Native Challenges to Mining and Oil Corporations

The book explores how the global elite sanction environmental racism with the belief that indigenous cultures are “an obstacle to progress” that must be assimilated into the “modern world.” Gedicks investigates the legal mechanisms—domestic laws, mining codes, environmental regulations—that are used and abused in the interests of politicians and corporations. He masterfully describes how the collusion between corporate and political interests breeds corruption and repression. Insight is given into how the lack of accountability and transparency in the activities of corporations and politicians eats away at the democratic foundations of society.

In one of the strongest chapters of the book, Gedicks reveals that the arms industry is a primary consumer of minerals. To feed the need for arms, corporations drive deeper into resource frontiers to seek raw materials. Gedicks makes the observation that the fragile ecosystems of the resource frontiers will collapse long before their mineral wealth is exhausted. When the environmental impacts of mineral extraction are added to pollution caused by weapons production, a vicious cycle of environmental destruction emerges. Indigenous people sit in the eye of this storm.

Resource Rebels details the consequences for indigenous people of large-scale natural resource extraction projects: forced resettlement, toxic pollution, disease, loss of food and water supplies and the collapse of traditional ways of life. The “divide and conquer” tactics employed by corporations to break indigenous opposition are laid bare. Gedicks recounts how intimate connections between oil, mining, and militarization result in a familiar pattern of violent conflict in indigenous ancestral lands. Plentiful evidence is given of the involvement of corporations in human rights abuses, from oil companies in Nigeria to mining companies in West Papua.

Given the odds facing indigenous communities in the path of large-scale development projects, Al Gedicks reasons that the presence of transnational supporters is vital to the continuation of indigenous resistance. Excluded from decision-making procedures, the key challenge facing indigenous peoples is to make their voice heard. Allies in Europe and the United States can speak out about human rights abuses against indigenous peoples without fear of retaliation. Gedicks states that the strategic use of information by transnational allies can expose the otherwise hidden activities of governments and corporations in remote areas. A key role for international allies lies in questioning current western energy consumption. Gedicks makes a series of recommendations for more efficient energy use.

Broad in its geographical scope, Resource Rebels tells of resource battles in Colombia, Ecuador, Nigeria, West Papua, the United States, and Canada. Different battles take different forms. In Ecuador alone indigenous organizations and international allies have produced remarkable results using various tactics—massive civil disobedience, international legal action, constitutional reform and international campaigns. The wealth of detail provided on key case studies makes Resource Rebels a valuable tool for international and indigenous activists. Readable and engrossing, this book will engage a wide public.

Al Gedicks concludes that indigenous people are the modern world's equivalent of the miner's canary. Their David and Goliath struggle against corporate power contains a warning to the world. Our unsustainable natural resource consumption habits are not only a threat to the lives of indigenous peoples. They are threat to the planet's future.                     Z