Beyond Extraction (BE) is a collective of researchers, writers, artists, and activists, from a range of disciplinary and philosophical backgrounds, who have come together to critically investigate and resist Extraction in its various forms. We approach ‘Extraction’ as an ontology of production, consumption, and wasting practices. We seek to create venues and platforms for the voices, stories, struggles, and techniques that confront the imperial promises of industry and extractive modes of social organization. 

At BE, our primary objective is to reveal how the mineral exploration and development sectors conjure an imaginary of spectacular subterranean wealth. We began this work in the depths of the extractive capital in Toronto, Canada, at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) annual meeting in 2020 thanks to an Antipode International Workshop Award. 

The Beyond Extraction Counter Conference (BECC) uses collaborative and interdisciplinary methods of analysis to expose PDAC as a key node in mineral extraction’s intensifying financialization, maintained through an international network of relations, discourses, and representations. Our critical praxis is collaborative and continues to resist PDAC as a node of extraction in diverse and novel ways, including: discussions, interviews, book reviews, visual arts projects, and counter-tours.

  • April 2026 | Mine-o-Polis is an alternative board game created by Beyond Extraction that invites players to explore Toronto as a centre of extractive power. Currently in development, we’re seeking feedback from the Beyond Extraction community to play-test the pilot version. More information on how you can get involved here.

  • March 2024 | As a response to educational materials created by PDAC’s educational arm, Mining Matters, the Beyond Extraction collective created a colouring book that resists simplistic narratives equating mining with environmental sustainability, jobs, and technology (i.e. ‘what a mine gives’). Instead, we visually weave connections between mining, water, waste, land, animals, and community in an approachable and interactive format. More here, including info on how to download a free, printable copy of What it Takes: an all-ages colouring book.

  • March 2024 | As part of #disruptPDAC 2024, on March 06, Beyond Extraction welcomes guests Gabriela Sarmet (Amazon Watch) Flavio Montiel (International Rivers) and Thaís Henriques Dias (York University) to discuss Canadian mining company Belo Sun’s Volta Grande Project (VGP) in the Brazilian Amazon. We are joined by Lorena Curuaia, Leader of the Iawá community affected by the Volta Grande do Xingu. The event will be held at 401 Richmond, Urbanspace Gallery. More event information here.

  • April 2022 | At the North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) Eric Robsky Huntley, Christopher Alton and Zulaikha Ayub, presented Mapping the Planetary Mine, a project that consists of teaching resources and interactive mappings that reveal the depth of the 'planetary mine’.  This work resulted in the publication of “Conjuring the Planetary Mine” in MIT Thresholds 50 Before | After. 

  • March 2022 | Mining at the Museum is a web-based, audio-visual intervention into the Royal Ontario Museum's Teck Suite of Galleries - an exhibition of minerals sponsored by Canadian mining companies with track records of environmental destruction and human rights violations. Mining at the Museum was launched in June 2022, in resistance and response to PDAC 2022. Relatedly, see our reply to Maggie Flynn’s “Trickle Down” in C Mag 153.

  • December 2021 | In collaboration with Observatorio Plurinacional de Salares Andinos (OPSAL) and MiningWatch Canada we have explored the consequences of Canadian mining activity in Chile through a jointly published report titled Inversiones canadienses de litio en Chile : Extractivismo y Conflicto (Canadian Lithium Investments in Chile: Extractivism and Conflict). On March 16, 2023, Ramón Balcazár (OPSAL), Devin Holterman (Beyond Extraction) and Viviana Herrera (MiningWatch Canada), discussed the findings of a at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), central campus. Gabriel Poisson (Resistaction) moderated the discussion, which was supported by Foundacion Tanti, Resistaction, and the Centre ERE, UQAM. Listen to the full discussion here.

  • November 2021 | In the lead up to COP26, Devin Holterman and Patrick Schukalla sought views from people resisting nuclear expansion at the frontlines of nuclear extraction in Greenland, Namibia, Tanzania, Spain and Canada. The collected interviews and visuals are published in Countering the ‘Nuclear for Climate’ Narrative: Testimonies from the Frontlines of the Nuclear Frontier.

  • June 2021 | “Confronting the Convention: The Planetary Mine and Extractive Power” was presented in the Extractive industry, governance, policy stream at Extraction: Tracing the Veins, an online conference on a range of topics that sought to re-examine extraction and its contested place in contemporary capitalism. This event was co-hosted by Massey University Political Ecology Research Centre (PERC) and Wageningen University Centre for Space, Place and Society (SCPS). 

  • April 2021 | Critical research on extraction is increasingly looking beyond the site and moment of mining activities, implicating networks of habitats, infrastructures, finances, resistances, and modes of life in what Martín Arboleda describes as the “planetary mine”. BE argues that the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) is a vital node in this network, and members have engaged directly with Arboleda’s work. Towards a Critical Glossary of Extraction is a wide-ranging discussion with Martín Arboleda by Mariano Gomez-Luque and Julia Smachylo, published as part of Antipode’s Intervention series. In addition, Devin Holterman reviewed Arboleda’s Planetary Mine: Territories of Extraction under Late Capitalism for Antipode Online Reviews.

  • March 2021 | Concurrent with a virtual PDAC in 2021, we hosted a Beyond Extraction Open House with research presentations from BE members Nadège Compaoré (The Norms of Extractive Research), Zannah Matson and Christopher Alton (Golden Reflections, Ghostly Projections), Camille-Mary Sharp (Oil Sponsored Museums), Eric Robsky Huntley (Mapping the Investors Exchange), Daniel Huizenga and Ramón Morales Balcázar (Event Ethnography Group) and Caitlynn Beckett (Caring for and Living with Abandoned Mines in Northern Canada). This event was moderated by discussant, Arn Keeling of Memorial University.

  • February 2020 | Christopher Alton and Devin Holterman contributed an op-ed in Ricochet Media, titled Toronto is the political and corporate wing of global extractive violence.

  • February-March 2020 | With the support of an Antipode International Workshop Award, we staged the first Beyond Extraction Counter Conference (BECC) in February-March, 2020. Collaborating with Graphe and the Mining Injustice Solidarity Network, BECC established a basis for our ongoing critique of PDAC.