Canadian diamonds and De Beers

[mike04456]

NWT Premier raises issue of alleged dirty diamond trade while in New York

Open mouth, insert foot.

 

[Richard Sherwood]

And a big mouth at that...

 

[mike04456]

The native peoples in the Northwest Territories have been trying to get a larger share of the diamond revenues on the basis that mines are all on their historic tribal lands. This was probably not the best way to go about it.

 

[winyan]

Possibly not the best way LG, but as with all things Indian, usually the only way. Otherwise First Nations, in Canada, rather like AI's in the US are ignored as being too much of a minority, no large voting bloc etc.

Sometimes the squeaky wheel does manage to get oiled.

win

 

[winyan]

LG, Here's the info I have on the First Nations Diamond rights.

First Nation Tribe Receives Land Rights in Canadian NW

(August 26, '03, 13

6 Edahn Golan)

At what was hailed as a historic event, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien signed yesterday a land settlement giving the Dogrib tribe, an aboriginal people from Canada's north west, rights to collect resource royalties, including from the Diavik and Ekati diamond mines located on their land, among other wide powers.



“On this land, the Tlicho will own the resources, which will give them the tools they need to strengthen their economy and their culture,” says Chretien, pointing out that the tribe has full control over the terms of resource development in their land.



The Dogrib, part of the First Nation, will get self-rule over a vast area of about 15,000 square miles between the Great Slave Lake and the Great Bear Lake, including the Northwest Territories.



According to the settlement the tribe will govern themselves, receive tax revenue and control hunting, fishing and industrial development, in addition to being paid C$108 million, over the next 15 years.



Current resource contracts, such as those signed with the diamond miners, will remain unchanged. After the lease agreements expire the companies will need to renegotiate the terms with the Dogrib government.



It is unclear at this stage how, if at all, this will impact De Beers’ mining efforts in the region, most notably the proposed Snap Lake project.


----

This is probably why DeBeers and First Nations are facing off right now.

win

 

[mike04456]

----------------
On 9/10/2003 7:33:34 PM winyan wrote:
Possibly not the best way LG, but as with all things Indian, usually the only way. Otherwise First Nations, in Canada, rather like AI's in the US are ignored as being too much of a minority, no large voting bloc etc.

Sometimes the squeaky wheel does manage to get oiled.

win----------------

I do understand their frustration. De Beers in particular has been giving them a really hard time, so this may have been a reaction to that.

 

[winyan]

I believe it was frustration...this is from this week's IDX

"Kakfwi Retracts De Beers Statement

(September 11, '03, 13:31 Edahn Golan)

Northwest Territories Premier Stephen Kakfwi has retracted his allegations from earlier this week, saying some of De Beers rough is from “countries of dubious character”, saying he regretted it.



In an interview with CBC News Business yesterday Kakfwi said, “I regret the statements that I made”, adding "They were not accurate,” blaming heat of the moment on his statement.



“I tried to retract the comments but that was not done. I guess we just got a little passionate at the moment," Kakfwi said.



De Beers quickly denied the allegations, rejecting any wrongdoing."

win

 

[aljdewey]

----------------
On 9/10/2003 7:10:10 PM LawGem wrote:
Open mouth, insert foot.

on 9/10/2003 Richard Sherwood wrote:

And a big mouth at that...----------------

WOW.......it would HAVE to big a big mouth to insert the foot that deeply.

Holy cow. This guy's on a suicide mission.

 

[winyan]

Actually, the guy is a frustrated First Nations member. They live in abject poverty, while outside concerns rape the land. It's a 510 year old story.

win

 

[rodentman]

>>This Saturday is Earth Day, the day annually set aside for condemning civilization's devastation of the environment. Around the country, there will be many events applauding Native Americans for living in harmony with the environment before the evil white man came and destroyed paradise. People will be encouraged to restore the earth to the time before Christopher Columbus came and ruined everything.

The school children who mainly participate in these Earth Day brainwashing exercises are not going to hear anything about the incredible environmental destruction by the native peoples of North and South America. A vast amount of research by anthropologists and archaeologists, however, shows clearly that in many ways Native Americans treated the environment far worse than we do today. The notion that they lived in harmony with nature, taking from it only what they needed to live, simply is mythology. The truth, frankly, is gruesome.

A recent study, "Wild in the Woods: The Myth of the Noble Eco-Savage" by Robert Whelan (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1999), documents the many ways in which pre-Columbian man absolutely ravaged his environment.

For starters, Native Americans were big forest burners. Indeed, before the white man came to this hemisphere there was virtually no virgin forest because it had all repeatedly been burned. The reason is simple. Forests had almost no value to Native Americans and interfered with hunting. Says Whelan, "The species which the Indians most wanted to hunt, like bison, moose, elk and deer, are found most easily in areas of recently burnt forest, which is why they burnt the forests over and over again."

Moreover, Native Americans often burned forests simply for fun. The great American explorers Lewis and Clark recorded that Indians in the Rocky Mountains would set trees on fire "as after-dinner entertainment; the huge trees would explode like Roman candles in the night."

When hunting, Native Americans were not shy about using extremely brutal methods, with no concern whatsoever for sportsmanship. A favorite buffalo hunting technique was to stampede huge herds of them over cliffs. Many such Buffalo jump sites have been found in the West, some with remains of as many as 300,000 buffalo.

Furthermore, Native Americans often hunted animals into extinction. Among those that disappeared due to Native American over-hunting are the woolly mammoth, saber-toothed tiger, giant sloth, giant beaver, camel, horse, two-toed horse and dire wolf, according to environmental writer Alston Chase. Australian Aborigines and the Maoris of New Zealand were also responsible for hunting numerous species into extinction long before white men arrived on the scene.

Such extinctions are unsurprising given the Native Americans' utter disregard for conservation. For example, they hunted prime age female animals most heavily, because they had greater stores of fat and better hides.

Native religious ceremonies also contributed to extinctions. Women of the Crow Tribe wore dresses decorated with the teeth of 350 elk. In Hawaii, natives made beautiful capes from the feathers of as many as 80,000 birds, some of which became extinct in the process.

Finally, it should be noted that Native Americans didn't treat the earth any better than they treated the wildlife. Soil erosion was common long before white settlements were established. When the land became exhausted, Native Americans simply moved on. The idea that they treated the land with special reverence simply has no basis outside the imaginations of gullible utopians.

The truth is that in many ways we treat the land better today than pre-Columbian man did, are better conservationists and stewards of the environment. Earth Day enthusiasts should cease celebrating an Eden that never was.<<

Source: Bruce Bartlett, senior fellow, National Center for Policy Analysis, April 19, 2000.

For Whelan study

 

[winyan]

American Indians, not Native American...

Anyone born in the US is a 'Native American'.

win