Interventions at the United Nations - Mining
Mineral Policy Institute; 1/6/08
Seventh Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues; Interventions at the forum by Jethro Tulin (Ipili, Papua New Guinea), Neville Chappy Williams (Wiradjuri, Australia), Carrie Dann (Western Shoshone, USA) and Larson Bill (Western Shoshone, USA) all voiced the serious concern these communities have with large scale mining on their lands, particularly by Barrick Gold Corporation.
Extract from Jethro Tulin’s intervention at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. “Madam Chair, ours is a clash of civilisations. Propelled largely by state services, the Engan and Huli people have shot from the so-called Stone Age, an age of true sustainability, to the space age in one generation, with stunning results for some. Tribesmen, who in their youth wore grass aprons and sported fantastical wings studded with bird of paradise feathers, now have health care and modern homes. But others are reeling from the impact of cash-for-land deals that have turned their traditions upside-down and their ancestral home into an industrial moonscape patrolled by guards and police, including one of PNG’s notorious “Mobile Units”, renowned for savages human rights abuses, including killings. The Porgera Mine Death and Injury case [Shooting Fields of Porgera Joint Venture, Papua New Guinea, 2005, by Jethro Tulin] is a textbook case of what can go wrong when large-scale mining confronts Indigenous Peoples, ignoring the impacts of its projects and resorting to goon squads when people rebel against it. This outrages local Indigenous communities, especially when the mine is right next to our homes; my people are exposed to dangerous chemicals like cyanide and mercury; some of our people drown in the tailings and waste during floods; and fishing stocks, flora and fauna are depleted down the river systems, leading to indigenous food sources being threatened.”
See: See: http://www.mpi.org.au/; http://www.mpi.org.au/campaigns/indigenous/barrick_agm/
There was no doubt that the Shareholders meeting was Barrick Gold’s show, using this once-a-year opportunity with shareholders to further their branding as the “Socially Responsible” mining giant, boasting community programs and infrastructure development near their mine sites.
But it wasn’t long before Barrick Gold was cut down in front of their shareholders by a rarely voiced perspective on gold mining, that of Indigenous communities. In the Q&A session were indigenous leaders from Ipili in Papua New Guinea, Wiradjuri in Australia and the Western Shoshone from the U.S., each representing communities affected by Barrick Gold’s operations, and each with a vision that differed greatly from Barrick Gold’s self-propagated benevolence.
- “Your security guards have been shooting and killing our people and raping, even gang-raping, our women with impunity for years now … When will Barrick agree to move the more than 5,000 families who live within your mine lease in a way that is fair and will provide us an opportunity to be healthy, to feed our families, and to educate our children?”, Jethro Tulin, Executive Officer of Akali Tange Association, explained in a speech aimed directly at Barrick’s founder and Chairman, Peter Munk. Jethro’s was met with a round of applause inside the shareholder meeting.
- “Barrick Gold has absolutely no respect for our cultural heritage and the very essence of our cultural being is at stake,” stated Neville “Chappy” Williams, Wiradjuri elder and spokesperson for Mooka and Kalara United Families, the traditional owners of the Lake Cowal area. “In addition to creating an open-pit mine in the “Sacred Heartland of the Wiradjuri Nation,” Barrick has confiscated thousands of Wiradjuri cultural objects from the mine site and refuses to return them to the traditional owners.”
- “The international community has spoken quite clearly on these matters. The United States has been told on two separate occasions to cease and desist the destructive activities on Shoshone lands and Canada has been told to rein in its corporate giants like Barrick,” stated Larson Bill, Westem Shoshone Community Planner, referencing the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (UNCERD) in their review of Canada last year.
- “Barrick Gold says that they want to help the poor, but we don’t want their helping hand, we want their hands off our mountains,” said Sergio Campusano of the stance of his community. “Barrick asked us what we wanted, and we told them that we only wanted one thing, that they leave.”
- Barrick Gold’s board of directors includes former Canadian PM Brain Mulroney. Barrick Gold’s adjusted net income totalled $1,733,000,000 for 2007.
- After the shareholder’s meeting, Anga Atalu, the Secretary for the Porgera Landowners Association in Papua New Guinea, remarked that he found it funny that Barrick specifically mentioned building schools for local communities, “the only school for our community was buried by mine waste 6 years ago,” he said.