Pitchblende

Elise Marcella Godfrey

• Publisher: University of Regina Press
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9780889778429
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

“We began to dig ourselves
 
deeper than we dreamed
when we began to see
 
metal as other than medicine,
our bodies, more than mineral.”

From an emerging environmental voice comes an evocative, multilayered poetry collection about extraction, destruction, and the erasure of Indigenous people.
 
At Rabbit Lake in Northern Saskatchewan lies the second largest uranium mine in the western world. For decades, uranium ore and its poisonous by-product—pitchblende, a highly radioactive rock—were removed, transported, and scattered across the land, forever altering the lives of plants, animals, and people who live there.
 
Elise Marcella Godfrey’s Pitchblende is a powerful, political collection that challenges us to urgently rethink our responsibilities to the land, water, and air that sustains all species, and our responsibilities to one another. Inspired by and adapted from testimonies given at the public hearings about the Rabbit Lake mine, which prioritized the voices of industrial interests, Godfrey gathers voices from the found texts, and adds others, in defence of the natural world. Interconnected, Godfrey's poems are a choral and visual, literal representation of how industry, capitalism, and colonialism seek to erase affected peoples and their voices.

35

Hatchet Lake Band’s Testimony

(Erasure, Part One)

You’ve heard Elders speak of damage to the land, disruption to wild life, changes in the fishery. Your reaction may be, “So what? There’s a good store in town, people can buy all the food they need. There’s no money in trapping, anyway.”

To understand our concerns, you must understand our lifestyle. Our way of living on the land has evolved over thousands of years...

Table of contents

• Advance Praise for Pitchblende
• Contents
• Follow the Water—Délįnę, Northwest Territories
• The Rock Reveals Itself—Délįnę, Northwest Territories
• LaBine—Echo Bay, Great Bear Lake
• Pitchblende
• Enter the Transcripts
• Elder’s Testimony—Stony Rapids
• Inuit Tapirisat of Canada’s Testimony (Erasure)
• Lichenology
• Caribou Conservation Board’s Testimony (Erasure)
• The North Is Not a Barren Land
• Rabbit Lake Uranium Mine
• When Women Speak—Hidden Bay
• Ore Body
• Elder’s Testimony—Black Lake
• Uraneco’s Response—Black Lake
• Dust or Pollen
• Fond du Lac
• Elder’s Testimony—Fond du Lac
• Uraneco’s Response—Fond du Lac
• Parse the Numbers
• Hatchet Lake Band’s Testimony (Erasure, Part One)
• Elder’s Testimony—Hatchet Lake
• How to Precipitate Yellowcake
• Hatchet Lake Band’s Testimony (Erasure, Part Two)
• Cosmochemistry (Part One)
• Elder’s Testimony—Clearwater River
• Water
• Women’s Testimony—La Ronge
• Trapper’s Testimony—La Ronge
• Uraneco’s Response—La Ronge (Part One)
• Biologist’s Response—La Ronge (Part One)
• Uraneco’s Response—La Ronge (Part Two)
• Biologist’s Response—La Ronge (Part Two)
• Uraneco’s Response—La Ronge (Part Three)
• Biologist’s Response—La Ronge (Part Three)
• Always Establish a Baseline
• No Return
• Métis Local 126’s Testimony—Saskatoon (Erasure)
• How to Sift the Many Metals?
• Our Anger Is Radiant
• Women’s Testimony—Saskatoon (Part One)
• Uraneco’s Response—Saskatoon
• Descent
• Limnology
• Collapse
• Geophysicist’s Testimony—Saskatoon (Erasure)
• Rabbit Lake Fault
• Call in the Dowsers, Now
• Anthropocene
• Cosmochemistry (Part Two)
• Pyrocene
• Biologist’s Testimony re: White Oak Lake, Tennessee—Regina (Erasure)
• We Dream Our Hands
• Saskatoon Indigenous Coalition’s Testimony—Saskatoon
• Fallout
• Will We Apologize?
• Take It to the Light
• Ethicist’s Testimony—Saskatoon
• Now, One Generation Later
• Women’s Testimony—Saskatoon (Part Two)
• To Survive
• Women’s Testimony—Saskatoon (Part Three)
• Our Fatigue Is the Future
• Notes
• Acknowledgements