Ideas for 13 November 2011 - The Story of Three Mines

The massive Freeport Mine in Indonesia’s Papua province has been brought to a standstill with 8000 of its workers on strike; a US federal appeals court in San Francisco recently ruled Bouganvillians can proceed with a case alleging the mining company Rio Tinto is complicit in genocide and war crimes at the site of the Panguna copper mine; and the Wixarika tribe of Mexico is in the midst of a battle to stop the mining of a mountain they have considered sacred for thousands of years. Chris Laidlaw and Jeremy Rose spoke to three experts about the conflicts: Cultural anthropologist Eben Kirksey; constitutional lawyer and advisor to Bougainville’s autonomous government, Anthony Regan; and Juan Negrin of the Wixarika Research Centre.