No/Place

This creative non-­‐fiction essay, which is ethnographically-­‐informed and located in critical geographic theory, contemplates remote and deeply overlooked places in Northern British Columbia (Canada) located along Highway 16, colloquially known as ‘The Highway of Tears’ because of the more than 30 (mostly) Indigenous women who have been murdered or gone missing along its paved shoulders in the past two decades. The photo-­‐accompanied essay works in multiple textual registers,from poetry to research interviews, in order to consider and evoke a variety of emotional and material places making up the always colonially-­‐impacted geographies along Highway 16. These places include homes of on-­‐reserve families whose children are routinely removed by the provincial government, staff in women’s centres and police detachments tasked with organizing search parties for women’s bodies dumped in ditches, and vast regions of forest and watersheds routinely characterized by both industry executives and often urban dwelling nature-­enthusiasts as unpopulated and open for development and discovery.