The Toxic Legacies project examined the history and legacy of arsenic contamination at Giant Mine. The project was a partnership among researchers at Memorial and Lakehead Universities, the Goyatiko Language Society (a Yellowknives Dene First Nation non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of the Weledeh language), and Alternatives North (a Yellowknife environmental and social justice coalition that conducts public interest research).
The project was a response to the Canadian government’s Giant Mine Remediation Project to freeze arsenic underground in pepetuity, a project that underwent an extensive environmental assessment. As a “Partnership Development” project (funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)), it also aimed to communicate our research results in a way that engaged the community of Yellowknife and the broader concerned public.
- The Yellowknives Dene and Arsenic (a history and memory project)
- Communicating with Future Generations
- The Guardians of Eternity Film
- Community Land-use Mapping
- Understanding Mine Remediation
See a poster about the project presented to the International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences and the Canadian Association of Geographers. Conceptual work and grant writing for this project was supported through a writing fellowship for John Sandlos at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society.