According to the UN, there are more than 370 million indigenous people in some 70 countries worldwide. For centuries, indigenous people have endured bias and, in some cases, severe racism. Their lands were (and sometimes still are) considered empty and fair game for others to exploit.
Up to sixty percent of the world’s most desirable mineral resources are on lands that belong to indigenous peoples, which means how individual countries, multinational corporations and the international community address the rights of indigenous people will have major implications for economic development, international trade, the environment, human rights and basic justice. Indigenous people in resource rich areas are rightly concerned about environmental degradation, human rights violations and being dispossessed from their ancestral land.
Last month, in Western Australia, the 200 families of the Martidja Manyjima people decided to challenge the world’s largest mining company, BHP Billiton, seeking to limit the amount of land it can lease, the amount of water it can draw from the aquifer (currently billions of gallons used) and to end its destruction of cultural sacred sites. They want to stop the company’s expansion. There is some legal precedent — a similar challenge was defended when a suburb of Perth was at stake. Will Australia, so heavily dependent on minerals, step up to the plate when it comes to aboriginal rights?
Indigenous people have begun to push back against the encroachment of mining and extraction companies and slowly they are gaining ground. Last spring, in Peru, the indigenous people of the Amazon banded together to force President Alan Garcia to back down and the country’s Congress to overturn the two decrees that had sought to open more than 100 million acres of the Amazon basin to extraction projects and other development.
Unusually, in Peru’s situation, the indigenous people, who do not usually work together or uniformly see eye-to-eye, had come together, and, as a united front, they were successful. But not before the protests became violent.
No situation should have to come to that. This past March, an international conference on indigenous people and extractive industries was held in the Philippines, organized by the indigenous rights group, Tebtebba. Indigenous people from every continent were present to discuss problems and solutions that stem mainly from mining. (Mining has the biggest environmental footprint and usually creates the worst environmental destruction.)
Some non-governmental organizations, including World Resources Institute, have recommended a policy approach that calls for free, prior, and informed consent by indigenous people to such invasive industries — but why would any group be tempted to offer consent? Without an economic incentive — and many extractive industries promise the moon when it comes to jobs and then never deliver — and strict environmental protections, there will be no reason to give such consent. Extraction companies need to make better and more direct and reliable economic offers, and countries need to establish powerful environmental limitations and guidelines.
“The Manila Declaration” from the conference demands “compensation and restitution for damages inflicted upon our lands, territories and resources, and the rehabilitation of our degraded environments caused by extractive industry projects that did not obtain our FPIC (Free, Prior and Informed Consent)”. The Declaration asks for monitoring, accountability, transparency, high multiple impact statements.
I thought of this when I attended a “State of the State” discussion at Alaska House in New York City last week. The panel, which included the head of the Carlyle Group, the chancellor of the University of Alaska, and Daniel Yergin (author of the seminal book on oil, The Prize), unsurprisingly focused mainly on energy.
Alaska not only has oil, but tons of natural gas, and recently, TransCanada and Exxon have agreed to partner with the state to start work on a 1700-mile, $30 billion pipeline to get it to the lower 48.
Oil accounts for almost 1/3 of the jobs in Alaska and, according to one of the speakers, the overwhelming majority of the state’s income. It is a resource-rich and –dependent place. A portion of the state’s oil revenue goes to The Alaska Permanent Fund. The Fund has acted as a proto-type sovereign wealth fund and currently has a balance of more than $30 billion — because of the small population, every year Alaskans receive a sizable “dividend” from the state.
For me, the most fascinating perspective came from Margie Brown, the CEO of the Cook Inlet Region Native regional corporation. Before the oil pipeline, Alaska was a young and fairly poor state; the indigenous people were its poorest and most marginalized. But they had never given up (or had to give up) their claim on 96% of the land — hundreds of millions of acres. So when oil was discovered, the Indians and Inuits of Alaska forced the issue legally.
There was never truly a question of whether the indigenous people would or could claim all the land. So in 1971, the claim was settled in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, which gave the Native people 44 million acres and nearly a billion dollars. Instead of the money being given directly to the people, 13 regional corporations were set up. These corporations, made up of the different native groups, used their share of the money for economic and social needs. The idea was that the money should make the tribes self-sufficient — which some did better than others.
One typical native idea, according to Brown, is the sharing provision: 70% of a corporation’s income is given to a pool to be shared with the other 12 Native corporations on a per capita basis. Shares of the corporation belong to the natives of the individual tribes — they cannot be sold, only inherited, to keep the wealth in the hands of the indigenous people. Corporations have invested in mining ventures, tourism, infrastructure, banking, and local business. There is a yearly independent and transparent audit.
Not long ago, in Yellowknife, in Canada’s Northwest Territories, 27 Canadian tribes came together to form a native corporation. And recently, a member of the Navajo tribe came to see Brown to investigate the idea of a tribal energy corporation for their area in the Southwest.
The idea of a native corporation is only one possibility that indigenous people can develop to manage their resource wealth. The Alaska experience shows it is the local people who can and must develop the solution, and that doing so does not mean a total end to extraction, nor does it mean the end to the inherent environmental dangers of extraction resources —- as Alaska knows only too well. Greenland’s Inuit are also developing democratic plans for development.
Local input makes it better and more palatable — a win-win for all concerned, hopefully without the violence seen in Peru.
