Indonesia

At the invitation of Brazilian activists who are supporting communities struggling against multinational mining giant Vale (formerly Companhia Vale do Rio Doce) in Brazil, and with support from the Steelworkers Humanity Fund and the Canadian Auto Workers Social Justice Fund, MiningWatch’s Catherine Coumans attended the World Social Forum in Belem, Brazil in January 2009. Catherine was asked to provide local activists with information about relations between Vale and communities in Canada (Port Colborne and Sudbury in Ontario as well as Labrador), Indonesia and New Caledonia. In each of these places Inco (now owned by Vale and operating as a subsidiary, Vale Inco) is facing serious community concerns and criticism of its operations.

The Canadian mining map was produced by the Halifax Initiative during the National Roundtables on Corporate Social Responsibility and the Canadian Extractive Industry in Developing Countries. The Roundtables, which took place between June and November of 2006, fulfilled one of the recommendations made in the groundbreaking report, Mining in Developing Countries and Corporate Social Responsibility, tabled by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade (SCFAIT) in June 2005.

[Joint news release: Oxfam Australia, Mineral Policy Institute and MiningWatch Canada] Australian, Canadian, and US mining companies that persist in dumping billions of tonnes of toxic heavy metals such as mercury and lead into the rivers and oceans of some of the world's poorest countries are causing irreversible environmental damage as well as driving human poverty. This warning came from a coalition of human rights groups and mining watchdogs as mining ministers from the Asia-Pacific region gather in Perth this week for a summit.

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.

Today, Wednesday, September 28, 2005, over five hundred people are staging a blockade at the PT Inco mine site in Sorowako, Indonesia while facing intimidation by hired men to break up the blockade and create horizontal conflict within the community. Several people earlier detained by police for several hours have been released.

The One Pute Jaya and Bahumotefe community lands in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, have been staked for PT Inco's expanded contract of work area. The One Pute Jaya and Bahumotefe citizens reject PT Inco's plans to mine on their land.