Nunavut uranium watchdog calls for territory-wide plebiscite on uranium mining

Areva Resources Canada Inc.’s Kiggavik uranium project, about 80 kilometres from Baker Lake, would cost $2.1 billion to build and create hundreds of jobs over its 14-year lifespan. (FILE IMAGE)

More Inuit decision-making on the future of uranium mining in Nunavut: this is what Nunavummiut Makitagunarningit, Nunavut’s uranium development watchdog, says it wants to see.

“Inuit are restricted in their ability to inform themselves independently and evaluate the proposal on their own terms, and while there are Inuit on the NIRB [Nunavut Impact Review Board] itself, the decision-making process does not clearly respond to or account for broader Inuit input,” said Makita in its submission to a study on extractive and energy industries in and near indigenous territories by James Anaya, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

“Important documentation is not being translated into Inuktitut, and important meetings are being held during the height of Inuit hunting seasons.”

Makita said it believes that the “free prior and informed consent” of Inuit in Nunavut can only be arrived at through a territory-wide public inquiry, followed by a territory-wide vote on whether to move ahead with uranium mining in Nunavut.

The GN and Nunavut’s representative Inuit organizations have given their guarded consent to uranium mining on Inuit territory.

But, in its submission, Makita said “the free prior and informed consent of the general Inuit population has yet to be sought on the matter.”

“Free prior and informed consent” is the international legal standard on dealings with indigenous people on resource development projects.

The submission documents the experience of Nunavummiut to date, with Makita maintaining that experience has been “the opposite of free, prior, and informed consent.”

Makita said April 8 in statement that all key uranium-related decisions taken by institutions created by settlement of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement have been made behind closed doors.

“These institutions have avoided the issue of democratic consent at all costs, opting instead for carefully controlled ‘consultations’ with no real mandate to assess community consent in any meaningful way. The mining industry has been overrepresented in these ‘consultations,’ to the point that both NTI [Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.] and the GN relied on industry consultants for supposedly unbiased and impartial policy ‘advice.'”

Makita’s submission repeats its call for a public inquiry into uranium mining, to be followed by “free and democratic votes – by the residents of Baker Lake and among NLCA beneficiaries – on the wisdom of opening the door to who-knows-how-many uranium mines in Nunavut… with all the cumulative effects they would entail.”

Makita’s submission can be found on its website while Anaya’s study is posted here.