– Mining companies came and robbed us of our country, where we lived, fished and hunted. The land will never be restored again to future generations, says 88-year old Annie Benonie who today lives in Wollaston Lake Indian Reservation.

To Wollaston Lake, which is the closest town to the world's largest uranium mine fields, no roads go. Tourists are not coming here, rarely some politicians and almost never journalists. After driving the car a thousand kilometres north from the city of Saskatoon in the Canadian state of Saskatchewan, mostly on gravel road, we are fortunate enough to catch the small ferry that takes us to the reserve.
Wollaston Lake is located thirty kilometers from the nearest mine, Rabbit Lake. From here, the Oskarshamn nuclear power plant in Sweden recovered much of its uranium, and OKG, the Swedish nuclear company, has a contract with the mining company Cameco to continue to do so until 2018, at least.

Impossible to live

In Wollaston Lake 88-year-old Dene Indian Annie Benonie lives. In her home in the middle of the village she welcomes us. Her grand daughter Flora Natomagan interprets as Annie, like many other elderly people in this part of Canada, only speak dene. After we've talked for a while Annie feels very anxious to ask some questions to us:
– You say you come from a distant country, where you use the uranium that comes from our country. I wonder if people who live where you live, where you have nuclear plants, what you gain from it? What advantages does it give you in addition to the jobs the industry creates?
– Does it bother the people where you live what is happening here in our country?
– Knows the people that our country has been destroyed because of this uranium mining?
– I want people in your country to know what is happening here because of the uranium industry, that it made it impossible for us to live the way we have always lived.

Traditional life

Before the uranium mines' time Annie Benonie and her family lived a traditional life. They moved around and lived in tipis, tents, in different places. They lived of fishing and hunting, fruit and berries, just as her ancestors did in North America for thousands of years.
– We live of what nature has to give us. Nature does everything for us, Annie says with pride in her voice.
Usually the family stayed at Collins Bay on the other side of the lake, where the Rabbit Lake mine is today. At Collins Bay Annies husband Louis had his trap-lines, traps he caught small animals in. There he hunted caribou and elk. The family made the traditional medicine of nature's wild plants.
– A few times a year we came to a village like this, Wollaston Lake.
– Otherwise, we lived this way, in smaller homes or in tipis.
Saskatchewan mines have supplied uranium for both nuclear power and nuclear weapons countries since the 1950s. Mining companies are constantly finding new deposits with high level of uranium in various locations in northern Saskatchewan. Here lives almost exclusively indigenous, or First Nations people as they are called in Canada.