Great new book from a veteran of "comics journalism". This time he travels to Canada's Northwest Territories, to examine how resource extraction intersect with indigenous people there. His two trips resulted in an insightful, nuanced story - of colonization, abuse and robbery, but also of proud heritage, connection to the land and some kind of vision for future. He interviews a lot of interesting subjects. His drawings are made with humor and compassion. Highly recommended for everyone interested in non-fiction, not necessarily in comics per se.

Thanks to the publisher Henry Holt & Company and NetGalley for the advance copy of this book.

First, this is not a graphic novel designed to entertain. It is a record of a people and a land and their relationship. It is a documentary in graphic novel form. At one point, an interviewee in the text is angered by the project because he feels the topic is too serious for “a comic book.” Sacco uses the medium, but maintains the depth and sincerity of the issue at hand - a culture and land in danger of being overrun by modern greed and materialistic values.

The illustrations in this one are not as captivating as the narrative. The most effective are the ones at the beginning where the Dene people are living together on the land. There is a symbolic truth to that fact in and of itself.

Paying the Land is the latest work from acclaimed comics journalist Joe Sacco, who is best known for his works like Palestine and Footnotes in Gaza. In Paying the Land, Sacco turns his eye towards the Dene, who are the people indigenous to the Mackenzie River Valley in the Canadian Northwest. Sacco recounts the the impact that the booming mining and oil industries have had on the lives of the Dene Nation. Sacco then works his way back through other struggles the Dene have faced as they continually weigh the benefits of industrialization with the costs to their way of life.

Sacco structures his graphic novel much the same way you’d expect to see in other visual medium like a documentary film. Sacco illustrates the people he’s interviewing while they recount their story as if they were talking on camera. In between these panels, Sacco has interwoven illustrations of his journey through the area and the history and topics that his subjects discuss in their interviews. The style has a way of establishing a human connection that would be lacking otherwise. It is so much more effective than simply re-telling the history as you’d find in a history book. It's important to note that Sacco is an outsider here, and there's always a risk of getting the story wrong when you are writing about a group of people that you are not a part of. But it seems like Sacco did his homework and his purpose was not one of exploitation, but rather to use his platform and skills to share an important cultural legacy and struggle that might otherwise go unheard.

The history of the Dene is one that will surely be familiar to anyone who has learned about the history of indigenous people across the globe. One distinction between the subjugation of the Dene and Native Americans in the United States is that the method of subjugation in the case of the Dene was mostly bureaucracy instead of violence. Rather than forcefully remove the people from the land, the Canadian government signed treaties stripping the Dene of any ownership claims in return for a pittance. There may have been less bloodshed, but Sacco makes clear that the end result has largely been the same. Paying the Land explores the impact these treaties have had on the Dene and the division that has occurred as members struggle with taking government resources and trying to reclaim their land and identity.

Beyond treaties and bureaucracy, the Canadian government also used several methods in an attempt to “reform” the Dene so that they followed a more Euro-centric culture. Particularly brutal was the practice of kidnapping children from their parents so they could attend state-sponsored schools hundreds of miles from home. The curriculum offered in these residential schools was built on beating the cultural roots out of the children. The government did this in an effort to eradicate the Dene culture and assimilate the indigenous tribes into those that more closely aligned with the government’s idea of Canada. It’s truly harrowing to witness the adults recount the horror stories of abuse at the hands of the state and the church in these “schools”.

The later portion of the graphic novel largely focuses on how the impacts industrialization locally and globally have changed the way of life for the Dene. As the Dene accept access to more amenities and luxuries of modern Western culture (snow-mobiles, modern electronics, mass-produced food and alcohol, cell phones, etc…) it has caused some divisions in the community. Some accept these changes as the price to pay for conforming to Western norms, but other members of the tribe feel like the Dene culture and history is being lost. On top of serious local issues like rampant alcoholism, global problems like climate change are rearing their ugly heads, as well. Many among the Dene still depend on the land and water for at least some portion of their diet and income, and global warming is creating environmental changes that could threaten those sources.

What Sacco has crafted in Paying the Land is a centuries-long history of a people that’s told in their own voice. The amount of research, investigation, and interviews done by Sacco surely parallels that of the very best of the investigative journalism field. Sacco’s knack for weaving a compelling narrative from the bits and pieces of Dene history and first-hand accounts from the members of the community work to create an engrossing read. It’s surely one of the better comic book histories I’ve read and is certainly worth your time. Joe Sacco is not an artist that has anything left to prove, yet his dedication to the craft of comics journalism remains as strong as ever.

Joe Sacco creates a beautiful, yet sad story of how a culture collapses due to western pressure by the white man. A story told in interviews and glimpses into the past on how the Dene culture was slowly and cruelly torn apart. The graphic novel is dense in text and are balanced with black and white illustrations.
This book is geared toward adults who prefer graphic novels that feature historic events about the indigenous tribe of the Dene. The interviews tell the perspectives from the Dene peoples and what happened to their culture, land and society.

While it starts out slow and lacks structure, this book eventually comes together to tie in the themes of the different interviews. It provided an important snapshot into a world that was a complete mystery to me. You will empathize with the Dene as their plight does not have a simple fix. Also worth note is the panel work; The framing per page is some of the best I've seen.

One of the masters of comic journalism, Joe Sacco turns his lens on Canada’s Northwest Territories and the indigenous people there. Paying the Land, the result of his research, interviews, and trips into the remote often troubled communities of the Dene people shows the same empathy, sincere effort at understanding and nuance that he’s displayed in previous works like Palestine.

The story attempts to grapple with the Dene’s struggles, from balancing their ancient connection with the land with the intrusions of the modern world, to the scarring legacy of Canada’s efforts to eradicate Dene culture through the residential education program, to the present debate over resource extraction.

As someone working on issues related to turning natural resources into sustainable development, the large sections of the book that dig into that debate are the real highlights. Even as an outsider, Sacco does an incredible job illustrating (literally and metaphorically) the push-pull of massive economic opportunity and the severe problems (environmental damage, alcoholism, an entirely new socio-economical way of life, etc.) that come with it. He also does an excellent job without directly identifying it of explaining the importance of free, prior and informed consent and how the lack thereof is one of the original sins perpetrated on indigenous populations like the Dene.

Sacco continues an incredible run of books.

Joe Sacco definitely brings the details with his journalism and comic writing style. This graphic novel was very educational because honestly, I knew very little about the northern territories before reading this. I think everyone needs to read this to learn and keep learning more about what the Indigenous People have gone through to simply survive. It's incredible.

“From the ‘heir to R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman’ a masterful work of comics journalism about indigenous North America, resource extraction, and our debt to the natural world”

Author and illustrator Joe Sacco is known for his insightful graphic novels Footnotes in Gaza, Palestine and The Fixer: A Story from Sarajevo. He is a well-regarded comix-journalist who immerses himself in different locations around the world to interview and understand his subject. He once again does this with this recent graphic novel, as he journeys to the subarctic Northwest Territories of Canada to stay among the First Nations Dené tribes.

Sacco begins the book by having some elders share how they used to “live in the bush” at least part of the year, which means their families were living off the land and were often nomadic. Men and women shared duties, with no gender division because if you were alone in the wild, you needed all the life skills, not just half, to survive. This lifestyle began to change with permanent settlements which resulted in specific gender roles, technology such as snowmobiles replaced the dog sleds, jobs in the industries that were advancing into the area and the enforced residential schools run by the government. Not only was a way of life disappearing, but their surrounding habitat was changing, as oil, gas and diamond mines were wrecking the environment.

There was so much to cover and Sacco ably shows the research and time he poured into this project. He interviews several chiefs (who have different ways of looking at the economy vs environment issue), activists, trappers, oil workers, priests and elders. Different chapters tackled some of the big topics – a changing way of life, land claims, and residential schools.

The chapters on the residential schools really stood out, as they devastated the families and tribes in both Canada and the US. Children were ripped from their cultures and identities and told that they must conform to European-type standards. And while those schools have been thankfully closed for a while now, their insidious legacy lives on. The transfer of dysfunction has now moved from their abusers who were strangers (at the schools) vs bringing home that dysfunction to their families so now abuse exists within families. Parental disengagement is rampant, as is extreme alcoholism. These unhealthy cycles are now being passed down to other generations, years removed from the residential schools.

At 272 pages, this a dense piece of non-fiction that will take multiple sittings to finish. In fact, even after finishing it, you will want to go back and look at certain chapters to gain even more information. I would suggest that this text-heavy graphic novel could be used in the classroom as a supplemental resource to trying to fully understand some First Nations issues. As with any complex issue, there are no easy answers and Sacco questions after many interviews “Is there really such a thing as the best of both worlds?”. He admits that because he not Native American there are some issues that simply can not be understood. While he was given much access to the communities, there are certain people, events or situations he could not be privy to.

The black and white art shows a comix vibe, which is meant for mature audiences. Not only are the pages filled with a lot of text to convey information, but the pictures are also detailed and precise. Whenever he includes himself in a scene, he draws himself in an exaggerated caricature style, yet everyone else is drawn accurately and with respect. The beautiful landscapes are lovingly drawn in, so then the juxtaposition of seeing how some areas have been destroyed is heartbreaking.

This was a deep and reflectful look at life for the Dené, and Sacco tried to wrap it up with a nugget of hope as young activists there are trying to work on a myriad of issues. I would suggest you pair this well-researched book with other books written by #ownvoices authors to get a nuanced view of the joys and struggles of people who live in that region. Thank you to NetGalley for an advance online copy of this thought-provoking story.

A text heavy graphic novel about Aboriginal Canadians living off the land and fracking. This could be used as an educational research for schools. It's very serious and sobering to read.

I really enjoyed this book. While it is not written by an indigenous author, the work that Sacco put into his interviews and research really shine through with authenticity. Sacco is consistently reaching out for fresh takes from under-represented people, and this book shows the care and consideration he put into working with First Nations people in Canada.

It feels as considerate of the lives we see in the comic as the narratives of bygone native writers like Ohiyesa (Charles Eastman). There is no talking down or denigrating. There is no "noble savage." There is just a personal, honest depiction of events from people's lives with a little disjointedness that really captures the voice of elder storytelling.

I really enjoyed this graphic novel because of its art style and entrenching plot. I would highly recommend this to fans of graphic novels.

Before reading this book, I can honestly say I had zero knowledge about the Northwest Territories. It took a little bit of time to get into this book, as the pages are completely full of illustration and information, but once you realize this is one to savor instead of fly through, it's a rewarding read. Some parts were hard to read/emotional because of the many struggles that the indigenous population faces. I think I personally would have preferred to consume this content via a traditional nonfiction book/audiobook, but if this gets it into more hands, I'm happy.

Paying the Land shows Joe Sacco's talent for the graphic novel medium yet again. This is a complex work illustrates how thought and contemporary issues can be shared in words and images. Highly recommended, thought-provoking, and powerful. Sacco truly does amazing work.

For those unfamiliar with him and his past works, Joe Sacco troops around the Northwest Territories exploring the indigenous Dene people’s past traumas and the myriad complexities they face. And as he captures it all in his distinct but realistic art style that will make a reader not only feel like they are right there in the room or out in the bush with whomever he is speaking with, he does so with both self-deprecation and a full and open awareness that there is only so much that he will be able to understand as an outsider as he nevertheless continues to try to grasp as much as he about all the difficulties and opportunities that the Dene and similar peoples face.

For those already familiar with him - it is the master of comics journalism once again doing what he does best.

Regardless of whichever group you fall into, this deep journey through this indigenous nation's past, present, and future is not an experience to be missed.

Although not written by an indigenous person, this graphic novel about the Dene of the Northwestern Territories of Canada, is written from extensive interviews of the Dene.

Joe Sacco has gone to many areas, where he has lived with and interviewed the people there, to find out what is happening. He usually comes back with stories that have been ignored by others.

In this case, he learns how the Residential Schools, the Indian Schools where the Canadians worked hard to strip the Indian out of the Indians, as the first Prime Minister said.


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The main point of the stories he collects is that you have to pay the land to use it. You don't just strip it, you give back. You live with the land, and when the local people send their children to school, and live in towns, withe electricity and gas powered vehicles, they move further way from what their ancestors had.

How do you balance this? How do you balance having to live on the land vs wanting to be educated. And how and what is it important for children to learn?

It is a good look at a very complicated issue, with many voices chiming in.

And in the end, Sacco realizes that there are some things that he, as a non-native, as a settler, simply can not understand, or be allowed to see.

Good way to get into the stories of Residential School, but there are others, such as the books that are being put out by the Indigenous people's themselves, that tell the story as well.

So, while I recommend this book, I would also recommend getting ahold of the books that Portage and Main have put out, as well as Second Story Press.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.