still, the siida had not, until recently, been legally acknowledged by Norwegian national authorities. Instead, the authorities maintained their own construction of reindeer herding districts, and an outsider's representation of Sami reindeer herding. The siida, and its use of traditional herding knowledge, has on the other hand been living its own life alongside, and often in conflict with, official accounts and decisions. Some aspects of traditional Sami reindeer herding knowledge can be held to correspond with scientific knowledge; others differ from it or go beyond the subject area with which western scientific knowledge has been occupied. However, all these aspects concern the siida members' efforts to continuously form and realize an acting siida. In 2007 the Norwegian parliament passed the new Reindeer Herding Act acknowledging siida as the basic institution regarding land rights, organization, and daily herding management. The recently achieved legal acknowledgement of siida in Norway must result in recognition of its autonomous processes of knowledge as well as recognition of its land rights. This article discusses the question of what this acknowledgement of siida's autonomous processes of knowledge means.

The DEW Line and Canada’s Arctic Waste: Legacy and Futurity

Abstract: During the Cold War, the United States and Canada embarked on an ambitious military construction project in the Arctic to protect North America from a northern Soviet attack. Comprised of sixty-three stations stretching across Alaska, Canada’s Arctic, Greenland, and Iceland, the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line constitutes both the largest military exercise and waste remediation project in Canadian Arctic history. Despite the massive cleanup operation undertaken, the DEW Line’s waste legacy endures as a prominent and deeply rooted feature of Canada’s Arctic history. Drawing upon a rich historical, anthropological, military, political science, and environmental studies literature, this article explores waste as a key issue in the shifting narratives concerned with the modernization of the Canadian Arctic. While the DEW Line has been extensively analyzed in terms of its effects on the modernization of the Arctic, this article seeks to link Canadian sovereignty, security, resource exploitation, environmental stewardship, and Inuit self-determination directly to waste issues. As industrial activity and military exercises stand to significantly increase in the Arctic, I want to draw attention to the lessons of the DEW Line; that ”develop now; remediate later” incurs steep human health, environmental, financial, and political costs.