A few extracts relevant to mining from the recently published United Nations Development Group Guidelines on Indigenous Peoples’ Issues, February 2008.  

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In the early 1980s, I spent two consecutive summers on Admiralty Island near Juneau, Alaska.  I was looking for and drilling the site that has become the tailings site.  We stayed in the old Cannery and ate food from the red-head Bullcook who caught fresh salmon and halibut each morning to fry it in beer batter for our evening meal.  Those days are long since gone and many others have done great work to keep the mine a success.  These sentimental thoughts are prompted by today’s headline news report that Rio Tinto has agreed to sell their stake in the mine to Hecla Mining for many millions.  In our days, neither company had any interest in the mine, but that is the way of the world, and we keep a small part of us that will always be interested in the mine, regardless of who owns it, or even if we never see it again.