LaBine Point, Port Radium, Northwest Territories, Canada

8”x10” palladium print from original 6x7 medium format negative

1/15 Limited Edition available.

On May 16 1930, Gilbert LaBine entered this channel and discovered several seams of iridescent, black, high grade uraninite with yellow uranium complexes along these cliffs, the Point that would later bear his name. Within one year, the first shipment of eight tonnes of hand-sorted, high grade ore would leave this same point. By August 6th, 1945, as “Little Boy” laid waste to the city of Hiroshima, an estimated 400 tons of uranium for the Manhattan Project, the United States’ atomic bomb program, had originated from the Eldorado Mine. In 1952, an acid-leach uranium mill was built at the site and by 1960, an estimated 800,000 tonnes of radioactive uranium ore tailings had been discarded in the water off LaBine Point.

The Sahtú Dene, the Indigenous People of Great Bear Lake, had long known about Port Radium. It would become known to them as Sǫmba K’oe, “The Money Place”. For the Sahtúot’ine, it had always been understood to be dangerous, a place to be avoided. In his book, “Highway of the Atom”, Peter C. Van Wyck recalls an ancient story by Dene storyteller, George Blondin, that foretold the impact and legacy of Port Radium :

“In the old days, the Sahtu Dene traveled across the lake to the Barrenlands every summer, to hunt caribou. Some of these Dene hunters were paddling near the shore on the east side of Sahtu (where Port Radium is today) and they came to a place where rocky cliffs rise high over the water. Like all Dene, they believed it was bad medicine to pass in front of this rock: it was said that loud noises came from within it. These particular hunters pulled their canoes out of the water, but decided not to portage...instead they camped near the cliff. During the night everybody was awakened by the singing of the medicine man... In the morning, when the medicine man stopped singing the people at last spoke to him... "Why did you sing all night...?"

"I foresaw many things and I was disturbed," replied the medicine man... The medicine man told them of his strange vision. "I saw people going into a big hole in the ground –strange people, not Dene. Their skin was white ... [and] they were going into a hole with all kinds of ... tools and machines... On the surface where they lived, there were strange houses with smoke coming out of them... I saw ... big boats with smoke coming out of them, going back and forth on the river. And I saw a flying bird – a big one. They were loading it with things...." "I watched them and finally saw what they were making with whatever they were digging out of the hole – it was something long, like a stick. I wanted to know what it was for – I saw what harm it would do when the big bird dropped this thing on people – they all died from this long stick, which burned everyone... But it isn't for now; it's a long time in the future. It will come after we are all dead."