Ki-Sang Yi - Ring of Fire

Overview

This project explores the human rights, ecological, and historical counter-story of Neskantaga First Nation, a community that has been under a boil water advisory since 1995, to highlight the gross and hypercritical colonial violations of indigenous rights to land and self-determination as articulated in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

While mining companies in the Ring of Fire claim new safety measures to contain mining tailings, northern watersheds have been contaminated with mercury and arsenic from former mines that made similar claims. All mining projects in Ontario sit atop of the sedimented histories of displacement and neglect faced by northern Indigenous communities for the sake of resource extraction projects.

In 2018, Ontario premier Doug Ford tweeted, “If I have to hop on a bulldozer myself, we’re going to start building roads to the Ring of Fire.” Sol Mamakwa, MPP and member of the Kingfisher Lake Nation, replied, “We welcome that because what’s going to happen is he’s going to go into a muskeg and he’s going to sink. We know these territories and we know these lands, and [the governments] haven’t done their work.”

In 2007, Noront Resources – since acquired by Wyloo and renamed the Ring of Fire Metals – discovered lucrative deposits of chromite, nickel, and copper in the Far North of Ontario, Canada. As these minerals are critical for electric battery production, the discovery ushered in an era of speculative mining claims, government subsidies, private-public partnerships, and a rebranding of the region as the "Ring of Fire". In a collective effort to develop an end-to-end EV supply chain and a net-zero economy in Ontario, federal and provincial government have announced up to $46.1 billion in subsidies for private automotive companies planning to establish EV production lines in Ontario.

Despite the outpour of private-public support for Ontario's EV revolution, large-scale development has yet to break ground in Ontario's Far North. Through a combination of legal challenges, social media campaigns, political advocacy, and environmental justice organization, First Nations have been resisting nonconsensual development on their lands while drawing greater attention to the systematic neglect of northern First Nations.

Adobe Suite | Columbia GSAPP | Fall 2024 | Difference+Design | Professor Justin Moore