The Dominion - Original Peoples

Mont-Royal to become Open-Pit Mine?

Martin Lukacs — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:15:45 +0000

Gold-digging RoyalOr stakes claim in heart of Montreal

MONTREAL–The RoyalOr mining company formally staked a claim to large portions of Parc Mont-Royal – smack in the centre of Montréal – on May 11, announcing plans to develop a major open-pit gold mine.

Anticipating controversy around the move, RoyalOr’s website reassures readers that “our state of the art mitigation and environmental impact strategies coupled with the project’s tremendous potential for regional development will garner the support of municipal and provincial authorities.”

There’s a catch: the company isn’t headed by jet-setting corporate types, but members of communities confronting destructive Canadian mining companies in Honduras, Chile, Papua New Guinea, Mexico, and Malartic, Qc.

In the days leading up to the staking claim action, organizers with the Québec Coalition on the Socio-Environmental Impacts of Transnationals in Latin America (CQISETAL) hoped the stunt would make Montrealers understand the adverse effects of unregulated mining.

“It might give them a momentary sense of what it must be like to wake up one morning to a mining company busily at work destroying one’s land and community,” says Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert, a McGill University history professor and coalition member.

The development of an open-pit mine in the heart of Montréal may seem far-fetched, but Studnicki-Gizbert says Canadian companies tend to disregard communities when in pursuit of precious metals and profits.

In the 400-year-old Mexican town of Cerro de San Pedro, short-listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, residents have been fighting a 15-year battle against Canadian-owned Minera San Xavier’s open-pit mine, which has reduced the town’s landmark mountain to rubble. For local Mario Martinez, a retired engineer, that’s the equivalent of losing Mont-Royal. It hurts him as much, he says, as police intimidation, constant dynamiting, the pollution of the town’s water supply by cyanide-leaching and the company’s refusal to comply with mining regulations.

“That mountain had extraordinary historical and cultural value for Mexicans,” says Martinez. “It was an emblem for the town and the entire state. You could find it in public institutions and on the state’s coat of arms. Three weeks ago, the company blasted its way to the bottom of the hill.”

The idea of staking Mont-Royal came to Martinez when he traveled to Montréal in 2007 to protest Canadian investment in the mine, and to encourage the federal government to adopt mandatory social responsibility standards for overseas corporate behaviour. The Conservatives rejected such standards last month.

“I hope this puts Canadians in our shoes, and makes them feel, even if only for a second, what we feel on a day-to-day basis,” he says.

Closer to home, Ugo Lapointe, a trained geologist with La coalition pour que le Québec ait meilleure mine!, says Québec’s mining system, which the right-wing Fraser Institute has called the world’s friendliest, is in urgent need of an overhaul. One of its most disturbing showpieces is in the northern town of Malartic, where a low grade open-pit mine will displace hundreds of families.

Under Québec's free entry process, a prospector with a $30 license can lay a claim to lands anywhere, on a first come first served basis, which is how CQISETAL will register their Mont-Royal stake with the Ministry of Natural Resources.

“The five communities represented at this action, inside or outside Canada, are living a similar nightmare, dealing with the same problems of weak mining codes and companies operating with no accountability,” he says.

A version of this story was originally published in the Montreal Mirror.

Mont Royal 1

Our Land, Our Life

Van Ferrier — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:13:59 +0000

Two Western Shoshone elders assert their right to land title in order to protect sacred and environmentally sensitive lands threatened by gold mining interests backed by the US government.

AMAZAY: A film about water

Van Ferrier — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:07:13 +0000

The Tse keh Nay people convince BC government to reject Northgate Minerals' proposal to dump acid tailngs into a pristine lake on their territory.

Canadian Mining in Guatemala

dru — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 21:50:37 +0000

After indigenous peoples' houses were burnt to the ground on land owned by a Vancouver mining company, Avi Lewis gets the company's version of events.

Criminalizing Indigenous Rights in Canada

david parker — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 03:47:53 +0000

Criminalizing Indigenous Rights in Canada
David Parker
September 8th, 2008.

HALIFAX - In September of 2007, the United Nations adopted the non-binding Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Four high profile countries notably voted against the declaration - namely Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand.[1] All four countries are states that were established by white settlers on indigenous lands, and all four are currently in disputes with indigenous peoples over land and sovereignty.

The Canadian state, built on the theft and occupation of indigenous lands, continues to benefit from its unjustly acquired assets. Equipped with an ultra-security state apparatus, Canada's repressive and suppressive anti-terrorist and security measures have historically struck hardest against those that have the most to gain, namely aboriginal nations and their legitimate claims for their rights to land and dignity.

Recent cases of indigenous protest in Ontario have been in opposition to government authorized resource extraction on native lands. Despite legitimate demands for sovereignty and decision-making power over their traditional lands, native protesters have been incarcerated: Robert Lovelace and the KI-6 (6 council members of Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation) have received harsh fines and 6 months in jail for peacefully protesting against mineral exploration on the lands of KI and Ardoch Algonquin First Nation (AAFN).

Québec Native Women's Association responds to Harper's apology for residential schools

Anna Carastathis — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 18:34:47 +0000

Ellen Gabriel.jpg

The Québec Native Women's Association has called upon the Canadian government to acknowledge that residential schools were an act of genocide.

Statement by Quebec Native Women's Association/Femmes Autochtones du Québec

Re : Government of Canada's Residential School Apology
June 11, 2008, Kahnawake

Quebec Native Women recognizes the Prime Minister's official apology concerning the genocidal experience of Aboriginal people in the history of the Residential School system. While the apology to Aboriginal peoples is long overdue it is contradicted by the oppressive policies of the Indian
Act.

The heinous crimes committed against Aboriginal children who were victims and survivors of the Residential School experience must be dealt with beyond mere apologies and monetary compensation.