Dammed

Dammed: The Politics of Loss and Survival in Anishinaabe Territory is a 2020 book by Brittany Luby, Associate Professor of History at the University of Guelph.

[1] The book charts the impacts of the damming of the Winnipeg River in the Lake of the Woods region on the local Anishinaabe population, focusing in particular on the Dalles 38C reserve located downstream from Kenora, Ontario.

Luby, drawing on both archival and oral sources, presents the history of the local Anishinaabe population at the Dalles 38C from the second half of the twentieth century, when the Winnipeg River was first dammed at Kenora to power a paper and pulp mill, through to the 1960s, when the construction of the Whitedog Falls hydroelectric generating station further upstream was completed.

[3] The book first charts the ways in which colonial authorities undermined Anishinaabe riparian rights, which appear to have been enshrined in Treaty 3, in order to proceed with industrial development.

Writing in the Canadian Historical Review, Jean L. Manqre noted that such an approach enables Luby to avoid focusing on victimization and to instead emphasize dynamic forms of Indigenous resistance in the face of environmental change.