Don’t put Tahera diamond on our mace

I was shocked this morning when representatives of Tahera Corporation were interviewed on CBC news broadcasts and casually announced that they were in the process of working with a jeweler to replace the quartz crystal on the Nunavut mace with a 2.5-carat diamond.

While I am in full sympathy for Tahera wanting the additional publicity this would give their firm, I cannot in conscience support this proposal and I am asking my MLA to speak and vote against it.

The quartz crystal on the mace end represents a mineral that has been in use for generations. Among the finest arrowheads and end-blades in Nunavut archeological records are those made in the Arctic of quartz crystals. In a modern setting on a black backdrop they are stunningly beautiful, sparkling like ice, frozen in time. The crystal on the mace is a common stone — common enough that all of the people of Nunavut have seen and are aware of them in our environment. The abundance of quartz in Nunavut reminds all of us that we are all part of this vast territory.

The diamond, on the other hand, is a material extracted from deep within the earth and which has no history to the people of Nunavut other than in the past 12 years as a recognizable development in the economic growth of the North.

Diamonds are the exclusive property of the wealthy and cannot possibly be seen as representative of anything except corporate exploitation of the environment. That exploitation does not come without further startling and disruptive change to the extant environment, peoples and cultures of the Arctic.

For Tahera to operate from the presumption that they can simply make changes to the mace — Nunavut’s symbol of royal authority — is ludicrous.

For our MLAs not to take a firm stand against this modification is a sign of divisiveness and weakness.

I suggest that the government of Nunavut investigate how gifts of cut and polished stones were dealt with by the GNWT and then take appropriate action to receive and display the cut and polished diamonds.

But not on our mace.
T. Bert Rose
Iqaluit