Coloring outside the mines
When you represent the interests of an industry like mining, you’re bound to make a few enemies.
In the case of PDAC—the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada—an increasingly sharp thorn in its side is a collective, Beyond Extraction, that finds creative ways to disrupt the mining group’s annual convention.
Its latest salvo? A coloring book that shows children a less-sanitized view of mining’s environmental impact than the industry acknowledges.
“All our projects seek to counter something PDAC is doing,” said Zannah Mae Matson, an assistant professor of landscape architecture at CMDI. A previous campaign, she said, involved creating an audio tour of the minerals exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum, in Toronto, that drew attention to mining’s labor and environmental calamities.
For the coloring book, Beyond Extraction took aim at PDAC’s educational wing, Mining Matters, which builds lesson plans to extend the industry’s ideology into Canadian schools. Mining Matters also creates coloring books featuring kid-friendly characters who show that when mining companies complete operations, “they remediate everything, and everybody’s happy—the water’s clean, the trees are fine,” Matson said. “Whatever.”
The title Beyond Extraction selected for its book, What It Takes, counters Mining Matters’ message—that mines give jobs, technology, bicycles and so on. The project argues that the industry doesn’t give those things without cost. It explains technical concepts like free-entry staking and labor exploitation in ways that allow teachers and caregivers to start conversations with kids about adverse impacts of mining.
Simplifying the message
“The biggest challenge was simplifying,” Matson said. “The illustrations had to be colorable and fun, and the message had to be approachable.”
The book is not about ending mining; rather, it offers a more complete picture of mining’s human and environmental impacts. That’s crucial as the industry positions itself as a champion of the sustainability movement, since the metals miners unearth help power alternatives to fossil fuels.
“We don’t live in a world where nothing needs to be taken out of the ground—but there is this false dichotomy that if you don’t like mining, then you love oil,” Matson said. “We can’t fall into this trap of believing we all bear the same responsibility for mining because we all use a laptop computer.”
Instead, she said, we need to introduce lower levels of consumption while holding companies accountable to higher standards.
We need to create higher levels of standards to hold companies accountable, and introduce lower levels of consumption.”
Zannah Mae Matson, assistant professor
The Beyond Extraction collective has released a coloring book, which Zannah Mae Matson co-illustrated, in five languages. Its message is designed to disrupt the work mining organizations do to influence curricula and position themselves as champions of sustainability. Photos by Kimberly Coffin.
“As someone who’s been researching mining for a long time, and seeing how these companies cover up the problems they cause, I have serious doubts they will be the heroes of a green, more just future,” she said.
Matson’s research investigates how infrastructure impacts communities and the environment. That might mean what a road system in Colombia indicates about its colonial history, or how mining operations create lasting damage to nearby communities. It’s work that takes her around the globe but is especially prevalent in her native Canada, which has worldwide mining operations.
That’s a key reason Beyond Extraction is translating the coloring book into different languages. It launched last year, but this spring, translations into American English, French, Spanish and Portuguese came online—countering Mining Matters’ multilingual approach, which also has editions in Indigenous languages, like Inuktitut.
“It’s so problematic that these materials are presented in the languages of people that the mining industry has dispossessed,” Matson said.
The collective hopes to translate its coloring book into Dene, Inuktitut and Cree, but for now, it’s too costly for Beyond Extraction’s budget activism. The book relied on volunteer members’ expertise in media studies, landscape architecture and beyond; Matson also was one of two illustrators.
Like many researchers, Matson is used to collaboration. Beyond Extraction, she said, is next level.
“When you’re facing such complex problems, you need collective ways of resisting them and finding answers,” she said. “It’s nice to know you’re not alone, and feel your work is rising to meet those challenges.”
Joe Arney covers research and general news for the college.
Photographer Kimberly Coffin graduated from CMDI in 2018 with degrees in media production and strategic communication.