Joe Sacco: Paying the Land

Jonathan Cape, 2020, hardcover, 272 pages, 27.3 x 19.4 cm

From one of the greatest graphic reporters alive, Paying the Land charts the tragic and manifold story of the exploitation of the indigenous North America.  Stunning and unparalleled in visual detail, Sacco’s narrative of loss, culture and the debt we owe to nature is powerful, timely and arresting.

In Paying the Land, Joe Sacco travels the frozen North to reveal a people in conflict over the costs and benefits of development. Resource extraction is only part of Canada's colonial legacy: Sacco recounts the shattering impact of a residential school system that aimed to remove the Indian from the child; the destructive process that drove the Dene from the bush into settlements and turned them into wage labourers; the government land claims stacked against the Dene Nation; and their uphill efforts to revive a wounded culture.

Against a vast and gorgeous landscape that dwarfs all human scale, Paying the Land lends an ear to trappers and chiefs, activists and priests, telling a sweeping story about money and dependency, loss and culture, with stunning visual detail by one of the greatest comics reporters alive.