Dear Editor,
Our residents in Chinese Landing Village are deeply saddened and concerned to hear that the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs and the National Toshaos Council have both appeared to abandon their mandates to represent the interests and rights of indigenous peoples.
The Ministry’s mandate, according to their own website, is to “recognize and protect the collective rights of Amerindian villages and communities”. Although the NTC has no statutory authority to resolve our situation, it is tasked with preparing strategies and plans for the conservation and sustainable management of Village lands and natural resources and advising the Minister on the protection of indigenous culture and heritage.
It is thus appalling to us that the Minister would suggest that there is nothing else the Ministry can do for us, or that the Ministry will not do its job simply because we have other allies supporting us. It is also dismaying that the NTC would suggest that preparations for Heritage Month are more important than addressing the ongoing destruction of our heritage.
Our village is experiencing (and has been for more than two decades) violations of our rights to our lands, resources, cultural heritage, livelihoods, health, and environment, because the Government continues to uphold mining interests in our titled lands. This runs counter to the rights the Government says are protected in the Amerindian Act and to the rights the Government has promised to uphold through its ratification of various international treaties.
We have sought assistance from the Government since 1998, including from the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs and later the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples Affairs, to help address these rights violations. The current Minister has been aware of our plight since her previous term in office. Yet there has been a systemic failure by the Government to protect our rights.
We had hoped the Ministry would act to enforce the relevant provisions of the Amerindian Act protecting titled lands from unwanted mining. We hoped that the Ministry and NTC would advocate on our behalf for the Government to respect our land rights and to revoke those mining concessions, granted without our consent, and to expel the miners from our lands. None of these actions have been taken. The Government insists that it is promoting indigenous rights by issuing new absolute grants and certificates of title. These title documents feel meaningless, though, when we have to ask miners for permission to access parts of our own titled lands.
The CCJ decision of 2017 primarily determined that the GGMC has no authority to enforce the Amerindian Act. This authority lies with the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs, which has done nothing to regulate the relevant provisions of the Act in the five years since the CCJ ruling.
Moreover, we have no doubt that the GGMC can achieve the same end by enforcing the Mining Act and its regulations, yet it does nothing except endless and fruitless “investigations” into the situation. The CCJ’s decision also did not take into account that we have a title that predated the mining concessions because the GGMC failed to provide any evidence on this point.
It is because of this that we have been forced to take our case to court. We have turned to the courts to uphold our rights to our traditional lands, which have already been legally recognized with title documents. We would rather not have to go to court though. The case would not be needed if the Ministry and other Government agencies protected our rights the way they claim to do – by not granting mining concessions in titled lands and by removing unwanted miners from our titled lands.
Going to court does not mean the Government can do no more for us. We can withdraw or settle our court case if the Government chooses to respect our rights without being ordered to do so by the judicial system. We still hope for such a resolution.
We are also tired of endless Government “investigations” into the situation. The situation is clear and the Government knows it as well as we do. We do not need more Government investigations that try to identify “illegal” mining activity. It is all illegal, because it is all happening inside our titled lands without our consent. We need the GGMC and Ministry of Natural Resources to shut down the mining operations in Tassawini and revoke the mining concessions inside our titled lands. We need the EPA to test our waters and soils and help us put in place measures to restore our environment. We need the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs to enforce the provisions of the Amerindian Act that require miners to get consent before mining inside village titled lands. We need the Ministry and NTC to fulfill their mandates and promote respect for our rights as indigenous peoples.
As the Government kicks off Amerindian Heritage Month, we urgently appeal to officials and the public to remember that celebrating our heritage requires first and foremost protecting our heritage.
Sincerely,
Orin Fernandes
for Chinese Landing Village Council
