At the Survey Frontier: Mineral Exploration Film and the "Orderly Development of Newfoundland".

The article analyzes the 1968 short film *Searching* (Seaton Findlay), which documents a large-scale geological mineral survey conducted in Newfoundland and Labrador during the 1950s and 1960s by Brinex, the mineral exploration subsidiary of the British Newfoundland Corporation (Brinco). It argues that the film depicts not a resource extraction frontier but a "survey frontier," a political and spatial construct created through geological science that establishes settler authority and legitimizes access to Indigenous lands prior to any actual mining development. The film’s portrayal of systematic surveying practices and everyday labor serves to naturalize settler presence and promote the orderly development of the province, reflecting broader colonial and economic agendas embedded in mineral exploration. Additionally, the article situates *Searching* within a tradition of sponsored industrial films that functioned to normalize and authorize settler-colonial resource projects in Canada.