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NAN leader challenges diamond industry to respect First Nation territorities

December 10, 2006 - 5:22am | by Anonymous

See the CBC News story after Deputy Chief Alvin Fiddler's document ...

Canada's Blood Diamonds? What DeBeers and the Canadian Governments Are Doing To Aboriginal Communities and the Environment in Canada’s Boreal Forest.

This holiday season, when more diamonds are sold in America than any other time of year, the Hollywood movie “Blood Diamond” is causing many people to reevaluate purchasing ‘conflict diamonds’. They will be looking to buy diamonds from other places in the world where responsible companies are treating local people and the environment fairly and responsibly. And mining companies will be trying to sell them diamonds from Canada.

Unfortunately, many Canadian diamonds are anything but conflict-free; ongoing aboriginal rights and environmental concerns should make consumers think twice before purchasing a Canadian diamond, too.

Nishnawbe Aski Nation, which means the people and the land, represents some 45,000 Cree and Ojibway people scattered over 49 communities in Canada's Boreal Forest—the world’s largest intact ecosystem and Earth’s last line of defense against global warming. At 1.4 billion acres, the Canadian Boreal Forest is one of the largest unspoiled forest ecosystems remaining on Earth, a mosaic of interconnected forest and wetland ecosystems, teeming with birds, fish, plants and animal life. Canada’s Boreal Forest is also a potential treasure chest of timber, oil and gas, and minerals, including diamonds and is under heavy development pressure.

At present, less than ten percent of the Boreal is protected from industrial development. Unless something changes, corporations will carve it up without regard to the impacts to the people or the environment.

While few American’s have ever heard of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation or the Boreal Forest, scientists will tell them what the peoples that live there already know: it’s critical to the earth in so many ways, and must be protected.

The Nishnawbe Aski Nation, along with many other First Nation communities throughout the great Boreal Forest have been in the grip of a diamond exploration boom led by companies like DeBeers.

That and other intensive resource development is causing environmental devastation.

A complicit Canadian government seems to be turning a blind eye.

We need and welcome responsible resource development, but with an emphasis on the word responsible.

The Nishnawbe Aski Nation communities are among the poorest in the world, ranked 69th in the U.N.'s Human Development Index, with the lowest life expectancy in Canada, the highest youth suicide rates in the world, and an unemployment rate of more than 60 percent.

With diamonds on our lands our communities should be wealthy.

Instead the hunt for theses rare gems from the heart of the earth has meant only conflict and strife for us.

De Beers plans to develop massive open pit diamond mining projects in our traditional territory but it is not honoring our treaty rights or working with us to win our consent for the projects.

Their army of airplanes, helicopters and claim stakers have been trespassing on the traditional lands of many of our communities, despite our calls for moratoriums on diamond exploration.

The link between diamond exploration and aboriginal and treaty rights violations fits the pattern of diamond conflicts in Africa. In these former European colonies, the scramble for control of diamond mining territory has helped to fuel a cycle of conflict. Will the cycle be repeated in our lands too?

Before they can claim to have done the right thing in Canada, DeBeers and other Canadian diamond mining companies must demonstrate a different attitude and pattern of behavior. They must allow us to determine where, when and how diamond mining will take place, if at all.

They must also work with us and the Canadian governments to protect the great Boreal Forest ecosystem and make sure it continues to provide clean air, clean water and abundant wildlife for our communities and for the world.

The battle over diamonds will be largely fought in the US, where annual sales of diamond jewelry represent almost half of the $55 billion sold world wide.

The time is now for U.S. consumers to connect the dots and weigh in. Tell De Beers, other diamond miners and Canada that unless things change, Canadian diamonds are no better than conflict diamonds from Africa.

Alvin Fiddler
Deputy Grand Chief Nishnawbe Aski Nation
www.nan.on.ca  

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From http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2006/12/08/conflict-diamond.html

First Nations leader slams Canadian diamonds
Friday, December 8, 2006 - CBC News

A First Nations group in Ontario is trying to dissuade Americans from buying Canadian diamonds this holiday season, saying the jewels are mined at the expense of its people.

Alvin Fiddler, deputy grand chief of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, said De Beers Canada in particular is causing environmental devastation and disrupting his community of 45,000 Cree and Ojibwa in northern Ontario.

"They're not clean diamonds; they're not conflict-free diamonds," Fiddler told CBC News. "People are paying a price for these diamonds and it's our people in the Nishnawbe Aski Nation. Our people, our children, are languishing in poverty while these resources are being extracted from their territory."

Fiddler this week had an editorial published in the diamond industry trade publication Rapaport News, in which he outlined his concerns about Canadian diamond exploration and mining. He says several communities have called for a moratorium on mineral exploration on land where the legal title is under dispute.

"The battle over diamonds will be largely fought in the United States, where annual sales of diamond jewelry represent almost half of the $55 billion sold worldwide. The time is now for consumers in the United States to connect the dots and weigh in," Fiddler wrote in his editorial.

"Tell De Beers, other diamond miners and Canada that unless things change, Canadian diamonds are no better than conflict diamonds from Africa."

Linda Dorrington, a spokeswoman for De Beers said the company is making an effort to negotiate with First Nations in Canada but said land rights need to be decided by government. The company has one project underway along with exploration work within Nishnawbe Aski territory.

"We encourage the government and these groups to continue to work together to get these matters settled," she said.

Fiddler said the diamond company should stop work until the government settles the land claims.

The trade in diamonds originating in conflict zones, sometimes called "blood diamonds," has helped pay for wars in Africa that have killed millions in Angola, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Congo.

Under heavy criticism from human rights activists, governments, non-governmental organizations and industry enacted the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme in 2002, which tracks diamonds from the mine to the store.

Jewelers are bracing for more consumer scrutiny this season with the opening of the new film Blood Diamond set amid the brutal civil war in Sierra Leone in the late 1990s. Industry officials have launched a high-profile campaign, saying the Kimberley Process has curbed the "blood diamond" trade.

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