Guardians of Eternity confronting Giant Mine's toxic legacy
Guardians of Eternity is a documentary film about the toxic legacy of an abandoned gold mine in northern Canada. The Giant Mine is closed now, but the mess that has been left behind will be with us forever. The Yellowknives Dene First Nation is on the front line because the mine is on their land.
Guardians of Eternity is a full-length documentary film about the toxic legacy of the Giant Mine in Yellowknives, Northwest Territories. The Giant Mine was part of the founding infrastructure of the city of Yellowknife and can still be seen on the outskirts of town. It is located near the Yellowknives Dene First Nation communities of N’Dilo and Dettah and was built in 1949 without consent on Dene hunting and harvesting grounds. For a number of years highly toxic arsenic trioxide, a byproduct of the roasting process used to separate gold from the ore, spread widely from the roaster contaminating the land around the mine. Today, the majority of the arsenic, some 237,000 tones, is buried underground in frozen chambers. The Canadian and NWT governments are working to remediate the site and the current plan includes keeping the contaminants frozen, perhaps into eternity. The recently passed environmental assessment includes a number of measure, including an independent oversight body and a perpetual care plan, and includes the requirement that research into a more permanent solution be conducted and that the project be reviewed every 100 years. This is one of Canada’s most contaminated sites and understandable there is much public awareness and concern. Guardians of Eternity introduces the people who are most affected by this legacy of a gold rush and looks at the challenge of communicating the danger to future generations posed by the existence of a substance that will remain highly toxic forever.
The Giant Mine produced 7 million ounces of gold over a period of 55 years. The companies that controlled the mine made $1.1 billion (all figures in 2002 dollars) in profit and the government collected $572 million in taxes and royalties, but also provided $59 million in subsidies to the mine.
After the mine went bankrupt, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada took responsibility for dealing with the cleaning up of the site. The Giant Mine site consists of 950 hectares containing 8 open pits, 4 tailing ponds, 100 buildings, 11,500,000 cubic feet of contaminated soils, and 237,000 tons of arsenic trioxide.
Remediation of the mine site focuses on isolating and containing the arsenic trioxide using a “Frozen Block Method.” In the short term, the estimated cost of the remediation work is $903 million. However, arsenic trioxide will remain toxic to life forever.
The Yellowknives Dene First Nation has lived on the surrounding land for centuries and now they must deal with the prospect of living with arsenic trioxide for eternity.
Director – France Benoit is a policy advisor turned filmmaker who decided to become a vegetable farmer in Yellowknife. After a feature documentary, she switched to short films and recently completed her first short fiction. She has lived in Yellowknife for 26 years. She has been directing films for more than a decade. Her film, “Un pied dans la main / Hand to Toe “ was selected for Hot Docs in 2011, the first filmmaker from the Northwest Territories to be selected. In 2008, with Les Productions Rivard of Winnipeg, Radio-Canada and RDI, France wrote and directed “One River, Two Shores, reflections on the Mackenzie Gas Project”. The documentary discusses the environmental spiritual and socio-economic consequences of the proposed natural gas pipeline which would largely follow the Mackenzie River in the Northwest Territories. The film was selected to the Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois in Montréal in 2009. Also in 2009, for the TVA show “Viens voir ici”, France completed a 30 minute episode on local food production in Yellowknife. France continues to live self-sufficiently in the boreal forest outside of Yellowknife, pumping her water from the lake, heating her home from wood and drawing her energy from the sun.
The Classroom
Guardians of Eternity can be used in schools and at community events to introduce people to a wide variety of themes dealing with the environment and future generations. You can use the film alone or you can accompany the film with the suggested readings below.
Use Guardians of Eternity with an audience
Here are a few questions to choose from to use with Guardians of Eternity to initiate discussion after a screening of the film..
Discussion Questions
- What part of the film stands out most?
- Do you think this is just a problem for the people in Yellowknife or should it concern others?
- What are some general scenarios we should think about when planning for the future in Yellowknife and at Giant Mine.
- What social or political changes might affect the care and maintenance of Giant Mine?
- What might change in 50, 100, or 500 years into the future?
- What do you think are some strategies we can use to communicate the hazards at Giant to future generations?
- If you were to build a monument to commemorate the Giant Mine site and warn the future, what would it look like?
- Who should be responsible for the long-term care and maintenance of the Giant Mine site?
- Do you know of any local places that have been adversely affected by industrial development?
- Who do you think should see this film and why?
Further Reading
Arn Keeling and John Sandlos, editors, Mining and Communities in Northern Canada: History, Politics and Memory, University of Calgary Press, 2015.
Mining and Communities in Northern Canada is a collection of articles examining the historical and contemporary social, economic, and environmental impacts of mining on Aboriginal communities in northern Canada. Combining oral history research with intensive archival study, this work juxtaposes the perspectives of government and industry with the perspectives of local communities. The oral history and ethnographic material provides an extremely significant record of local Aboriginal perspectives on histories of mining and development in their regions.
See Also
John Sandlos, Arn Keeling and Kevin O’Reilly, “Communicating Danger: A Community Primer on Communicating the Arsenic Hazards at Yellowknife’s Giant Mine to Future Generations.” Open access community based report (2014).
John Sandlos and Arn Keeling, “Zombie Mines and the (Over)Burden of History,” The Solutions Journal Vol. 4, Issue 3 (2013) http://thesolutionsjournal.com/node/23361.
John Sandlos and Arn Keeling, “Living with Zombie Mines,” Seeing the Woods: A Blog by the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (2013). http://seeingthewoods.org/2013/03/06/living-with-zombie-mines/
The People
Mary-Rose Sundberg is the great-granddaughter of Chief Jean Baptise Madzii Drygeese, Chief Drygeese, who signed the treaty of 1921 (Treaty 8). Her parents worked at Giant Mine. She has dedicated her life to the transmission of her language and traditions to other generations. Mary-Rose is the director of the Goyatiko Language Society in Dettah. A translator and community leader, Mary-Rose teaches language and history.
Fred Sangris is the former Chief of the Yellowknives Dene First Nations (N’dilo) and land claim negotiator. He is a community negotiator with the Treaty 8 Yellowknives Dene, a cultural historian, trapper and hunter who cares deeply about the land.
Kevin O’Reilly is the Giant Mine Co-ordinator for Alternatives North. He has resided in Yellowknife since 1985 working for Aboriginal, federal and territorial government agencies, and on Giant Mine issues for over 20 years. Kevin served on Yellowknife City Council 1997-2006.
John Sandlos is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Memorial University of Newfoundland, where he conducts research on mining and indigenous communities in northern Canada. With Arn Keeling, he is the co-editor of the book Mining and Communities in Northern Canada (University of Calgary Press).
Arn Keeling is an associate professor of geography at Memorial University. His research focuses on mineral development and indigenous communities in the Canadian Arctic. With John Sandlos, he co-directed the Abandoned Mines in Northern Canada and Toxic Legacies projects.
The Place
Guardians of Eternity was filmed on the traditional land of the Yellowknife Dene First Nation and in the communities of Dettah and N’Dilo. The film was made in cooperation with the Yellowknife Dene First Nation. Partners on the project are the Goyatiko Language Society and Alternatives North.
The Partners
Goyatiko is a Yellowknives Dene First Nation non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of the Weledeh language. It is a language research, training and educational institute serving Yellowknives Dene Communities. It is located in the Dene community of Dettah.
Alternatives North is a social justice coalition operating in the Northwest Territories. Within our ranks are representatives of churches, labour unions, environmental organizations, women and family advocates, anti-poverty groups and committed citizens. Sometimes referred to as the NWT’s “unofficial opposition”, Alternatives North takes the grassroots approach to democratic change. Our alliance of interests provides a forum and a voice for issues analysis, popular action and social change.
Funding for this film is from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. If you want to go beyond the film, you will find links to other information on this website. Please take a few minutes to explore the menu above to find out how you can make the most out of this website.
Production was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) with additional support from Memorial University of Newfoundland, Lakehead University and Resources and Sustainable Development in the Arctic (ReSDA).
ReSDA is a research network that brings together researchers from a broad range of disciplines and organizations representing communities, government, the private sector, and non-profit organizations. Through partnerships and collaborations ReSDA conducts and mobilizes research aimed at the sustainable development of Arctic natural resources in a manner that will improve the health and well-being of northern communities while preserving the region’s unique environment.
For more information about the Toxic Legacies Project
John Sandlos – jsandlos@mun.ca
Arn Keeling – akeeling@mun.ca
For more information about the film
Shebafilms@gmail.com
To set up an interview with the filmmakers or to obtain a screening copy contact
Ron Harpelle – harpelle@lakeheadu.ca
Toxic Legacies
The Toxic Legacies Project examines the history and legacy of arsenic contamination at Giant Mine. The project is a partnership among researchers at Memorial University (John Sandlos and Arn Keeling) and Lakehead University, (Ron Harpelle) the Goyatiko Language Society (a Yellowknives Dene First Nation) non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of the Weledeh language), and Alternative North (a Yellowknife environmental and social justice coalition that conducts public interest research).
The project is a response to the Canadian government’s Giant Mine Remediation Project to freeze arsenic underground in pepetuity, a project that has recently undergone and extensvie environmental assessment. As a “Partnership Development” project (funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)), we also aim to communicate our research results in a way that will engage the community of Yellowknife and the broader concerned public.
Follow us in the news
Oct. 1, 2015: Danger! Danger!: How will people 300 years from now understand the hazards of Giant Mine’s toxic legacy – enough underground arsenic trioxide dust to fill the Bellanca Building and potentially contaminate the entire watershed (http://edgeyk.com/article/danger-danger/)
Oct. 1, 2015: Designing for the future at Giant Mine: A youthful perspective (http://edgeyk.com/article/designing-for-the-future-at-giant-mine/)