First Nation pushes back against ‘Ring of Fire’ mine, rail project

26th Jan­u­ary 2010
A Thun­der Bay min­er­al sym­po­sium of the Matawa First Nations trib­al coun­cil in Feb­ru­ary could be a rau­cous affair.

The aggres­sive push by Cliffs Nat­ur­al Resources and Cana­da Chrome to devel­op a $1.5 bil­lion chromite deposit in the James Bay ‘Ring of Fire’ and ore haul rail­road has drawn heat from one remote com­mu­ni­ty.

Last week about 15 pro­test­ers from Marten Falls First Nation pitched tents last week at Kop­per and McFauld’s Lakes near the explo­ration camps of Noront Resources and Freewest Resources.

“We’re pre­pared to stay there as long as pos­si­ble,” said Chief Eli Moo­nias, who isn’t pleased that Cana­da Chrome has staked min­er­al claims along a 350-kilo­me­tre long pro­posed rail cor­ri­dor between McFauld’s Lake and the Town of Naki­na in north­west­ern, Ontario.

He’s angry the stak­ing was done in advance of the imple­men­ta­tion of the Ontar­i­o’s Far North Plan­ning Act and wants North­ern Devel­op­ment, Mines and Forestry Min­is­ter Michael Grav­elle to “claw back” those claims.

Moo­nias said his com­mu­ni­ty of 300 was not con­sult­ed by Cana­da Chrome and claims the McFauld’s Lake deposits and most of the pro­posed rail­road cor­ri­dor falls with­in Marten Falls’ tra­di­tion­al ter­ri­to­ry.

We don’t like this under­hand­ed busi­ness,” said Moo­nias. “They should have come to the com­mu­ni­ty to do that.”

Moo­nias said he told min­istry offi­cials in Decem­ber he want­ed a com­mu­ni­ty-based land use plan that will include their 10-year-old strat­e­gy for an access road run­ning into the James Bay Low­lands and even­tu­al­ly link­ing up with Attawapiskat on the coast.

Moo­nias said his com­mu­ni­ty’s posi­tion is to sup­port the mine pro­vid­ed their cor­ri­dor plan is adopt­ed, but Cana­da Chrome has large­ly ignored this.

He said the min­ing com­pa­nies and Queen’s Park must address a list of con­cerns and wants an agree­ment signed with the min­ing com­pa­nies before the protest camps are pulled out.

Cana­da Chrome, a sub­sidiary of KWG Resources has been deal­ing with the Matawa First Nation, a trib­al coun­cil rep­re­sent­ing nine area com­mu­ni­ties, includ­ing Marten Falls.

But Moo­nias said the coun­cil does­n’t speak for his com­mu­ni­ty.
“They’ve got noth­ing to do with tra­di­tion­al ter­ri­to­ries. What hap­pens there is our busi­ness.”
KWG Resources and Cana­da Chrome pres­i­dent and CEO Frank Smeenk chalked up the protest to an inter­nal squab­ble inside the coun­cil.

“We were giv­en to under­stand that we were to fol­low a pro­to­col by the nine mem­bers of Matawa Coun­cil,” said Smeenk, refer­ring to the Matawa Inter­im Min­er­al Mea­sures pro­to­col. “Now we are to under­stand that’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly the case.”

Moo­nias said he nev­er agreed to any such pro­to­col.

“I nev­er heard of it. I’ve got noth­ing to do with that.”

Smeenk said it’s obvi­ous Marten Falls wants to be con­sult­ed with sep­a­rate­ly.

“Eli’s try­ing to get atten­tion to a cause and one of those is one that pre-dates all of us, a plan for a win­ter road.”

Smeenk said he met Moo­nias in Thun­der Bay this month after hear­ing of the com­mu­ni­ty’s plan to block­ade of airstrips at McFauld’s and Kop­per Lakes.

He said the protest may be a nego­ti­at­ing ploy to force the gov­ern­ment to re-open an ille­gal airstrip in the Ring of Fire along the Muketei Riv­er closed down last Novem­ber by the Min­istry of Nat­ur­al Resources.

Marten Falls had part­nered with Wilder­ness North Air to pro­vide a logis­tic sup­port base for the explo­ration efforts.

The MNR said the devel­op­ment of this airstrip was not autho­rized and a war­rant was autho­rized under the Pub­lic Lands Act pro­hibit­ing the use and occu­pa­tion of this airstrip. A restric­tion remains in place until a final deci­sion is made by the MNR regard­ing an ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion and review of the airstrip pro­pos­al.

Smeenk said his com­pa­ny has no objec­tions to the airstrip being per­mit­ted for use.

Cana­da Chrome’s pro­posed rail route fol­lows glac­i­er eskers that run north-south through the swampy ter­rain between Naki­na and McFauld’s Lake.

“If God had a place for a rail­road to go that would be it,” said Smeenk.

With an adjoin­ing ser­vice road, Smeenk said near­by com­mu­ni­ties could access it with branch roads as well as run fibre optics and pow­er lines.

Moo­nias said he met pri­vate­ly with Smeenk in Thun­der Bay before Christ­mas to dis­cuss the trans­porta­tion cor­ri­dor and said the com­pa­ny pres­i­dent “made some over­tures.”

Last Sep­tem­ber, Marten Falls signed a com­pen­sa­tion agree­ment with Noront Resources for past explo­ration work already per­formed at their explo­ration camp. Moo­nias said it amount­ed to $2 per metre for holes already drilled, but added no agree­ments for future explo­ration work has been signed with Noront or any oth­er com­pa­ny.

Noront said in a Jan. 18 statement,despite the incon­ve­nience of a “logis­tics halt” at their ice airstrip” it was sup­port­ing the actions of Marten Falls.

Moo­nias said a meet­ing is sched­uled next week with gov­ern­ment offi­cials and some min­ing play­ers in Marten Falls.

He wants the min­ing com­pa­nies to use their win­ter toll roads to haul fuel and bulk items, and for the gov­ern­ment to allow them to fin­ish con­struc­tion of an airstrip to cre­ate a ser­vice hub for McFauld’s Lake.

“We’re say­ing let’s build this strip where the ground is good for the envi­ron­ment and let us build the camps there and do busi­ness.”

Moo­nias said some com­pa­nies had been land­ing on the par­tial­ly-com­plet­ed airstrip last fall. “We told the MNR about it and they shut it down. We’re try­ing to fin­ish that so we can start build­ing our camps there to do busi­ness.”
He also wants jobs and con­tracts to ser­vice these camps instead of the com­pa­nies bring­ing in out­side sup­pli­ers and sup­port per­son­nel.

Moo­nias also wants an envi­ron­men­tal clean-up and com­pen­sa­tion at McFauld’s Lake for raw sewage, grey water, fuel and chem­i­cal spills dumped by explo­ration com­pa­nies in the sum­mer of 2007.

Smeenk expressed con­fi­dence the issue could be resolved to ben­e­fit all and does­n’t sus­pect the protest will raise any red flags with Cliffs Nat­ur­al Resources.

“The First Nations just want to fig­ure out how to get our atten­tion.”

He said it may involve com­mu­ni­ty own­er­ship of the enter­prise and did­n’t rule out a First Nation equi­ty stake in the project.

When asked if the Ontario gov­ern­ment was active­ly involved help­ing in medi­at­ing the dis­pute, Smeenk paused and said he found he found MNDMF and MNR staff to be “exceed­ing­ly help­ful and care­ful of every­one’s rights.”

Anne-Marie Flana­gan, spokes­woman for Michael Grav­elle, said the min­istry is talk­ing with all the par­ties toward resolv­ing a “com­pli­cat­ed sit­u­a­tion” that involves the MNR, the air strip and how peo­ple in the Far North can all ben­e­fit.

“We’re look­ing into the whole sit­u­a­tion because this is some­thing that’s going to have to be sort­ed out big time and rather quick­ly when you look at what Cliffs is doing.

“There has to be rea­son­able deci­sions by the First Nation about what they want to go ahead with and how they want to do it.”

Grav­elle is sched­uled to deliv­er a speech Feb. 10 at the sym­po­sium.

Ontar­i­o’s new­ly revised Min­ing Act includes a dis­pute res­o­lu­tion mech­a­nism for issues between First Nations and min­ing com­pa­nies, but the details of how it is sup­posed to work has yet to be defined since the gov­ern­ment is con­duct­ing anoth­er round of pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion.