From cutlines to traplines: Post-industrial land use at the Pine Point mine

Industrial mineral extraction in Northern Canada has had lasting, transformative effects on landscapes and land-based economies. This paper examines post-industrial hunting and trapping at the former Pine Point mine, Northwest Territories, to clarify the effects of environmental and socioeconomic change on land use in the nearby, predominantly Aboriginal, community of Fort Resolution. Pine Point was an extensive open pit mine where failed attempts at remediation have resulted in a landscape that remains drastically altered 25 years after closure. Although the mine employed few individuals from Fort Resolution, the introduction of industrial mineral extraction in the region coincided with a transition from a primarily land-based economy to a mixed economy heavily reliant on wage labor. Map-based interviews with local land users documented ongoing, contemporary interactions between land users and the abandoned Pine Point mine which demonstrate that some of the physical and socioeconomic transformations associated with industrial development continue to shape land use in the Pine Point region. From maintaining a reliance on the mixed economy to appropriating the post-mining landscape in ways that benefit hunting and trapping, land users from Fort Resolution continue to be influenced by the Pine Point mine long after its abandonment.