BHP-Billiton

There are no clean diamonds. Exploring for them, digging them out of the ground and selling them requires sacrifices from the natural environment, from the wildlife and fish that live on it, and from the Aboriginal people who depend on it.

We want to ensure that the public understand that Canada’s Aboriginal communities are engaged in a daily power struggle to ensure that the mines benefit their people, and to ensure that these mines do not irreversibly damage the intricate web of life on which we all depend.

In the municipal jurisdiction of El Estor in northeastern Guatemala, Maya Q'eqchi' communities represent more than 90% of the population. They are scattered over an area of nearly 3,000 km² in more than 100 villages as well as the town of El Estor, totaling over 35,000 persons. The Guatemalan Ministry of Energy and Mines has granted more than 1,000 km² of the area of El Estor to international mining companies* for the purposes of exploration and exploitation of nickel using a strip mining process. Nearly all of these areas are lands on which indigenous communities live and work. Some have titles to their lands, but many are still in the process of collective titling of the lands they possess.

While ethnography ordinarily privileges anthropological interpretations, this book attempts the reciprocal process of describing indigenous modes of analysis. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research with the Yonggom people of New Guinea, the author examines how indigenous analysis organizes local knowledge and provides a framework for interpreting events, from first contact and colonial rule to contemporary interactions with a multinational mining company and the Indonesian state.

Submitted by Alternatives North.

What is BHP-Billiton so afraid of? That’s the question Mining Watch’s Joan Kuyek asked recently in Yellowknife, NWT, while speaking about the strike at the Australian mining giant’s Ekati diamond mine, 300 kilometres north of the city.

Rio Algom, a subsidiary of BHP-Billiton, and Denison Mines Limited have awarded a contract for laboratory analytical work to monitor 14 decommissioned uranium mines and 130 million tonnes of residual radioactive tailings in the Serpent River basin area to a large commercial laboratory in Peterborough, Ontario.

The winners of the 2003 Dirty Digger Awards have been decided. The awards are being made to coincide with the Mining Journal's 'Outstanding Achievement' Awards, to be presented at the Mines and Money Congress on 3rd December 2003.

International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) announcement:

(Presentation by Joan Kuyek, National Coordinator)

Thank you for this opportunity to appear before the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development.

MiningWatch Canada is a pan-Canadian coalition of environmental, Aboriginal, social justice, development and labour organizations that advocates for responsible mining practices and policies in Canada and by Canadian companies operating internationally.

We have a number of concerns with the amendments to CEAA which I will address here with reference to some specific mining projects.

Washington, D.C. — A new World Bank report calls on the mining company Broken Hill Proprietary (BHP) to immediately close the troubled Ok Tedi mine in Papua New Guinea due to the environmental damage being caused by the mine. In response to the report, international environmental groups including U.S.-based Mineral Policy Center, the Australia-based Mineral Policy Institute, MiningWatch Canada, and Papua New Guinea's Non-governmental Environmental Watchdog Group, called on BHP to take full responsibility for mine cleanup by implementing a comprehensive mine closure plan.