Various graphic reports from Dene country. Starts out with stuff about the oil & gas boom and its impact on the Dene communities, but then goes into how their way of life changed under the influences of the Canadian Government, missionaries, and resource prospectors/extractors. The biggest and most malevolently destructive influence Sacco writes/draws about is the residential schools. He doesn't explicitly make the connection himself, but Paying the Land shows how the residential schools were kiddie concentration camps designed to destroy the Dene as a people. The residential schools didn't actually try to kill all the Dene, but they did try to break the connections between the parents and children so that the culture could be killed. Towards the end of the book, Sacco covers the efforts of a new generation of Dene trying to reclaim their heritage and revitalize their culture for the 21st century.