Exploring human-environment relationships in Schefferville and Matimekush Lac – John
Universität Bern
Lay summary
Schefferville is a mining town located at the heart of the Labrador Trough, a large iron ore belt covering a vast area of the Québec peninsula. Created in the 1950s, the primary function of the town has historically been to sustain the iron ore extraction carried out in the surrounding area. In the immediate vicinity of Schefferville lies Matimekush-Lac John, one of Québec’s Innu communities. Since time immemorial, in fact, the area around Schefferville has been part of the Nitassinan, the ancestral territory of the Innu people, one of Eastern Canada’s indigenous Nations.
This project proposes to engage with the specific subarctic landscape where Schefferville and Matimekush-Lac John are located. Its focus is to explore the impact that extractive industries had and still have on the territory itself and on the life of the human and nonhuman communities inhabiting it. Methodologically, the project is based on prolonged on-site anthropological fieldwork and proposes a mix of ethnographic and artistic methods, such as interviews, field recordings, image making, and archival research. The proposed approach will also explore the implementation of shared methodologies, reflecting on both their affordances and limitations in a sensitive context marked by complex and multifaceted settler-indigenous relationships. From this site-specific and collaborative perspective, the aim is to produce a series of written and audiovisual material documenting the territory’s history, its ancestral and contemporary uses, as well as the effects of the extractive activities and climate change on the landscape’s human and nonhuman ecologies.
Details
| Regional focus | Arctic |
| Location | Schefferville, Québec |
| Funded amount | 10,800 CHF |
| Project dates | 15th September 2023 – 31st December 2025 |
| Category | Polar Access Fund |