Mining
De Beers Canada officially opened Victor Diamond Mine, Ontario's first ever diamond mine July 26, 2008. De Beers has spent approximately $1 billion on construction of the mine. It is located 90 kilometres (56 mi) west of the settlement of Attawapiskat on Attawapiskat First Nation traditional land. An Impact-Benefit Agreement (IBA) was signed with community leaders in 2005 to be later protested by the community through demonstrations and road blocks. De Beers has negotiated a lease area. Although it is acknowledged that the mine is on Attawapiskat traditional land, the royalties from Victor Mine, flow to the Province of Ontario, not Attawapiskat First Nation. They have 500 full-time employees with 100 from Attawapiskat First Nation. De Beers also employs Attawapiskat First Nation in winter road construction.
Read more about this topic: Attawapiskat First Nation
Famous quotes containing the word mining:
“For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish or a German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making “ladies” dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)
“In strict science, all persons underlie the same condition of an infinite remoteness. Shall we fear to cool our love by mining for the metaphysical foundation of this elysian temple? Shall I not be as real as the things I see? If I am, I shall not fear to know them for what they are.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Any relation to the land, the habit of tilling it, or mining it, or even hunting on it, generates the feeling of patriotism. He who keeps shop on it, or he who merely uses it as a support to his desk and ledger, or to his manufactory, values it less.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)