Mount Kawagebo, so sacred that climbing is banned, sits on the border between Tibet and China’s Yunnan Province; its eastern side is part of the Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Area UNESCO World Heritage site. In February 2011, a small gold-mining operation started near the village of Abin, which is on the western side of Kawagebo, along the path of an 800-year-old pilgrimage route that circles the mountain, attracting tens of thousands of Tibetans annually.

To the local people, who believe strongly in the sacredness of Mount Kawagebo, direct destruction of the mountain body, through activities like mining, is unthinkable. Further, villagers said the project was started without permission or prior consent. Thus began a community effort to halt the project.

Villagers said their attempts to deal directly with the mining company resulted in threats and violence from agents hired by the company, and harassment and arrests by local police. On two occasions, men armed with wooden sticks with nails attacked villagers, injuring more than a dozen.

After efforts to negotiate with the local government failed, villagers pushed $300,000 worth of mining equipment into the Nu River. A leader of the group was arrested, but later released when 100 villagers surrounded the local police station where he was being held. A few months later, however, mining resumed and tensions grew. Harassment, death threats and attacks on villagers increased, and some women and children fled to other villages to escape the violence.

On January 20, 2012, a village leader who had tried to confront the mining company was ambushed by local police, tased and arrested. Some 200 community members surrounded the police station, and an ensuing riot resulted in violence and injuries on both sides, with at least one villager sent to the hospital with serious injuries. The leader was released, but protests continued as villagers demanded closure of the mine, and hundreds more villagers from the surrounding area joined in.

This time, the local government held negotiations with the community, including the just-released leader, on behalf of the mining company, whose boss had reportedly fled the area. Villagers involved in negotiations said they were offered money in exchange for allowing the mining to continue, but they refused. On January 23, with tensions mounting, a vice-official from the prefecture government ordered the mine closed and the equipment trucked out of the village.

While the persistence of the community to protect its holy mountain ultimately paid off, some villagers suggested the mountain itself had a role to play. During the negotiations, many reported hearing the sound of a trumpet shell—used in Tibetan religious rituals—coming from the mountain, while others reported unusually windy weather, which stopped once the conflict was resolved.

A Tibetan hired to provide catering to the mine workers described being struck by a physical pressure that forced him to drop what he was carrying; only after he prayed did the sensation disappear. Several months earlier, according to another account, a village leader who had accepted bribes from the mining company died suddenly, and a member of his family was seriously injured in an accident.

He Ran Gao, a researcher who works for the Chinese NGO Green Earth Volunteers and has been closely involved with the communities of the area, described the context of these supernatural accounts. “In a place like Tibet, people have an unusual sense of divinity in nature, based on a whole system of worship and interaction, which sometime seems superstitious to modern citizens,” she said. “But it is not necessarily irrational or unreasonable.”

This sense of nature worship, Gao said, with its attendant conservation values, is “barely left due to past communism and later economic development.” But in the Himalayas and other mountain areas, where non-Han ethnicities reside and remain somewhat protected, those traditional values can still be found. She described Kawagebo as a success story showing “how sacred nature can be” and how it can “still be respected, protected and continue to make an impact in people’s lives.”

Unfortunately, Abin is but one of many villages threatened by mining activities—in most other cases, marble quarrying—and a greater overarching threat to the region: hydroelectric dam development.

Along the Nu (Salween) River, the longest free-flowing river in mainland Southeast Asia, a proposed 13-dam cascade—including several dams in or very close to the World Heritage site—would wipe out portions of the pilgrimage route around Mount Kawagebo and displace the communities of the river valley, likely dealing a blow to their traditional culture as well. Although the project was put on hold in 2004 in the wake of widespread protest, it is certainly not dead.

Last year, the World Heritage Committee issued a statement expressing concern over reports of unapproved construction under way at one dam site on the Nu River, and surveying work—including road-building and drilling—at three others. It warned that “the many proposed dams could cumulatively constitute a potential danger to the property’s Outstanding Universal Value.”

The committee asked China to submit by February 1 of this year a detailed list of all proposed dams, as well as mines, that could affect the World Heritage property, along with the environmental impact assessments of any proposed projects, prior to their approval. The committee also requested, by the same deadline, a report on the state of conservation of the property and on the progress made in completing a strategic environmental impact assessment on all of the proposed dams and related development that could impact the site’s World Heritage value.

Many thanks to He Ran Gao, who provided reporting and other source material for this report. He Ran wishes to thank villagers who provided her with information, but whose names have been witheld.

The proposed mine site — which encompasses Teztan Biny (Fish Lake), Yanah Biny (Little Fish Lake) and the surrounding area, called Nabas — is traditional Tsilhqot’in territory where the people have hunted, trapped, fished, collected medicinal plants, and shared their knowledge and history from generation to generation through cultural gatherings and ceremonies.

The lakes are home to a genetically unique type of rainbow trout. They are also in the headwaters of the last major viable salmon run that comes up the Fraser River, and water in the area is pure enough that the people are able to drink directly the source — a testament to the protection the Tsilhqot’in have provided their traditional lands for generations. The area also provides important habitat for the threatened South Chilcotin grizzly bear.

For some 20 years, the Tsilhqot’in Nation has been fighting Taseko Mines Ltd.’s proposed open-pit mining project, which the Canadian environment minister rejected last year largely because the plan called for draining Teztan Biny and using it as a toxic tailings dump.

The government environmental report on which the decision was based concluded that “the project would result in significant adverse environmental effects on fish and fish habitat, on navigation, on the current use of lands and resources for traditional purposes by First Nations and on cultural heritage, and on certain potential or established Aboriginal rights [to hunt, trap and fish].” It particularly noted that the island in the middle of Teztan Biny, which would have been destroyed, is “a place of spiritual power and healing for the Tsilhqot’in.”

Three months after the government’s refusal, Taseko Mines submitted a revised plan, which proposes instead to build the tailings facility a little over a mile upstream from Teztan Biny. While the new proposal “saves” Teztan Biny, it would still surround the lake with a massive open-pit mine, destroy Yanah Biny and the Nabas region, endanger the trout spawning grounds, and threaten Tsilhqot’in member homes and graves.

Regardless of the proposed plan, according to a Tsilhqot’in media backgrounder, “the fact remains that the ore body lies immediately beside and under Teztan Biny and that the ore body is a toxic cocktail waiting to contaminate the region’s water.”

The Tsilhqot’in National Government called the new proposal a “repackaged version” of a past option that was already determined to be inferior to the most recently rejected plan, and members are frustrated that they must now endure another lengthy and costly review process.

Meanwhile, the mining company, to the dismay of First Nations members and conservationists, has already received exploration permits to begin building 15 miles of roads and dig dozens of test pits and drill holes in the proposed project area.

“The cumulative impacts from the proposed road building and drilling in this area of proven cultural and spiritual importance is a serious threat to our Aboriginal rights,” Chief Marilyn Baptiste of the Xeni Gwet’in First Nation said in a press release. “Any further destruction would be pointless as the federal government cannot possibly approve this proposal.”

What you can do

Please contact Elaine Feldman, Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency president, to voice your opposition to Taseko Mines’ revised proposal:

Elaine Feldman
President
Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency
Place Bell Canada 160 Elgin Street, 22nd Floor
Ottawa, Ontario  K1A 0H3 Canada
Email: elaine.feldman@ceaa-acee.gc.ca
Tel: 001-613-948-2671
Fax: 001-613-948-2208

If you send a letter via email, please CC the following people:
Peter Kent, Federal Minister of Environment (peter.kent@parl.gc.ca)
Premier Christy Clark, Province of British Columbia (premier@gov.bc.ca)
Tsilhqot’in Chiefs (mining@tsilhqotin.ca)

In June of this year, when a 2009 temporary mining ban was due to expire, Salazar issued a six-month extension, asking the BLM to issue a final environmental impact statement evaluating his proposed action. The bureau examined that and three other scenarios — ranging from withdrawing smaller parcels of land from new claims to doing nothing — ultimately favoring Salazar’s proposed action.

Over the past few years, as uranium prices rose, thousands of claims were filed under an 1872 mining law that allows free access to public lands. This renewed interest in uranium mining put Native American tribes, environmental-protection advocates and other stakeholders on alert, and prompted the government to propose the withdrawal of land from new claims.

Increased uranium mining around the Grand Canyon has the potential to threaten aquifers and drinking-water supplies, tribal interests, the tourism economy and the park’s status as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

BLM Director Bob Abbey said the 20-year withdrawal “would allow for cautious, continued development with strong oversight that could help us fill critical gaps in our knowledge about water quality and environmental impacts of uranium mining in the area.”

(Claims approved before July 2009 would not be affected by the ban. According to the final environmental impact statement, 11 mines could be operating in the area in the near future. Some observers are calling for more lasting protection, such as designating the public land surrounding the Grand Canyon as a national monument.)

Take action

After a 30-day review period, the federal government will issue a final decision. Please send a letter to President Obama by Nov. 25 voicing your support for protecting the Grand Canyon.

The Wixárika have sustained their millennia-old culture thanks to their resolve to maintain ancestral traditions, a key aspect of which is a 310-mile annual pilgrimage to Wirikuta, regarded as the birthplace of the sun and of peyote, the sacred cactus though which the Wixárika communicate with their ancestors and deities.

The 540-square-mile Wirikuta reserve — located in the Chihuahuan Desert, one of the world’s most biodiverse deserts — encompasses sacred sites and 86 miles of the pilgrimage route. It is unique in that it was explicitly designed to protect the area’s cultural heritage first, followed by its natural heritage. In 2001, the state government designated it as a sacred natural site under a landmark environmental protection law. And in 2004, the entire pilgrimage route was added to Mexico’s Tentative List for inclusion as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Yet despite these protections, the Wixárika’s sacred landscape faces significant threats. First Majestic Silver Corp. of Canada has been granted 22 mining concessions covering more than 23 square miles, 70 percent of which is within the reserve, while Minera Golondrina, an affiliate of another Canadian mining company, wants to build an open-pit gold mine. Toxic tailings, water pollution, ecosystem destruction, loss of wildlife, and depletion of the water table are among the potential impacts.

In addition, industrial tomato growers have razed miles of fragile desert ecosystem. Both agroindustry and mining threaten the habitat of the peyote cactus, essential to Wixárika spiritual practice.

Apart from the direct environmental impacts, Wixárika leaders say these projects endanger the integrity of the sacred landscape and their ability to practice their traditions. The UN’s special rapporteur on indigenous affairs is also investigating the Wixárika’s claim that their right to informed consent regarding the development of their traditional lands has been violated.

The Oct. 26-27 action in Mexico City, the latest effort in a battle that has been unfolding over the past year, included public marches and ceremonies, a press conference, and a meeting with officials of the federal environmental agency.

Wixárika leaders also entered the presidential complex to deliver a letter asking President Felipe Calderón to rescind the mining concessions, curb the agroindustrial megaprojects, and “implement an alternative plan that will generate jobs for local people while it converts Wirikuta on a protected natural area that is a world-renowned model of ecological conservation.” Wixárika are also calling on Calderón to uphold the 2008 Pact of Hauxa Manaká, in which the president and the governors of four Mexican states guaranteed the protection of the Wixárika culture and sacred sites.

What you can do

Support the Wirakuta Defense Front and visit their website for updates and more information about actions you can take.

Visit Cultural Survival’s Wirikuta campaign page for more information, a sample letter to send to Mexican officials, and other ways you can help.

The long-awaited decision denied a petition for a permanent injunction and lifted a temporary injunction that had been granted to the plaintiffs, landowners on the Rai Coast, who bathe, fish and travel in the waters where millions of tons of mining waste would be dumped.

In his ruling, judge David Cannings found there was “a high likelihood that serious environmental harm … will be caused by operation of the [deep-sea tailings placement].” Yet he nevertheless refused to grant a permanent injunction, citing, among other things, the plaintiff’s delay in bringing the action (well after the government had approved waste-disposal plan), the economic consequences for the companies and other stakeholders, and potential negative impact on investor confidence in PNG as a whole.

Suggesting that the landowners might receive court help in the future — once the damage is done — the judge also noted, “If environmental harm of the type reasonably apprehended by the plaintiffs does actually occur, they will be able to commence fresh proceedings at short notice and seek the type of relief being denied them in these proceedings.” The court’s one concession to the plaintiffs’ requests was that they must be consulted and kept informed every three months on tailings-disposal issues, for the life of the mine. The Ramu plaintiffs intend to appeal the ruling.

Rewind one week, to a seemingly unrelated gathering at the David Brower Center (SLFP’s home office in Berkeley, Calif.) sponsored by Earth Island Institute, where Stewart Brand and Winona LaDuke debated about technology and the environment. An audience member — our friend Peter Coyote — stood up and commented that Brand was operating from a place of intellect and LaDuke from a place of wisdom. Peter suggested leaders would do well to have wisdom advisers, not just intellectuals and technocrats offering policy advice.

The concept strikes us as directly relevant to the court case in PNG. The ruling, applauded by the governor of Madang and PNG’s mining minister, is a clear example of the values that currently preside across the globe — particularly here in the United States, where our need to consume drives a frantic demand for more. The search for ever-increasing profits and more and more stuff is finally becoming imbedded in places previously considered too remote, pristine places like PNG, where people still live off the land and many deal in trade rather than money. These places are now under siege by a new value system that will reshape the land and the culture until they are a direct reflection of the dominant system. Wisdom seems far off indeed as mining waste begins to flow into the sea.

Here at the Sacred Land Film Project, we follow the news from afar, feeling as though it was just yesterday we were filming in Madang with our new partners and friends, promising to bring their story to the world. We are now in the heat of writing and editing the story, to fulfill our promise and produce a documentary record that will be a tribute to the voices of wisdom that still remain.

For more information, read the full court decision, visit Papua New Guinea Mine Watch, and listen to the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Tifanny Nongorr, comment on the decision.

The temporary ban — enacted in July 2009 and due to expire next month — will now be in effect until December of this year, while the Bureau of Land Management completes a final environmental impact statement that evaluates the department’s “preferred alternative” of a 20-year ban on new mining in the full million-acre zone. Once that statement is published in the fall, Salazar said, he will be ready to make a final decision on the 20-year withdrawal.

Speaking from the South Rim of the canyon, Salazar emphasized the need for a management plan guided by “caution, wisdom and science,” in order to protect the World Heritage Site, drinking-water supplies, the tourism economy and tribal interests, noting that “many tribes in the area see their history and culture woven throughout the Grand Canyon’s landscape.”

Attempting to quell criticism that the withdrawal would deny access to uranium resources in the area, Salazar pointed out that it would apply only to new claims — the small number of existing claims would remain in effect and could continue to be developed. Referring to those claims, Salazar urged “cautious development with strong oversight.”

Salazar recalled the words President Theodore Roosevelt, spoken years ago at the same location: “Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.”

Read this Feb. 25, 2010 Sacred Land News post to learn more about the moratorium, the existing mining claims and the potential environmental impacts.

Proponents of the pipeline point out the benefits of a stable supply of oil from a friendly neighbor in a time of rising fuel prices and Middle East instability. But the Times editorial argues that the environmental risks, for both Canada and the United States, are “enormous.”

In Alberta, the extraction of oil from the tar sands requires the stripmining of swaths of boreal forest, along with the burning of natural gas and consumption of large quantities of water to produce steam to a turn tar-like substance called bitumen into oil. The Times’ editors came to the same conclusion SLFP did when we filmed in Alberta last year: “Operations in Alberta have already created 65 square miles of toxic holding ponds, which kill migrating birds and pollute downstream watersheds, a serious matter for native communities.”

In the United States, the greatest threat is from pipeline leaks; the Times cites multiple recent spills from existing tar sands pipelines. The new pipeline would cross an important U.S. water reservoir, the Ogallala Aquifer, thus threatening “disastrous consequences” if a leak were to occur.

Two Nebraska senators are opposing the pipeline’s proposed route, but “political pressure to win swift approval has been building in Congress.” Because the pipeline would cross an international boundary, the State Department must approve its construction; that decision is expected later this year.

This controversial issue is one of those featured in Sacred Land Film Project’s upcoming film series Losing Sacred Ground.

At issue are the plans of the Chinese state-owned China Metallurgical Group Corp. (MCC) to extract nickel and cobalt from an area called Kurumbukari, send it through an 84-mile slurry pipeline to their refinery at Basamuk Bay and, after processing, dump the untreated waste into the sea. An estimated 5 million tons of various heavy metals and toxins would be dumped annually.

Whether MCC will be allowed to do so in an operation euphemistically called “deep-sea tailings placement” is expected to be determined by the court in the next few months. (They’ll announce the date of their decision in April.) More than a thousand villagers from the Rai Coast, those most likely to be impacted by the disposal, have joined the lawsuit.

At stake for MCC is the millions of dollars it says it’s losing each week that the project is delayed, and millions more if the court rules it must come up with an alternative method for waste disposal. At stake for the villagers at Basamuk Bay and the Rai Coast is their source of food, the water in which they bathe, and their primary pathways of transportation.

The court case has brought some important facts to light:

• MCC admitted that they’ve already dumped ore into the bay, despite a standing court injunction specifically banning the practice.

• MCC’s contract with the Papua New Guinea government allows it to import ore from other countries and process it at the Basamuk plant, including disposing of those additional tailings in the sea.

• The company used false information in a brochure it distributed to villagers about the deep-sea impacts of the tailings disposal.

• In early March, MCC alerted villagers that they should avoid fishing and swimming in the waters near the Basamuk refinery because of a spill of sulphuric acid that occurred four days earlier. The company later retracted that warning and said only a few liters of acid had dripped onshore. Skeptical villagers report that the coral has turned white and they are afraid to eat fish from the bay.

During our shoot in PNG last April, we visited the sites that the court saw from their helicopter — the refinery site at Basamuk, the mining site at Kurumbukari, the sometimes precariously braced slurry pipeline. We met the lead plaintiff at the time, Sama Mellambo, who has since withdrawn (some people believe his decision was made under duress), and two brothers who were resisting relocation by the mine.

We have constantly been astonished by the reports we hear from this developing story, and we anxiously wait with the rest of the country for the court’s verdict, which will determine the fate of tens of thousands of people and the direction of millions of dollars.

Community members are tasked with proving the mining waste, or tailings, flushed into the ocean will cause environmental harm. They have united together with power in numbers: 998 landowners have joined the plaintiff’s case to submit opposition to the waste dumping. Learn more about the lawsuit at Earthworks.

Additional information and commentary available at The National, Papua New Guinea Mine Watch, Ramu NiCo website.

In a major victory for indigenous land rights, India’s environment minster on Aug. 24 struck down a controversial mining project in eastern Orissa state that would have threatened the survival of the 8,000-member Dongria Kondh tribe.

Citing violations of environmental and human rights laws, Jairam Ramesh denied permission for London-based Vedanta Resources to build an open-cast bauxite mine in the Niyamgiri Hill range. The company had set up an alumina refinery in Orissa in 2008 with the expectation that it would be allowed to annually extract three million metric tons of bauxite, the raw material for aluminum.

The Dongria Kondh consider the remote hills — home to their god, Niyam Raja — sacred, and they also depend on the hills for their livelihood. For the past eight years they have been fighting to protect their land and way of life. The tribe had gained the support of NGOs including Amnesty International and Survival International, which ran a successful global campaign comparing the Dongria Kondh’s plight to the Na’vi tribe in the award-winning James Cameron film “Avatar.” (Watch Survival’s film “Mine,” embedded below.)

Vedanta had claimed the mine would cause little disturbance to the hills and that, along with the refinery, it would help alleviate poverty in the region. However, in a report commissioned by Ramesh, a committee of experts found that the project would “drastically alter the region’s water supply, affecting both ecological systems and human communities,” and threaten “the very survival” of the Dongria Kondh. The committee found that Vedanta had acted illegally and with “total contempt for the law,” and that to allow the mine to go forward would be “illegal.”

Vedanta reportedly intends to push for an alternative mine site in the region. “There is no question of abandoning this project,” CEO Mukesh Kumar said. The alumina refinery, which has polluted rivers and damaged crops along with the livelihood of the local people, will also continue to operate.

Defend Indigenous Rights and Protect Marine Life in Papua New Guinea

The government of Papua New Guinea doesn’t want to hear from us. It has authorized a Chinese mining company to dump toxic waste into the sea, and it is determined to stifle dissent from every quarter. It hired scientists to assess potential harm to marine life, but when the scientists warned that the damage could be widespread, it suppressed and ignored their findings. When coastal Indigenous land-owner clans challenged the mining company’s “deep submarine tailings placement” project in court, the government passed a law that denies citizens the right to appeal any permit granted by the Department of Environment and Conservation, no matter how it might affect their health, livelihoods, and cultures. PNG’s license to the Chinese Metallurgical Construction Company (CMCC) violates national laws and international agreements, but the PNG government isn’t listening – yet.

An international outcry is needed. Toxic mine tailings dumped into the Bismarck Sea could undermine the marine food chain at its source, potentially rendering all fish unsafe to eat and destroying the livelihoods of the Indigenous people who depend on the sea. Could thousands of letters from world citizens get the attention of the PNG government? Please send your letter today. We must try.

Read more at Cultural Survival’s website.

Rushed through Parliament on a Friday night, the amendments shelter resource projects from legal challenges over environmental damage, labor abuse and landowner exploitation, and grant the government wide-ranging power to exempt resource developers from state environmental requirements. Thus, the legislation effectively strips citizen’s traditional and constitutional land rights while giving developers greater power and protecting them from liability.

The legislation, passed by a vote of 73 to 10, came after intense lobbying by China Metallurgical Group Corporation, developer of the $1.4 billion Ramu nickel/cobalt mine. Ramu landowners had recently won an injunction to stop a pipeline that would slurry waste from the mine out to sea off Madang Province, once the mine is completed.

Tiffany Nonggorr, a lawyer representing the landowners, said the battle is not yet over, as the matter is already before the courts.

For more detail check out the June 1 blog post by SLFP Director Toby McLeod about his recent trip to Madang Province to document the Ramu nickel mine story for the upcoming Losing Sacred Ground film series.

Radio Free Asia reported on May 15 that five people were beaten and tear-gassed in protests against three gold mines in the county. Some 5,000 troops were in the area, with reinforcements expected.

“Thousands of local Tibetans — young, old, men, and women alike — have attempted to block the Chinese from resuming mining activities,” one local Tibetan source said. “But [Tibetan Autonomous Region] Party Secretary Zhang Qingli has given orders to ahead with the mining, even if this means using force against protesters.”

Last year in Markham similar protests took place against mining on a sacred mountain called Ser Ngul Lo, a site where Tibetans have historically worshipped. However, talks ultimately resolved the standoff with a promise to end mining operations.

According to another local source, on May 4 — the day the mining company was ordered to resume operations at the three sites — 13 Tibetans were detained. “All of those detained were Tibetan businessmen and leading figures who successfully blocked the Chinese mining company in 2009,” the source said.

What you can do

Go to the Intercontinental Cry website for a sample letter to send to China’s permanent representative to the United Nations, calling on the Chinese government to withdraw their police forces and protect the Tibetans’ sacred mountains.

To learn more about the history, beliefs and practices surrounding sacred mountains in Tibet, read our Mount Kailash sacred site report.

In late December 2009, Denison Mines Corp. began extracting high-grade uranium ore from its Arizona 1 mine, located about 10 miles from the boundary for Grand Canyon National Park.

The mine had been shut down in 1992, never having produced any ore, after a crash in uranium prices. However, with a rebound in prices in recent years and increasing uranium demand — including the Obama administration’s January announcement of major investment in the construction of new nuclear reactors — mining companies are looking to restart old mines and open new ones in northern Arizona, which reportedly holds the most concentrated source of uranium in the United States.

Renewed interest in uranium mining has put Native American tribes, environmental-protection advocates and other stakeholders on alert. In July 2009, members of the Havasupai Nation and their allies gathered at the Red Butte sacred site, on the south rim of the canyon, to address the reemerging threat.

The U.S. Department of the Interior is taking a cautious approach to ensure that communities, landscapes and watersheds are protected, it says. In July, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced a two-year moratorium on the filing of new mining claims on the 1 million acres of federal lands near the Grand Canyon. During that time the department will consider imposing a 20-year restriction on new mine development. Also on the table is the Grand Canyon Watersheds Protection Act, introduced by Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) in January 2009, which would withdraw the lands from mineral exploration.

“Over the next two years, we will gather the best science and input from the public, members of Congress, tribes and stakeholders, and we will thoughtfully evaluate whether these lands should be withdrawn from new mining claims for a longer period of time,” Salazar said in a statement.

The moratorium, however, doesn’t affect existing valid mine claims, which are protected by the outdated General Mining Act of 1872. According to the Bureau of Land Management, six mines are expected to reopen on the federal lands in question.

In November 2009, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club and the Grand Canyon Trust sued the Bureau of Land Management for failing to update 1980s-era environmental reviews and mining plans before allowing Denison to reopen the Arizona 1 mine. The groups say the current mine claim is not valid, and thus subject to the moratorium. The suit is still pending.

Of particular concern is potential impact on groundwater and regional aquifers, which supply water districts including Las Vegas and Los Angeles. As a part of the Interior Department’s two-year review, the U.S. Geological Survey conducted a series of studies to determine the effects of uranium mining on the natural resources of the region. The results, released Feb. 17, show elevated levels of uranium in wells, springs and soil around uranium exploration and mining sites.

Elsewhere in the Southwest, uranium mining threatens Native American sacred sites. New Mexico’s Mount Taylor — held holy by the Navajo, Acoma, Zuni and other tribes — sits atop a vast uranium deposit that has also attracted the attention of mining companies since the upsurge in uranium prices. In 2009, native tribes and environmental groups launched an effort to protect the mountain, which resulted in its receiving state protected status as traditional cultural property. (Read an excellent piece of long-form journalism on this complex story in High Country News.)

Visit the websites of the Center for Biological Diversity and the Grand Canyon Trust for more information on uranium mining at the Grand Canyon and ways you can help.

In January, the U.N. released its first-ever report on the “State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples,” which presents a global view of the current situation of indigenous peoples, examining poverty and well-being, culture, education, health, human rights, environment and emerging issues.

Authored by indigenous peoples, the report offers statistics and information to raise awareness about indigenous development, advance the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and influence the U.N. Development Program’s 2010 Human Development Report, themed “Rethinking Human Development.”

The report highlights the critical situation for indigenous peoples around the world and translates the urgency into hard statistics. Indigenous peoples make up about 5 percent of the world’s population and 15 percent of its poor, as they are the first population to be affected by industries that harm the environment or resource-intensive projects.  In the United States, nearly a quarter of Native Americans and Alaska Natives live below the poverty line, with lower life expectancy and higher death rates from causes including diabetes, homicide, suicide and car accidents. The statistics are grim.

Although indigenous peoples are caretakers of some the world’s greatest regions of biodiversity and enrich global culture in a plethora of ways — from traditional knowledge in herbal remedies and land management to environmental principals — their plight has yet to enter mainstream conversation or find serious discussion in major news outlets.

Yet every effort counts, and actions such as the release of “State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples” will further the urgently important dialogue on global interdependence, land rights, resistance to the loss of biological and cultural diversity, and hope for a collaborative future.