Mining in Remote Areas Issues and Impacts - MiningWatch Canada

Labrador who feel the mining activityin the area has costs for theirfamilies and the environment. (47)A professor at Memorial Universityin Newfoundland has found thatfor married workers, long absencesfrom home can contribute to marriagebreakdowns and disrupt familylife.(49)If male partners are employed atmines that require them to be awayfrom home for weeks or months at atime, the primary responsibility formanaging the household (provisionand preparation of food, subsistenceharvesting, care of clothing, housework,maintenance of household accounts,childcare) will fall to women.This can potentially affect women’sparticipation in community life.Miriam Wall, writing on the impactof resource developments onwomen in northern Ontario states,“Time is a premium for manywomen. As mothers they often cannotafford to be away over night orfor long periods of time… workingwomen, who find themselves overburdenedwith both their paid employmentand traditional family role[can be] effectively excluded fromfurther involvement in community.”(48)Wall also writes that job opportunitiesmay be limited for women insingle-industry towns. The traditionalemployment options availableto women tend to be in the lowpaying,service sector. Moreover,there is a certain “mill mentality”that exists in single-industry towns,CommunityImpactsMining extracts toll on47 Innu women of Labrador(Herizons Winter 1997; v.11(1); pg 6-7.)Innu women leaders fear history isrepeating itself with the frenzy of miningactivity in Northern Labrador. In 1993,what is believed to be the world’s largestnickel reserve was found in Voisey’sBay, located on Labrador’s north coast.The mining boom was cheered on BayStreet, but women in the region areconcerned about how this newest invasionof their homeland will affect theirfamilies, their environment, the healingprocess and land claims negotiations.Case Study: Ross River, Yukon TerritoryThe following case study is composed of information fromthe report “Just Like People Get Lost: A retrospective assessmentof the impacts of the Faro Mining Development on theland use of the Ross River Indian People.”(31) In the report,the author makes it clear that while there were impacts directlyattributable to the mining development, there wereconcurrent factors, such as changes in education, transportation,employment, and social welfare programs, that contributedto the severe social problems experienced by the aboriginalcommunity of Ross River.Beginning in 1966, there was an influx of outsiders andbusinesses to Ross River to service the construction and operationof the Faro mine. In the ensuing years the Ross Riverband experienced increased “drinking, open conflicts, violence,sexual exploitation . . . the disintegration of somemarriages.”The internal problems among the aboriginal people wereexacerbated by the arrival of large numbers of transientwhite male labourers during the construction period. Many ofthe mine construction workers carried the stereotypic imagesof “Indians as victims and powerless,” that were prevalent inYukon and many other areas of Canada at that time. Womenwere seen as sexual objects and the men, when drunk, wereseen as objects for abuse and violence. Raids by constructionworkers to abduct women from the village were not uncommon.There have been vivid descriptions of sexual exploit a-tion and beatings of Natives by whites at the local bar.Many of the southerners who settled in the village broughturban ideas, values and behaviour.The parents of non-Native childrendemanded a southern school curriculumand were instrumental in getting the school principal,who was sympathetic to the differing needs of the Indianchildren, dismissed. Thus, even aboriginal children were involvedin the disempowerment.The impact of roads, the stresses of village life, the dislocationof some family groups from their traditional lands, andthe rapid transformation into a marginal minority changedthe lives of the Ross River people forever. When thesechanges combined with the ready availability of alcohol,however, they produced a deadly combination. Public facilitiesfor the purchase of alcohol became available in the regionwith the influx of mine construction workers. As all ofthe stresses to life in Ross River developed, extended periodsof binge drinking became the rule. When people returnedfrom a job with cash, alcohol would be bought and sharedwith friends and relatives until the money was spent.Deaths from a variety of alcohol related causes, mostly accidents,began to occur in 1966. From that time to the present,death from alcohol-related causes has been a regularevent for the Indian population, with one or more deathsfrom drinking almost every year between 1970 and 1989.The community of Ross River is in the process of healingfrom the negative social effects that have so drasticallychanged their way of life in the past 30 years. In light of theindefinite closure of the Faro mine in 1998, the people ofRoss River must now try to develop strategies for building amore healthy, sustainable community.Mining In Remote Areas: Issues and Impacts 15