Lianne C. Leddy

Lianne, C. Leddy, Serpent River Resurgence: Confronting Uranium Mining at Elliot Lake. University of Toronto Press, 2022.

Examining environmental injustice from an Indigenous perspective, Serpent River Resurgence challenges our thinking on the “ecological Indian,” postwar affluence, regional development, and Cold War politics. Leddy draws on Indigenous knowledge and oral history to interpret archival evidence and examine how the Serpent River First Nation resisted environmental degradation caused by uranium mining. She documents Indigenous labour patterns to demonstrate how combining paid work in resource extraction while maintaining traditional economies became impossible because pollution made it dangerous to drink water and eat wild food. Leddy analyzes the Cold War using a settler colonial framework, connecting this local uranium mining to global politics. Regional economic development projects damaged the environment, but this book is also about rebuilding community and the reclamation of homeland. Serpent River Resurgence is a significant historiographical contribution that speaks to urgent political issues we grapple with today.

SHORT LIST  – In alphabetical order

Catherine Carstairs, The Smile Gap: A History of Oral health and Social Inequality. Mc-Gill Queen’s University Press, 2022.
François-Olivier Dorais, L’école historique de Québec: une histoire intellectuelle. Boréal, 2022.
Steven High, Deindustrializing Montreal: Entangled Histories of Race, Residence, and Class. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022.
Catharine Anne Wilson, Being Neighbours: Cooperative Work and Rural Culture, 1830 – 1960. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022.