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Aboriginal and Inuit Mining and Oil/Gas

The transition to closure: The Diavik diamond mine in the Northwest Territories is approaching closure in early 2026, but Rio Tinto aims to leave a positive legacy – by Ailbhe Goodbody (CIM Magazine – October 28, 2024)

https://magazine.cim.org/en/

Rio Tinto’s Diavik diamond mine in the Northwest Territories is set to close in approximately 18 months after almost a quarter of a century of operations. Over 144 million carats of rough diamonds have been recovered at Diavik through a combination of open-pit and underground mining since it entered commercial production in 2003, and the mine is a major contributor to the economy of the Northwest Territories, accounting for more than 10 per cent of the territory’s gross domestic product.

The current mine plan anticipates that operations will cease in the first quarter of 2026, followed by a transition to closure activities from 2026 to 2029. However, the mine was designed with closure in mind from the outset, and Rio Tinto hopes to leave a lasting beneficial impact in the region after its closure activities end in 2029, while limiting its carbon footprint at the same time.

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Cree hold ‘eye-opening’ discussions on how development happens in northern Quebec – by Cole Bosum (CBC News North – September 27, 2024)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/

Leaders meet with Cree traditional hunters and trappers last week to talk development

How development happens in Cree communities and who benefits was front and centre at a recent meeting between Cree leaders and many hunters, trappers and land users from the inland communities in northern Quebec.

Close to 300 hunters and tallymen, as traditional land users are called in Quebec, were registered for the meeting that happened in Mistissini last week, but organizers say closer to 500 were in the room. “The meeting for me was a real eye-opening experience,” said Mandy Gull-Masty, the grand chief of the Cree nation in northern Quebec.

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How Quebec Cree avoided the fate of Attawapiskat – by Terry Milewski (CBC News Politics – May 14, 2013)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/

Please note that his article is from 2013!!

On the eastern shore of James Bay, a very different story

Freezing, mouldy homes. Sewage contamination. Sick kids. Unemployment. A blockade on the road to the mine. A hunger strike by the chief. That, it seems, is the news from the Cree of James Bay — at least, as it’s defined by the desperate community of Attawapiskat, in northern Ontario.

Before that, there was the news from nearby Kashechewan. Flooding. Despair. Suicide. And both James Bay towns endured fresh emergencies this spring as the annual meltwaters exposed, again, their rickety infrastructure.

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Times of ‘Wild West’ in mining are over: Agnico Eagle – by Arty Sarkisian (Nunatsiaq News – October 28, 2024)

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People remain suspicious of resource extraction even though more regulations are in place, says company director

Many Nunavummiut have misconceptions about mining, says Pujjuut Kusugak. Kusugak is the director of Nunavut affairs for Agnico Eagle, which operates multiple gold mines in Nunavut. “People still remember how mines used to operate — Wild West do whatever you want, no safety concerns,” he said in an interview with Nunatsiaq News at the Agnico Eagle office in Rankin Inlet.

People assume that the company still “does whatever it wants,” he added, but today Nunavut has some of the strictest regulations that protect the environment using both territorial and federal laws. Meliadine mine would have been “shut down” very quickly if it was operating the same way mines used to operate, Kusugak said.

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Utah has the last conventional uranium mill in the country. What does it do? – by Anastasia Hufham (Salt Lake Tribune – October 7, 2024)

https://www.sltrib.com/

The mill’s owner and regulators say there’s no evidence its uranium processing is causing contamination. But a nearby tribe and others fear the impacts of increased demand.

San Juan County – Trucks filled with thousands of pounds of rock roll up a paved road, the namesake twin buttes of Bears Ears National Monument visible in the distance on a clear day. The dark gray rock is uranium ore headed to the White Mesa Mill in Utah’s rural San Juan County — the last remaining “conventional” uranium mill in the United States.

The country’s other 14 uranium recovery sites solely process rock from the site where they’re located. This leaves White Mesa as the only American uranium mill still accepting ore and other radioactive materials from around the country and the world.

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Conservationists raise alarm bells over James Bay lowlands (Timmins Daily Press – October 26, 2024)

https://www.timminspress.com/

First Nation says plan is crucial for global climate goals

Mushkegowuk Council released a statement Thursday, Oct. 24, urging Ontario to join as a partner on a conservation plan they say is crucial to the global efforts to protect land and water. For their part, the province says their talks with the federal government on conservation efforts are ongoing.

“Minister Rickford has met with Mushkegowuk council on several occasions to discuss shared priorities,” wrote Curtis Lindsay, spokesperson for the minister of Indigenous affairs, in an email. “Ontario is continuing discussions with the federal government on how to move forward collaboratively on conservation projects that fall under provincial jurisdiction,” Lindsay wrote.

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Why this town in the Northwest Territories was called the ‘Village of Widows’ – by Nina Dragicevic (CBC Docs – October 25, 2024)

https://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/

The discovery of a rare rock amidst the tundra of Canada’s Far North nearly 100 years ago set in motion one of mankind’s most destructive legacies: Decades of mining, workers getting sick and, finally, a pair of atomic bombs that killed tens of thousands of civilians in an instant — and changed the world forever.

As author and professor Peter van Wyck says in the documentary Atomic Reaction: “This is a piece of Canadian history that doesn’t get talked about much.” It all started near Délı̨nę, a community on Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories, where the Sahtu Dene people have lived for thousands of years. Originally a nomadic people, they started settling more firmly at Délı̨nę in the 1940s.

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Meliadine gold mine: The ‘largest hotel’ in Nunavut – by Arty Sarkisian (Nunatsiaq News – October 21, 2024)

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Mine has more employees than the population of many Nunavut hamlets

Agnico Eagle’s Meliadine gold mine has approximately 1,500 employees. That’s about half the size of the population of nearby Rankin Inlet and slightly more than Clyde River. But only about 700 people live and work on the site at all times, which is still more than the populations of Grise Fiord, Resolute Bay and Chesterfield Inlet put together.

The mine’s employees live side by side in what they call the “biggest hotel in Nunavut” and their collective efforts produce about one gold brick a day that is roughly the size of a loaf of bread.

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Who will pay for Ontario’s radioactive past? – by Aya Dufour (CBC News Features – October 15, 2024)

https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/

One northern remediation project illustrates the complexity of the issue

If not for the fences and the signs, nothing’s obviously threatening about the radioactive waste that has plagued Nipissing First Nation for decades. It looks like sandy soil peppered with small rocks. Behind the benign appearance, however, are niobium and other naturally occurring radioactive materials that were left behind by a defunct mining operation dating back to the early days of the Cold War.

With the company long gone and the Ministry of Mines busy remediating and monitoring the other 5,865 abandoned mining projects in Ontario, the waste has just sat there for 67 years.

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Baffinland cuts 10% of workforce to focus on Steensby rail – by Samuel Wat (CBC News North – October 19, 2024)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/

Mining company will reduce amount of iron ore shipments out of Milne Inlet

Baffinland Iron Mines is laying off 10 per cent of its workforce in Nunavut due to weak iron ore prices. Senior adviser Paul Quassa said the company is diverting its resources to the $5.7-billion railroad from the Mary River Mine south to Steensby Inlet.

“We would be rationalizing our equipment and supplies… and reducing the number of permit fronts to concentrate folks on the Steensby authorization,” he said.

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Agnico Eagle’s Meliadine mine close to extracting 2M ounces of gold – by Arty Sarkisian (Nunatsiaq News – October 16, 2024)

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Milestone expected to be reached in November; Nunatsiaq News takes tour to learn how ore is transformed

Agnico Eagle’s Meliadine gold mine is nearing a milestone. In November, the company projects the mine located near Rankin Inlet will have produced two million ounces of gold, said Pujjuut Kusugak, director of Nunavut affairs for Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd.

Two million ounces is just under 57 tonnes — or perhaps a more appropriate measurement for such occasions, approximately 28.5 small elephants. Nunatsiaq News was given a tour Oct. 2 of the above-ground part of Meliadine mine to learn how rock gets blasted, excavated, crushed and transformed via chemical reaction into such an enormous amount of gold.

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‘We believe Canada needs more nickel,’ Wyloo boss says – by Nicole Stoffman (Sudbury Star – October 13, 2024)

https://www.thesudburystar.com/

Nickel produced and processed in Northern Ontario and the Ring of Fire would be destined for the EV market

Kristan Straub, CEO of Wyloo Ring of Fire, provided an update on the Eagle’s Nest Mine at the State of Mining luncheon in Timmins recently. The mine site in the Ring of Fire in northwestern Ontario has a ‘small footprint’ of one square kilometre or half the size of the Timmins Airport, Straub said.

The site contains a deposit of 17 million tonnes at 3.3 per cent nickel, copper and platinum group elements. It also has some of the world’s largest chromite deposits outside of South Africa, Straub said.

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Ontario stonewalling marine conservation area, proponents say – by Nicole Stoffman (Timmins Daily Press – October 11, 2024)

https://www.timminspress.com/

Bourgouin: ‘The province should be at the table with Mushkegowuk Council’

A proposed marine conservation area in the James Bay Coast is being hindered without the support of the province, Mushkegowuk Grand Chief Leo Friday says. The Mushkegowuk National Marine Conservation Area (NMCA) would protect 86,000 square kilometres of federal waters in the Hudson and James Bays and 20 kilometres of coastal buffer zones under provincial jurisdiction.

The federal waters have been approved for conservation by the Ministry of the Environment, but without Ontario’s approval of the 20-kilometre buffer zone, the NMCA could still proceed but will be “very limited,” according to Lawrence Martin, director of Mushkegowuk Council’s lands and resources department.

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Plibersek releases reasons why $1bn McPhillamy’s gold mine near Blayney is on hold – by Lani Oataway and Hamish Cole (Australian Broadcasting Corporation – October 11, 2024)

https://www.abc.net.au/

Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek has found the ‘irreversible’ and ‘permanent’ loss to Aboriginal heritage outweighed the financial cost of halting a $1 billion gold mine development in the New South Wales Central West.

Ms Plibersek today released the Statement of Reasons behind her decision to protect part of the Belubula River, its headwaters and springs near Blayney, from the tailings dam earmarked for the site by Regis Resources McPhillamys gold mine.

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Is Ontario holding back the Ring of Fire? Federal natural resources minister says so – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – October 8, 2024)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Accused of stalling Far North mineral development, province says it waits on $1-billion commitment from Ottawa

Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said Ottawa offered a $40-million sweetener to entice Queen’s Park for a formal sit-down to discuss how to make progress in the Ring of Fire. So far, Wilkinson said, they’ve been rebuffed by the province.

“To date, Ontario has not taken us up on that, but I continue to urge Ontario to do that. I think it’s an important conversation, but there are really important issues to be addressed before we actually talk about mines.”

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