Joe Sacco traveled to Canada's Northwest Territories intending to report on resource extraction. He thought he roughly knew the story: companies wanted oil and gas development, Indigenous people wanted to protect the land, and a reporter would document the conflict.

On arrival, that division failed. Some people opposed development; others needed its jobs. Some feared losing inherited ways of living, while others sought opportunities through education and new occupations. Different views existed not only between communities but within them.

Published in 2020, Paying the Land follows the conversations as they enlarge his inquiry. This work of comics journalism principally records Dene lives, history, and debates over land and development. Paying in the title does not simply mean buying. It concerns giving something back when receiving from the land; translating it too quickly into a property transaction would obscure the relationship.

Known for reporting on Palestine and Bosnia, Sacco encounters no identical battlefield in the north. Yet understanding the meaning of a wage now requires learning how families left land-based lives, children were taken away, and people decades later were trying to learn their own languages again.

First, let someone describe growing up

The book does not introduce Indigenous people through statistics about poverty, addiction, or social problems. It begins with Paul Andrew recalling childhood: family and community fishing, hunting, making camps, with children observing and helping adults.

For unfamiliar readers, this order matters. Beginning with a population needing assistance makes everything afterward resemble a list of deficiencies. Learning about a life that already existed reveals that later changes did not merely add schools, roads, and jobs. They also took things away.

This does not mean the past was easy. Skills were necessary for life to continue. The land offered food and demanded knowledge. Children learned not only techniques but when help was needed and whom to approach with a problem. Andrew's childhood was close to adult labor; the things he gradually learned were things his family needed.

Sacco explains in a later interview that he worried about depicting this earlier land-based life inaccurately. He consulted visual archives and showed the opening to Andrew and others. The drawings are specific, but the childhood was not something he witnessed. He reconstructs it from testimony and materials. Specificity does not eliminate selection, and moving images do not substitute for checking.

The title's return to the land belongs within this life rather than on an interchangeable environmental slogan. For those describing the practice, receiving food, shelter, and the conditions of living does not end the relationship. Gratitude and giving register what sustains them. An actual connection precedes an idea outsiders may choose to admire.

After the plane takes the children away

Andrew later describes being taken to residential school as a child. Sacco places children approaching a floatplane, a mother covering her face in tears, and the adult Andrew recounting it on the same page.

Words tell us that an adult remembers. The image prevents the two times from separating completely. The grown man can explain events; the child does not yet understand the preparations or his mother's distress. Understanding arrives much later, but departure occurs that day.

Residential school requires historical context here. This was not simply a boarding arrangement families freely chose. Canada's National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation describes a government- and church-driven system aimed at separating Indigenous children from families and cultures and assimilating them. Their languages could bring punishment; many suffered physical or sexual abuse. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission identified cultural genocide as the policy's intent.

This background does not make every interviewee the same kind of victim. It helps explain why returning home did not restore the former life. Language had become unfamiliar, communication with elders harder, and skills normally learned through living together unavailable. Closing a school building could not close the damage with it.

A review in Canada's History notes difficult details: some speakers remember individual clergy's kindness, while others value having learned English. Sacco does not remove such experiences to keep an accusation uniform. Neither do they balance away institutional harm. Describing something one gained does not authorize others to declare the forced losses worthwhile.

The book must then return to present life. Young people have employment plans, households have expenses, and communities make decisions about land use. History shapes these decisions without preparing a ready-made answer for them.

Wanting to protect land and wanting a job

Extraction brings environmental damage and lasting burdens, but it also supplies wages and business opportunities in the places Sacco visits. Opposing pollution does not make another income easy to find. Distant readers who need only express a position can particularly overlook this.

In his Between the Covers interview, Sacco discusses people who want to preserve oil and gas jobs while insisting on care for the land. Protecting home and supporting a family do not always occupy separate people. One person may have to worry about both.

Supporting a project therefore does not immediately establish that someone has abandoned tradition. Such a judgment can sound supportive of Indigenous people while imposing a standard of authenticity: to deserve sympathy, remain pure and outside money. Paying bills and providing for children are then left to the people being judged.

Real employment needs also do not justify accepting any development terms. Who decides, who bears risk, how long income lasts, and who cleans up afterward remain necessary questions. Multiple views make judgment answerable to those affected, not impossible because everything is complicated.

The reporting enters land claims and internal disagreements. These sections are dense and less readily followed than individual memories. Goodreads reviewer Adam Dalva appreciates the work while sometimes losing its narrative thread. The observation points to a practical expectation: the comics format does not instantly clarify every historical relationship.

The book produces no single final answer on behalf of all Dene people. Self-determination includes disagreement, reconsideration, and changed minds. Listening only when people choose the direction we favor makes support conditional in a severe way.

A reporter who takes stories must answer questions too

Sacco knows he is not outside the situation. He listens, takes stories away, and makes a book. For communities accustomed to visiting researchers, this raises a question: others obtain publications and careers, but what do the people telling their lives receive?

He discusses that unease in his Canadaland interview. Good intentions cannot by themselves separate him from everyone who comes to take something. Listening carefully, seeking accuracy, and enabling people to see the resulting work are obligations, not immunity from criticism.

Paying the Land therefore offers an entry rather than a sufficient library of Dene life. Its outsider author selects interviews, orders people, and chooses experiences for depiction. Some Goodreads readers recommend reading Indigenous authors alongside it. The suggestion does not reject cross-cultural reporting. It prevents even an excellent report from occupying every available position.

Drawings keep faces before us and can make memories harder to bear. The book concerns abuse suffered by children, domestic violence, and addiction. Comics do not turn these subjects into easy reading.

Fortunately, life contains more. Community gatherings include competitions in chopping wood, boiling water, and preparing food. Practiced skills still produce pride and laughter. These passages neither establish that harm is healed nor supply a reassuring ending for outsiders. People continue living, with things they want to do, preserve, and learn again.

Finishing the book may not equip us to judge every local development proposal. But hearing land described as resources awaiting use may now bring people to mind. They did not become relevant only when a project began. Before the first plan was drawn, they were living there and considering how to live next.