Background

Vancouver based The Metals Company (TMC) holds concessions for exploration of polymetallic nodules in the Clarion Clipperton Zone, in Pacific international waters, granted to it through the International Seabed Authority (ISA) because of its partnerships with the Pacific Island country of Nauru and the Kingdom of Tonga.

Unofficial translation by the Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA), originally posted here.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 8, 2025

The announcement marks the culmination of court-mandated consultation process over future of Pan American Silver’s controversial silver mine.

Sonal Gupta, the National Observer

An email from the CEO of a mining company to an Ontario First Nation chief is causing an uproar over how resource companies engage with Indigenous communities. 

Barrick Gold Corp. (Barrick) has chosen, once again, not to hold its annual shareholder meeting in-person in Toronto this year and instead, has moved proceedings to a highly-controlled online format.   For many years community members, often Indigenous peoples, from villages surrounding Barrick mines have travelled from as far away as Papua New Guinea and Chile to Toronto to be able to speak directly to shareholders and the board of directors.

The following blog was written by Diana Martin of MiningWatch Canada and María Alejandra Torres García of Earthworks.

In 2022, [1] and again in 2024, [2] Indigenous Kuria from villages surrounding North Mara Gold Mine in Tanzania filed cases in Canada against Barrick Gold Corporation [3] (Barrick) for alleged “acts of extreme violence committed by Mine Police in the service of Barrick in and around the North Mara Mine.” [4] The 29 plaintiffs include victims

Between 2022 and 2024, Indigenous Kuria from villages surrounding North Mara Gold Mine in Tanzania filed cases in Canada against Barrick Gold Corporation for alleged human rights abuses in and around the North Mara mine. MiningWatch Canada attended the hearings in Toronto and has prepared this report where we: 

As the Diaguita Patay Co Indigenous Community, we express our firm opposition to Barrick Gold's new attempt to encroach on our territory through its “El Alto” mining exploration project, located in the same area impacted by the failed Pascua Lama mine. This is not about a new project. Rather, it represents a recycled strategy that is  underhanded and opportunistic, aimed at bypassing the court ruling that ordered the permanent closure of Pascua Lama due to the irreparable environmental harm it caused.

Five years after a Chilean court made an historic ruling ordering the permanent closure of Barrick Gold’s Pascua Lama project and ahead of tomorrow’s Barrick’s AGM, the Indigenous community of Diaguita Patay Co in the Huasco Valley is denouncing renewed threats from mining. Barrick is looking to develop another mining project in the same protected area, a biosphere home to several important glaciers that sustain the surrounding agricultural valley.