Inuit miners demand traditional rights

Native Inuit Greenlanders have launched a campaign asserting their rights over the natural resources of their ancestral home.

Traditional small-scale, sustainable gem miners are, they say, being harassed by the Danish Government and a Canadian mining company, preventing them from earning their living in a manner practised for centuries.

On 16th August 2007, Inuit men ruby miners were arrested in a demonstration against Canadian mining corporation True North Gems complained to Greenland’s Bureau for Minerals & Petroleum. Greenland police were ordered to arrest the miners, an act which campaigners say was in violation of the Danish Government's own Mineral Code and the UN Declaration of Human & Indigenous Rights. Greenland was directly ruled by Denmark until June 2009, when extensions were made to the Home Rule instituted by Denmark in 1979.

The arrests were followed by a clampdown on indigenous mining operations. Lars Lund Sorenson, then a division head at the Minerals Office, was said to have told Inuit groups that "We don’t want your sort of people having access to this kind of wealth."

Local people engaging in gem mining were, they say, told that they would be charged with criminal offences unless they signed paperwork promising not to mine again, and were fined when they refused.

Barred from traditional land

According to Neils Madsen, head of the 16th August Union, an association of the threatened miners, the Greenland Bureau of Minerals and Petroleum has sought to enforce new rules governing mining on the island, which have been developed without any consultation of local communities and which Madsen claims violate Section 32 of the Greenland constitution. The new rules forbid traditional Inuit miners from collecting ruby, sapphire, diamond, chrysoberyl, emerald, opal and pearl, or from collecting other minerals in groups of more than two persons – including family members.

Inuit campaigners also object to the regulations' references to personal land claims, as most Inuit land is communally owned. And they say that fees of $200 for exploration licenses and $1000 for exploitation licenses are beyond the means of most indigenous gem collectors.

The new regulations, claims Madsen, were approved by the Danish government without the support of the Home Rule Parliament.

Progress in negotiations?

According to Greg Valerio, founder of UK-based fair trade pioneers Cred Jewellery, recent negotiations with the Greenlandic Bureau of Mining and Petroleum have shown possible signs of progress.

Valerio reported from the negotiations that the Bureau's negotiators were completely ignorant of issues around small-scale mining in Greenland, confusing the chemicals used by different types of miners and trying to accuse traditional miners in Greenland of polluting the environment with chemical actually used by industrial gold miners elsewhere in the world.

“In fact, the mining of rubies requires no chemicals whatsoever” said Valerio in a report for fairjewelry.org.

He also reported that in the new negotiations, officials were assigned to represent the Inuit position, a move from the BMP's previous assumption that Inuit miners were criminals.

However, Inuit campaigners were, reported Valerio, given on four weeks to review an entire volume of new regulations. The Bureau was also said to have admitted in initial discussions that it had no experience in small-scale mining issues, that it had taken on no experts to help in shaping the new laws, and that it had secured no funding for any measures to promote equal rights or representation for local miners in relation to a regulatory process that could strip hundreds of their livelihoods.

The prejudices apparent amongst Bureau officials was described by Valerio as follows:

“The only information they had, apart from the criminal proceedings they had instigated, was general book and anecdotal knowledge from their background in servicing large scale miners. These larger corporate organizations generally despise small scale miners and hold deep seated prejudices against them. One member of the World Gold Council famously exploded at a meeting in London, exclaiming, “All small scale miners should be shot!””

However, Valerio reported, the discussions did close with the Bureau agreeing to help pay costs for a lawyer to help Greenland’s Inuit maintain rights to their own land and resources.

Sarah Irving is a freelance writer specialising in social and environmental issues and the Middle East.