Bob Lovelace speaks in Ecuador, by Jennifer Moore, 20 May 2009

[Steev]

Written by Jennifer Moore
Wednesday, 20 May 2009
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1871/49/

“The sorrows are ours; the cows are not.”

Translation of a lyric written by Atahualpa Yupanqui (born Hector
Roberto Chavero; died 1992), an Argentinian Communist exiled to Paris
and who lived out his life there. The original Spanish is “las penas
son de nosotros, las vaquitas son ajenas.”

Image“Welcome to the future,” says the sign behind the gated area
where Vancouver-based Corriente Resources is developing an open-pit
copper mine in Ecuador's Southern Amazon. Bumping along in the back of
a pick-up truck on her way to visit one of several communities slated
to be displaced by the project, the idea that the future is fenced off
with restricted entry for local communities that have lived on the
land for years, even generations, hit home for Anne Marie Sam.

From the Nak'azdli First Nation in central British Colombia, Sam is
one of two indigenous representatives who visited communities affected
by Canadian-financed mining activities in Ecuador earlier this month.
“We don't even want Canadian companies in our territory, so we don't
blame Ecuadorians for not wanting them here either.” The Nak'azdli
Nation opposes a proposed gold and copper mine on their territory that
they have determined “would not strengthen them as a community” which
includes about 1,700 members.

The trip was a critical response to President Rafael Correa's recent
invitation to the Canadian Embassy to help delegitimate the position
of various indigenous leaders who are critical of his mining policy.
The Embassy is still responding and will soon host a second delegation
of indigenous leaders. This most recent visit was coordinated by the
Quito-based Pachamama Foundation in cooperation with the Confederation
of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE).

The CONAIE has criticized Correa for continuing with World Bank-backed
policies to substitute the country's dwindling oil reserves with metal
extraction. Ecuador has been an oil producer for more than forty
years, but no large scale mining project has yet entered production
here. The CONAIE is worried about possible impacts on both water and
local livelihoods. They further argue that indigenous peoples and
other affected communities should have the right to consent over what
projects take place on their lands or territories. A position
substantiated by international law.

However, Correa is unequivocally opposed to local communities having
“a veto” over what he sees as a matter of national interest. He calls
his critics “infantile environmentalists” and the “greatest threat” to
his political project.

Coming from Canada - the world's principal source of financing for
global mining activities – Robert Lovelace, a leader from the Ardoch
Algonquin First Nation in Eastern Ontario, says his experiences in the
Andean nation reveal that indigenous communities in both countries
“share a heck of a lot in common.” Not only does Canada have its share
of environmental disasters from extractive industry and not uphold the
right to consent for indigenous communities, it also lags behind
Ecuador for not having ratified international conventions that
recognize these rights including the American Convention on Human
Rights, Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization and
the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

“We need to see much more of each other and we need to compare notes,”
Lovelace says. An ongoing relationship, he believes, could be mutually
beneficial. “When people in Ecuador stand strong,” he says, “it also
helps us because it tells the mining companies that nobody is going to
take the stuff that they've been giving out regardless of where they
are.”

Canada's Glowing Reputation

While Correa hopes that indigenous leaders invited by the Canadian
Embassy will drown out the CONAIE's criticisms, the recent visit by
Sam and Lovelace revealed that Canada's story is not as harmonious as
Correa would lead Ecuadorians to believe.

“[Canada] has understood how to respect and benefit its ancestral
peoples,” said Correa during a national radio address. The first
people to benefit in Canada from mining, he added, “are the ancestral
peoples.”

But Lovelace, speaking during two events in Quito which included
members of Ecuador's Constitutional Court, the Ministry of Mines and
Petroleum and an international group of lawyers, called Canadian
mining a “two fold problem: for us and the rest of the world.” He
insisted that within Canada it has to be seen within the context of
colonialism and poor regulation.

The firm but soft-spoken leader explained that indigenous peoples are
the most impoverished group in Canada, with high rates of suicide
particularly for those who have lost their traditional ways of life,
and that they have suffered official attempts to destroy their social
and cultural fabric leading to rampant addictions and many broken
homes. This, he explained, is a cost of the extractive and commercial
mindset with which Canada was founded and continues to operate.

Lovelace has been opposing a proposed uranium mine on Ardoch
territory, and shared his experience about how his community was sued
for $77 million dollars by Frontenac Ventures and about his three and
a half months in jail as a result of efforts to prevent mining
activities on their lands.1 Radioactive contamination of lakes and
rivers from uranium mining, occupational health hazards, and the uses
of uranium for nuclear energy and arms are a few reasons why they do
not support the mine.

Speaking to the national press, he added that the proliferation of
Canadian mining companies can be explained by the fact that “we don't
have tough rules” and have poor infrastructure to enforce the rules
that we do have. The Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) lists almost 60% of
mining companies worldwide with over 1,400 projects in Latin America
and more than 8,000 around the globe.2

He thinks stronger regulation, backed up by good monitoring and
enforcement, should be “the cost of doing business for companies that
are invited into other countries and invited onto indigenous land, as
a bare minimum. Canada has to acknowledge that and do that because it
is immoral not to.” The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of
Racial Discrimination (CERD) has also urged Canada to develop such
legislation.

But Canada has been reticent. It took the government four years to
respond to parliamentary recommendations to strengthen its mining
legislation for extractive industry abroad, and its recent decision
reinforces voluntary guidelines rather than tightening regulations.

Interestingly, Ecuadorians from the northwestern valley of Intag
recently launched a lawsuit against the TSX with the objective that
the case will help lead to stronger regulations in Canada. Inteños
have broadly opposed open-pit copper mining for over twelve years, but
this has not stopped current project owner Copper Mesa Mining
(formerly Ascendant Copper) from trying to use forceful means to try
to reach its concessions. The TSX was warned before the company was
listed that further financing could lead to human rights violations
and violence in the valley.3

ImageThe Environment, an Afterthought

However, Correa would have Ecuadorians believe that TSX-listed
companies who are irresponsible, well, they are simply not Canadian.
“Be careful!” he has warned on national radio. “There are some
companies that try to pass themselves off as Canadian because they
trade on the Canadian stock market, but they're not Canadian. Canada
has strict, very strict, environmental requirements.”

But the Canadian public does not even know how much pollution mining
operations have generated.

Only several weeks ago, the Federal Court released a “strongly worded
decision” ordering the Canadian government to “stop withholding data
on one of Canada's largest sources of pollution - millions of tonnes
of toxic mine tailings and waste rock from mining operations
throughout the country.”4 Indicating the strength of Canada's mining
lobby, it has taken sixteen years since the National Pollutant Release
Inventory was created for the sector to be held to the same reporting
requirements as every other industrial sector.

When Anne Marie hears a question translated for her from an audience
in Quito: “Mining companies say that their projects will be clean,
that they won't have serious enviromental impacts, what do you think?”
she laughs at the coincidence. “We hear the same thing,” she remarks.
“But the question isn't whether a company will contaminate our water,
it's when.”

Given the industry's track record in her home province, Anne Marie's
nation has not been swayed by company promises that environmental
impacts will be mitigated. A recent press release from the Nak'azdli
Nation states, “There are close to 2,000 abandoned or closed mines in
BC and two third of them are still polluting the land and water.”5

So, when the Nak'azdli First Nation was approached by Terrane Metals
to develop a gold and copper mine on their lands at the headwaters of
the Peace River watershed, they did not jump at the opportunity for an
agreement with the company. They did, however, take the chance to do
some of their own investigations and accepted the company's offer of
$150,000 CDN without promising any further agreement.

Anne Marie was appointed to study the issue.

“Our elders advised us not to focus just on the economic aspect, but
to also seriously consider the social and cultural implications,” she
said.

With the company funds, they hired their own experts and examined the
social, cultural, economic, environmental and legal ramifications of
the project put together in what she calls an “Aboriginal Interest and
Use Study.”

They concluded that they could not support the project. Even when they
hit a period during which many of their members were without work,
they determined that the kinds of jobs they could qualify for based
upon their education and experience – cleaning, cooking and
construction – did not outweigh the impacts.

Their disapproval has not stopped the company from seeking other
nearby First Nation communities that would accept the project. Nor did
it stop the provincial government from recently approving the
company's Environmental Assessment despite not having consulted the
Nak'azdli Nation. However, it has been a key tool in their resistance.

It is a challenge because “time is not on the side of First Nations
when it comes to a mining project. It's always the timeline of the
company.” But, she laughs, thinking about the time it took to read
through the 6,000 page environmental assessment that the company
provided and in which they found many weaknesses, “if I didn't read
[the study], I wouldn't be able to tell you this story.” Education and
communication, she says, “are key.”

ImageSorrow is Ours, the Cows are Not

The newly elected Prefect of Ecuador's southernmost Amazonian
province, Salvador Quishpe, welcomed the Canadian delegation to their
final event in El Pangui. The Condor Mountain Range stretches along
the eastern horizon of this steamy jungle town situated near some of
the most contentious mining developments in the country.

Whereas Bob Lovelace contextualizes Canadian mining in terms of
colonialism, Quishpe frames Ecuadorian mining around twenty five years
of neoliberalism that he says continues despite Correa's slogan “Our
patrimony belongs to all.” He jokes for a moment: “the Canadians came
along and said, “Belongs to all, eh?” “Hey, that's good, then that
includes us too!”

Quishpe reminded the 400-strong crowd that UNESCO has declared part of
the Condor Mountains a World Bioreserve which has over 48 distinct
ecosystems and is one of the highest priority areas for scientific
research in the neotropics. He also reminded the audience that vast
stretches have been claimed for mining exploration and that the
principal concession holders are Vancouver-based Corriente Resources
and Toronto's Kinross Gold.

He observes that the industry's principal proponents - the Ecuadorian
representatives of Canadian transnationals - are in large part former
officials from the Ministry of Mines and Petroleum. So, he remarks,
the same people who helped institute the neoliberal framework for
mining in the 1990s are now sitting on top of some of the best
deposits of gold and copper. “It is ultimately the companies, not the
government, who makes mining policy in this country,” he concludes.
“And while it's a mortal sin to say it,” he continues, “mining should
be nationalized.”

Having recently been called “an enemy of the government” and a “dumb
leftist” by Correa, Quishpe adds, “We are not against development.”
Rather, he emphasizes, his province needs proper planning with strong
participation. He proposes at least one industry – tourism - that he
plans to promote during his upcoming term in local office. “We want
development for the well-being of our peoples, not so-called
development by which a transnational company takes away our riches for
itself.”

Sam has a similar comment. “Our community has always said, we're not
against development. But we need to have a say in what development
happens in our area and where, and right now we're not being given
that opportunity.”

The Waterkeepers

As the event wraps up, Anne Marie hands Salvador a card. She explains
that the image of a red and green frog was drawn by an artist from her
community. The frog represents the waterkeepers, she says, and
Salvador is a water defender just like she and the rest of her clan
from the Nak'azdli First Nation.

“Coming here has opened my eyes to how connected we are,” says Sam
reflecting on the visit shortly later, “and how similar the fight we
have to protect the land and the connection [we have with the land]
whether indigenous or not.” She thinks about El Pangui's struggle at
the headwaters of the Amazon, and recalls her own at the headwaters of
the Arctic. “What we need,” she says, “is a stronger role for
indigenous people that is not after the fact or after claims are made
on the land.”

In British Colombia, she says they are using new technology that
enables helicopters to identify and take images of what minerals are
in the ground just by flying over their territories. “Instead of this
information going direct to the internet so that people can begin
staking claims,” she says, “the information should go to First Nations
first. And then we can decide if we want to do small scale mining, or
if we want to do something else because open pits are not a nice site
to look at and a recreational lake in an open pit (which is what the
Terrane Metals promises to leave behind in her territory) isn't an
ideal situation for us.”

Robert Lovelace also believes that a much more meaningful
participation is necessary. He describes it as a spectrum that usually
begins with information sessions or token consultations.
“Consultation,” he explains, “is still a form of tokenism because to
consult with someone does not mean that you're going to agree with
them or even take their advice into account especially when there's a
power differential, whether based on capital or politics.”

“But when the values of each of the parties are truly recognized,” he
says “and we look at consensual partnerships where both parties are
able to give consent, then if one party can't give consent, a project
or development doesn't go ahead. But that's honest partnership.”

“As long as the power of First Nations are recognized then they may
assign their authority to a corporation or a level of government in
order to facilitate something happening. But that's their choice,
they're not being forced or imposed upon to do that. The last stage is
true self-governance. That's having full authority to choose to move
forward with development or not, or to choose another future
altogether.”

While it has yet to be seen what the Canadian Embassy's upcoming
delegation will share with Ecuadorian's, it will most definitely get
broader coverage from the Ecuadorian press. As well, one can be almost
sure that free, prior, and informed consent; recognition of the
inherent rights of indigenous peoples; and the possibility of
different futures other than the Canadian-owned, open-pit and
underground mines envisioned for El Pangui, Yantzaza, Intag, Victoria
del Portete, Molleturo, Ponce Enriquez, and many other parts of
Ecuador will not be up for discussion.
Notes:

1. For further detail see: Justin Podur, “Canada's latest political
prisoners” http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/17019
2. 2007 figures based upon the Toronto Stock Exchange's Mining
Presentation
3. For more information see http://www.ramirezversuscoppermesa.com/index.html
4. Press release “Court victory forces Canada to report pollution data
for mines” available at http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2009/04/24-0
5. Press release “Proposed BC mines cannot proceed without Nak'azdli
First Nation” available at http://www.rightsaction.org/articles/Nakazdli_abuse_031909.html