This graphic memoir delves into some of the world’s most plentiful — and destructive — oil mines.
In the late 2000s and early 2010s, Kate Beaton’s Hark! A Vagrant webcomic was, to a certain brand of internet user, a very big deal. It was the sort of thing you would probably read if you also read The Toast and The Awl and Hyperbole and a Half (all of which, of course, I did): whimsical, sweetly ridiculous little sketches about Napoleon, the businesswomen of the 1980s, and the love between a pirate and his nemesis.
Now, 11 years after the collected Hark! A Vagrant became a New York Times bestseller, and seven years after its follow-up Step Aside, Pops followed suit, Beaton has returned with her new graphic memoir, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands. Bleak, lonely, and with a boldly graphic line, Ducks is a very different reading experience than the comics that Beaton first built her name on.
Ducks begins in 2005, with Beaton as a 21-year-old newly minted college graduate. Saddled with an arts degree that leaves her feeling unemployable and a small mountain of student debt, Beaton leaves her beloved home of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, for the oil sands of Alberta, where work is plentiful and life is cheap. Her plan is to work so much that she can pay off her student loans in two years. It will be a break from her life, a lark. When it’s over, she’ll go back to the real world.
Alberta’s oil sands are the third-largest oil reserve in the world. The mines are large enough to be seen from space. They’re also considered some of the most environmentally destructive oil fields in the world, and Indigenous populations say the mines have been ruinous to their way of life.
None of that was exactly clear to Beaton when she set off for Alberta in 2005. What she knew, she writes, was that Alberta was “the place to go to find the good job, the good money, the better life.” But Ducks quickly makes it clear that “the good life” is relative.
In Alberta, Beaton bounces from mine to mine. Sometimes she lives in an empty little apartment that requires a 6 am bus ride into camp; sometimes she lives on site in a dorm equipped with only a bed and a shelf. When she makes it to a camp where the dorms come with fake plants, she’s overwhelmed. “It’s like a hotel,” she breathes.
The camps are populated mostly by men, who outnumber women in the oil sands by 50 to 1. Most of the people who work there have minimal education, and many of them have migrated from their homes, as Beaton did, in search of better wages. Resources and entertainment are limited. In the isolated, macho social landscape that results, sexual harassment becomes the norm.
Beaton finds the doorknob of her dorm room jiggling at night and has to keep it locked. When she arrives at one new camp, men line up around the building to get a look at her and loudly discuss their opinions of her body. She asks her supervisor if she can be put on another task that leaves her less on display, and he tells her he can’t offer her special treatment. The harassment keeps going and escalates.
Yet Beaton feels a certain amount of protectiveness for the men she works with. When she’s interviewed by a journalist who wants her to go over all the worst harassment she’s experienced at camp, her hackles rise.
“I don’t think people like her believe that the men they know wouldn’t be any different,” she says. “They don’t think that the loneliness and homesickness and boredom and lack of women around would affect their brother or dad or husband the same way.”
She wonders whether, if her father had needed to support his family by working on the oil sands, he would have found himself resocialized into one of the leering men who surround her, or whether he would have been one of the quiet ones who keeps his head down and says nothing. Given the right stimulus, it could probably have happened to almost anyone, she thinks.
Throughout Ducks, Beaton’s figures are rendered in scrunchy, expressive lines; a little less cartoonish than the figures of Hark! A Vagrant, but vividly expressive. In the background, the silos and sheds of the camps are stern geometric shapes, while the natural landscape appears in brief, breathtaking flashes: a half-page panel showing the aurora shimmering over a watery-eyed Beaton, a full-page spread showing the shock of open-pit mines scarring over a swampland.
The imagery here is richer and more cutting than the imagery of Hark! A Vagrant, more suited to this lengthy, ambitious memoir. In its 430 pages, Ducks sets itself the task of placing a very personal experience into its political, economic, gendered, racial context. As Beaton stays in the oil sands, she begins to joke casually about what kind of cancer she’ll develop from their polluted air; she watches the wildlife driven out of its habitat. Eventually, it occurs to her that the camps are displacing Native people and destroying their landscape.
Ducks paints a picture not just of the camps on the oil sands but of the economic and political pressures that produced them: all the workers fleeing dying industries and jobless provinces to go to the one place where they could imagine being able to build “a good life,” and all the ways they were failed once they arrived there. And it becomes clear, in the book’s final, devastating panels, that who a person becomes on the oil sands will always be a part of them.
Local governments and universities are taking reparations into their own hands. But can these efforts be successful or enough?
In Evanston, Illinois, where redlining excluded the city’s Black residents from homeownership, 16 Black families — randomly selected from 600 who applied — were given tax-free grants this year to be used toward a home.
California launched its reparations task force in 2021, to determine how the state can compensate Black Californians descended from those formerly enslaved.
Dozens of colleges and universities, including Georgetown, Brown, and Harvard, are facing pressure from students to examine their ties to slavery and give reparations. A judge ruled earlier this year that the three known living survivors of the 1921 Tulsa white mob massacre could go forward with their reparations lawsuit, despite a motion by the defendants, including the city of Tulsa, to dismiss the case.
Advocates continue to demand action on reparations from the federal government. But local governments and institutions aren’t waiting to try their hand at reparative justice. Following the social justice uprisings of 2020, cities including Asheville, North Carolina, Providence, Rhode Island, and Burlington, Vermont, established reparations commissions and task forces. Voters in Greenbelt, Maryland and Detroit approved commissions to study reparations through ballot measures.
While these efforts have been applauded as first steps, some reparations advocates worry that they aren’t reparations at all.
Since localities can’t afford what experts say is the “true cost” of reparations, these smaller initiatives might only detract from the broader call on the federal government, and could weaken the case for wider reparations by allowing the federal government to dodge accountability, since they might argue that the local efforts are enough.
On the fourth and final episode of 40 Acres, a special four-part miniseries from Vox Conversations, I explore these ideas with Indigenous philanthropist Edgar Villanueva and activist Kavon Ward. Villanueva is the founder of the Decolonizing Wealth Project and creator of the Case for Reparations initiative, which funds reparatory justice projects across the country. (He is also on the board of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which provided a grant to Vox to support the miniseries project.)
Villanueva, who is a member of the Lumbee tribe and whose philanthropy is rooted in Native American traditions and teachings, believes that money can be healing and that individual donors and institutions have a role to play in funding efforts aimed at reparations.
One effort he funded is Justice for Bruce’s Beach, which called for the return of Bruce’s Beach — a property California seized from a Black family almost 100 years ago via eminent domain — to the descendants of the original owners. The effort’s leader, Kavon Ward, called for the state to return the property and eventually succeeded, launching the organization Where Is My Land, which is helping other Black families reclaim property that was stolen from them. I talked to Ward about how various cities and states are repaying Black people for what was taken from them and whether this should be considered reparations.
Fabiola Cineas
It’s 2020 and Kavon Ward has set her sights on Bruce’s Beach and returning that land to its rightful owners. The first step? Figure out who exactly had the power to return it.
Kavon Ward
We tried to figure out what we could do legally and legislatively, and then I thought, okay, so they need a lawyer. We introduced them to Public Counsel. Public Counsel is a nonprofit organization in DC that provides legal assistance for folks who can’t really afford legal representation. They’re essentially a conduit between the law firms and the families who can’t afford attorneys. So we got them connected with them to help them get a lawyer. And then we tried to make changes, legislatively, thinking that the city of Manhattan Beach actually had the power to give the land back.
Fabiola Cineas
Turns out, the city didn’t have that power.
Kavon Ward
The Bruces owned the land, two plots of land. It’s now a lifeguard training facility. And so once we learned that the city of Manhattan Beach actually had no control over that land because they had transferred it to the state of California and the state of California later transferred it to the county, we knew that our approach needed to be different and needed to shift.
Fabiola Cineas
But there were other roadblocks they hit along the way.
Kavon Ward
One of the things we decided to do was to have a march and a protest in front of Manhattan Beach City Hall and to march to Bruce’s Beach. And that is when [Black Lives Matter] LA helped out. The national BLM founder, Patrisse Cullors, stepped in and decided to help us strategically. Once that happened, the city of Manhattan Beach, essentially, made me out to be a terrorist.
Fabiola Cineas
And this is where things took a turn. Both for Kavon’s life — and for the future of Bruce’s Beach.
Kavon Ward
I felt that it was a threat on my life. People impersonated me online, created false accounts, made it seem as if I was saying something that would make other people come after me.
It just got really, really, really bad to the point where I felt like I needed to purchase a firearm to protect myself and my daughter as a single mother at Manhattan Beach. The other white women in the group were anti-gun and they didn’t like that. They were opposed to me getting a gun. Because they didn’t take into account positionality, right? Like, they were white women for the most part, not living in Manhattan Beach, and with husbands. So they didn’t have to worry about that type of threat on their lives. When I learned that they were going to leave the movement because I was going to purchase a firearm, I said, you know what? You guys leave. Then I started Justice for Bruce’s Beach.
Fabiola Cineas
And that’s when even more work began.
Kavon Ward
We started a petition [and] started making more noise so that we could get the attention of the LA County Board of Supervisors, and Janice Hahn, who at the time represented that area. She heard the demands and she decided to step forward and and do what was right.
And she committed to making sure that policy change was created so that the land could be transferred back to the Bruces. And that’s where [California state] Sen. [Steven] Bradford stepped in and he created SB 796.
Fabiola Cineas
It took a lot of work to get this done. And the work wasn’t initially funded. The money that helped Kavon came in the form of grants.
Edgar Villanueva
The folks who are part of Justice for Bruce’s Beach and the organization Where Is My Land have been working for a long, long time to make this happen. And so long before our fund existed. I don’t want to take too much credit there, but what I will say is we were honored to move two grants to this organization.
Fabiola Cineas
That’s Edgar Villanueva. He’s an Indigenous philanthropist and founder of the Decolonizing Wealth Project, an organization working to disrupt philanthropy through reparative giving.
Their Case for Reparations initiative has given millions to nearly two dozen organizations that are leading campaigns to achieve reparations.
Edgar Villanueva
When we made the first grant to Justice for Bruce’s Beach, I remember getting a video recording from Kavon Ward, who was just in tears and said this is the first time [they’ve] ever received funding. And so folks have been doing this work for free. Nobody is making a lot of money doing reparations organizing. But this work is deeply connected to healing and what people feel like they need spiritually to move forward and to right a wrong.
Fabiola Cineas
Over and over it becomes clear that one thing is at the center of reparations: Money. Money owed. Money for losses. And even if capital isn’t a cure-all, from Edgar’s perspective, money can be medicine. Through disruptive philanthropic efforts, it can heal wounds.
Edgar Villanueva
We are up against a major paradigm shift that is needed, to understand that colonization actually is something that was very harmful, and the impacts of global colonization and colonization that’s been happening on the land here.
It is the erasure of cultures. It is a genocide of peoples, and it’s all deeply connected to wealth. And so when we talk about decolonizing wealth, it is acknowledging that the way that wealth has been built historically is deeply connected to this force of colonization.
And so to decolonize, we are acknowledging the truth of how wealth has been acquired. And we are bringing an awareness of the harm of all of that, and the trauma of all of that. And we are beginning a process, of beginning to think about how we heal or repair that harm.
Fabiola Cineas
A lot of this is colored by his own background. Edgar is Lumbee. They are the survivors of several Native American tribes who lived along the coast of North Carolina and were the first point of contact for Europeans in the late 1500s. For much of his life, Edgar says he had to assimilate to survive.
And though being Native American meant dealing with an identity crisis for much of his life, Edgar arrived at a point where he launched a journey to decolonize himself and unlearn harmful stereotypes about his Native American heritage. That also meant starting on a journey to reclaim what he believes is his people’s share of resources.
Edgar Villanueva
As a Native American working in the philanthropic sector, this is a $1 trillion industry. I always held these contradictions. There’s so many contradictions, where this is a charitable sector, but I’ve always been pretty aware that the capital that I have access to is a byproduct of capitalism.
Philanthropy exists because rich people, rich corporations, were able to create foundations or funds, get major tax write-offs, and then some good things could happen without money. And so I could definitely offer critiques about whether or not philanthropy as it exists today in the United States should even exist or not.
But again, I’m an incrementalist in a lot of ways. And so I’m like, well, I have access to this money now. What’s the best I can do with it? Well, I’m supporting people who have a vision for something far more radical and amazing. On the other side of all of this, there has always been a role for philanthropy in our communities as Native people, the way that we take care of each other, the reciprocity, the thought that if I ever needed something, I know my people will be there for me.
Fabiola Cineas
I asked Edgar if he thinks philanthropy can really make a big impact without assistance from the government in this space. When we think about reparations, can we make a big impact without the federal government’s help?
Edgar Villanueva
Yes, and no. Philanthropy has often, and maybe has always, played a role in being a catalyst for civil rights causes. There are lots of anecdotes looking back over history where donations and foundations have played a role in supporting advocates and organizers to see social change. But it is a small fraction of the amount of money and resources and power that is held by the federal government. I see philanthropy as a catalyst.
The fund that we’ve created, the Case for Reparations Fund, is fueled by foundations and donors who have supported us in moving $4 million so far. Those funds have been highly impactful, and the foundations that are taking on our reparative philanthropy lens have really shifted significant resources to communities in a whole new way.
I had a lot of discomfort as a Native person, not being able to view institutional philanthropy or practice grant-making in a way that aligned with those values. Over time I got physically sick because of the contradictions. I didn’t even know if I could do this work. I felt like I was a part of something that was not having as much of an impact as it should because there wasn’t a truth-telling process around what was really happening.
Some folks say that philanthropy is sort of like reputation laundering in some ways. And the only approach I know to move forward is to tell the truth about it, right? There’s a lot of things we cannot undo, and this wealth is here now. Part of this is really coming to terms with history, and we’ve all inherited this history that we’ve got to take ownership of. We need to tell the truth. We need to numb the pain. We need to sit in grief around that. And then we need to think about, well, what can we do today with all of this wealth in the form of repair?
10 questions about the queen’s funeral, asked and answered.
After more than 70 years on the throne, Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, died last week on September 8. Her death marks the end of the second Elizabethan era and the beginning of a period of public mourning for the UK.
That mourning will crescendo at the queen’s funeral next Monday, when the new King Charles III will see his mother formally laid to rest. But the queen was around for so long, and served as such a constant, that there are plenty of questions to be asked about what comes next.
How can we watch the funeral? Will Prince Andrew be allowed to attend? What happens to all the money with the queen’s face on it? What happens to the dogs?
You’ve got questions. We’ve got explanations. Here are 10 questions about the queen’s funeral, answered.
When is the queen’s funeral?
The queen’s funeral will begin on Monday, September 19, at 11 am in the UK, 6 am on the East Coast of the US. It will take place at Westminster Abbey, where the queen married Prince Philip in 1947, and where she was crowned in 1953.
Monday’s ceremony will be the first monarch’s funeral to take place at Westminster Abbey since the 18th century. (The funeral of George VI, Elizabeth’s father, took place at the royal residence of Sandringham House.)
How can I watch the queen’s funeral?
In the UK, the BBC has been livestreaming coverage of the queen’s coffin nonstop and will almost certainly livestream the funeral as well. In the US, NBC News, NBC News Now, CNN, ABC, and Fox News will all be covering the queen’s funeral live.
What will happen at the funeral?
The queen’s funeral will be the first state funeral since Winston Churchill’s in 1965, so some of the details are still in question. There simply isn’t any modern precedent for what this kind of event should look like. Here’s what we do know.
The queen’s body is currently lying in state in Westminster Hall, the oldest building in the Houses of Parliament. Her coffin is on display on a raised platform, closed and draped with the Royal Standard and topped with the Imperial State Crown, orb, and scepter, with members of the Royal Guard standing vigil over it. The building is open 24 hours a day until 6:30 am British time on Monday, so that members of the public can file past the coffin and pay their respects. The palace warns that visitors may have to wait in line overnight.
At 10:44 BST on September 19, the queen’s coffin will travel across Parliament Square to Westminster Abbey. As has been the case at the funeral of every British monarch since Queen Victoria, the coffin will be borne on the back of the Royal Navy State Funeral Gun Carriage. It’s likely that senior members of the royal family will follow the coffin in its procession, including the new King Charles III.
The funeral service will happen inside Westminster Abbey, beginning at 11 am BST, 6 am EDT. While confirmed details are few, the BBC reports that the service will probably be conducted by the Dean of Westminster David Hoyle, with the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby giving the sermon. Prime Minister Liz Truss may also do a reading.
After the ceremony, there will be a walking procession from Westminster Abbey past Buckingham Palace to Wellington Arch at Hyde Park Corner. From there, the queen’s coffin will travel by hearse to Windsor Castle, the queen’s chief residence just outside of London.
The BBC reports that the king and other senior royals will most likely process with the coffin through the grounds of Windsor Castle to St. George’s Chapel, where Harry and Meghan were married in 2018 and where the queen’s late husband, Prince Philip, had his funeral just last year.
Will the queen be buried with Prince Philip?
Yes. The queen will be interred next to her husband in the King George VI memorial chapel of St. George, named after her father.
Who will be at the queen’s funeral?
The palace has not released a formal guest list for the funeral, but reports indicate that around 500 VIP guests are expected, including major world leaders and fellow royals. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden have both confirmed they will attend.
Not in attendance: Donald Trump. Traditionally, all living former US presidents would be invited to the funeral of a monarch, but Politico has reported that in this case, only current heads of state and their spouses have been invited, with the palace citing space concerns. According to CNN, the palace has also decided against inviting representatives from Russia, Belarus, and Myanmar.
How long is the mourning period for the queen?
Tradition calls for a 12-day period of national mourning after the death of a monarch. In this case, Charles has requested the mourning period extend until seven days after the queen’s funeral, on September 26.
Technically, not that much has to change for the public during the mourning period. There are official protocols that will be observed by members of the royal family, their staff, and representatives, as well as troops on ceremonial duty, but the most visible thing is that flags at royal residences, government buildings, and military establishments will remain at half-staff until the period of mourning is over.
Per the palace’s guidance, “There is no expectation on the public or organisations to observe specific behaviours during the mourning period and there is no set way for the public to mark the passing of Her Majesty. Individuals, families, communities and organisations will want to mark Her Majesty’s death in their own way.”
However, a number of organizations have chosen to observe the mourning period by shutting down, either for the duration or simply on the day of the queen’s funeral, which has been officially declared a bank holiday. Trade unions called off their planned strikes, and sports teams canceled or postponed their games. Most shops in the UK will likely be closed on the day of the funeral.
Some of these individual shutdowns have raised eyebrows across the internet. The family vacation company Center Parcs briefly announced that all venues would be shut down the day of the queen’s funeral, meaning that guests planning to stay over the 19th would have to leave and then come back the next day. It retracted the policy after waves of outrage. Bicycle racks outside Norwich’s City Hall have been blocked off for mourning, apparently to create space for the grieving public to leave flowers. Nintendo announced that it would drop plans for a Nintendo Direct livestream in the UK, “as a mark of respect.”
More darkly, Wimbledon Food Bank has announced that it will be closed on the day of the queen’s funeral. After public outrage that a food bank would shut down as the cost of living continues to soar, the organization released an official statement noting that it is standard policy to shut down during all bank holidays.
What happened to the queen’s corgis?
The queen was famously fond of her dogs, frequently using them as diplomatic conversation starters and ice breakers. She had a special affinity for corgis, of which she owned more than 30 over her lifetime. Many of them were descended from her first corgi, which she received as an 18th birthday present from her father.
The queen’s last two remaining corgis are now with Prince Andrew, her second son, and his ex-wife Sarah, Duchess of York. Andrew and Sarah continue to live together, and the pair gave the queen the corgis as a gift in 2021 after the death of Prince Philip.
Speaking of Prince Andrew …
What’s the deal with Prince Andrew?
Prince Andrew, Elizabeth’s second son, has remained visible throughout the queen’s death rites, frequently processing with his mother’s coffin as it’s brought from place to place. That’s led to public outrage in some corners, because Andrew has become notorious for his close ties to infamous sex predator Jeffrey Epstein.
Andrew has been accused of sexual assault by one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre, who says she was trafficked to Andrew while she was a teenager. While Andrew denied the charge, in 2019 he reached an estimated multimillion-dollar out-of-court-settlement with Giuffre. Shortly thereafter, he stepped down from his public duties as a member of the royal family and was stripped of his HRH title (His Royal Highness), as well as his military affiliations and royal patronages. However, reports suggest that both Andrew and the late queen expected that he would eventually be able to return to the fold. A new book by former US attorney Geoffrey Berman says New York prosecutors tried and failed to compel Andrew to cooperate with their investigations into Epstein, and suggests that the royal family gave him cover to dodge them.
“Andrew, you’re a sick old man!” one man cried on September 12 as Andrew processed with the rest of the royal family behind the queen’s coffin down Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. Onlookers bundled him to the ground, chanting, “God save the King!” to drown out his cries, and he was subsequently arrested and charged with disturbing the peace. “Powerful men shouldn’t be allowed to commit sexual crimes and get away with it,” the heckler later told reporters.
What’s going to happen to the money with the queen’s face on it?
The queen’s face is on all UK currency, and on multiple pieces of currency in Commonwealth countries. (Charming anecdote from Tina Brown’s Palace Papers: When a friend of Diana’s gave the young princes William and Harry each a 50-pound note, Diana cooed, “Ooh, look, boys, pink grannies!”) Now that she’s dead, when does the money change over to display Charles’s face?
It’s not clear, but it looks like it will take a while. The Bank of England expects it to take about two years to get new Charles notes designed and circulating, and assures the public that money with the queen’s face on it will continue to be legal tender and to circulate. Neither Australia nor Canada has announced a timeline for the changeover, and New Zealand has declared its plans to wait until its current supply of queen coins is exhausted before it introduces new currency.
One big change: While Elizabeth faced to the right on her money, Charles will likely face to the left. It’s been a British tradition to alternate the direction of the monarch on currency since the 17th century.
What happens next?
As soon as the queen died, Charles became king of England, and his wife Camilla became queen consort. (He also inherited the queen’s personal fortune, value unknown, tax-free.) However, Charles has yet to be coronated, meaning he has yet to take an oath to the country and be formally crowned, blessed, and anointed.
At this point, while it’s expected that Charles will be crowned sometime in 2023, we don’t know when the full coronation will take place. If historical precedent is any guide, it could be quite a while away. The queen’s coronation did not take place until 16 months after the death of her father.
What we do know: Charles’s coronation is being planned under the code name Operation Golden Orb. It will take place in Westminster Abbey, where all English coronations have taken place since 1066. Authorities have confirmed that the Stone of Destiny, on which Scottish monarchs are crowned, will be brought to England for the occasion. (The British government returned the stone to Scotland in 1996, after England took it in 1296.) Camilla will be crowned queen consort alongside Charles.
Experts speculate that Charles, who has long advocated for a “slimmed-down” monarchy, may call for a less ornate coronation than the one his mother experienced. It’s widely expected that although the coronation is an Anglican religious rite, Charles’s ceremony will be more multi-faith and inclusive than traditional, in celebration of a multi-faith Britain.
But to find out, we’ll have to wait until next year. Before the new king can be crowned, the world will be mourning the old queen.