This semester, the Centre for Environmental History's Environmental Exchanges seminar series will include four fantastic papers from a diverse group of historians on the theme 'extraction'. All seminars will be held both in person, and online (Zoom links will be provided via Eventbrite or email closer to the date).

The last of our Environmental Exchanges seminars of our 'extraction' series in Semester 2 2023 will be the following paper from Associate Professor Lianne Leddy.

Confronting Uranium Extraction on Anishinaabe Territory: A Case Study from Canada

A Cold War uranium boom brought thousands of settlers into Anishinaabe territory beginning in the 1950s as Elliot Lake was established as a mining town. Drawing on her 2022 book, Serpent River Resurgence: Confronting Uranium Mining at Elliot Lake, Leddy will discuss how these extractive processes compromised the Serpent River watershed and a related acid plant resulted in air and water pollution. Serpent River First Nation members, however, contested these extractive intrusions on our territory in the latter half of the twentieth century.

Lianne C. Leddy is a member of Serpent River First Nation and grew up in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada. She is an associate professor of History at Wilfrid Laurier University where she teaches Indigenous history. Leddy is the author of Serpent River Resistance: Confronting Uranium Mining at Elliot Lake, which was published by University of Toronto Press in 2022. Her work has appeared in the Canadian Historical Review, Journal of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, and Oral History Forum.

When: 18 October 2023, 9:30am - 10:45am AEDT (17 October 2023, 6:30pm - 7:45pm EST)

Where: Room 6.71, RSSS Building, ANU & Online via Zoom

Zoom links for joining the event remotely will be circulated in the days ahead of the event. Ensure you register early to receive the link. Alternatively, please email jessica.urwin@anu.edu.au for links for joining us online.

To find out more about the Centre for Environmental History, or to sign up for our newsletter in order to hear about more exciting events and opportunities, click here.