In Our Backyard Hybrid Book Launch

Join editors Aimée Craft and Jill Blakley for the launch of In Our Backyard: Keeyask and the Legacy of Hydroelectric Development. This event features a conversation with Robert Spence, elected councillor of the Tataskweyak Cree Nation.

The launch will be hosted live in the Atrium of McNally Robinson Booksellers, Grant Park and also available as a simultaneous YouTube stream. The video will be available for viewing thereafter. Before arriving, please review details of how to attend physical events at the store.

Beginning with the Grand Rapids Dam in the 1960s, hydroelectric development has dramatically altered the social, political, and physical landscape of northern Manitoba. In Our Backyard tells the story of Manitoba Hydro’s Keeyask dam and accompanying development on the Nelson River, amplifying Indigenous voices that environmental assessment and regulatory processes have often failed to incorporate.

Aimée Craft is an Associate Professor at the Faculty Law, University of Ottawa, and an Anishinaabe-Métis lawyer from Manitoba. She co-leads a series of major research grants on Decolonizing Water Governance and works with many Indigenous nations and communities on Indigenous relationships with and responsibilities to nibi (water).

Jill Blakley is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning and Interim Vice Dean Faculty Relations in the College of Arts and Science at the University of Saskatchewan. She is the lead editor of the international Handbook of Cumulative Impact Assessment.

Robert Spence is a father of six and a grandfather of eight, with two more grandchildren on the way. He has been a fisherman for most of his life, a constable for seven years, and councillor of the Tataskweyak Cree Nation for six years. A hunter and artist, Robert promotes land-based learning and healing, and is currently trying to get the Churchill River Sturgeon full protection.