In Canada, the Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group – a group of First Nations communities in British Columbia – has requested precautionary measures from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, seeking to stop the sale of their historic land to the provincial and Canadian governments by a logging corporation. [Canada.com; Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group] The request alleges that the Canadian government has failed to consult the affected First Nations communities regarding the sale, in violation of its international obligations.
The group filed a related petition before the IACHR in 2008, which the Commission declared admissible in 2009. [Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group] The petition challenged the Canadian government’s failure to protect the communities’ property rights and its sale of the ancestral lands without prior consultation to logging companies, which allegedly proceeded to cause irreversible environmental damage. Read the admissibility report here. In the words of the Commission:
The petition alleges that the State has violated the human rights of the [Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group] because of the absence of demarcation, established boundaries and recording of title deed to their ancestral lands; the lack of compensation for HTG ancestral lands currently in the hands of private third parties; the granting of licenses, permits and concessions within ancestral lands without prior consultation; and the resulting destruction of the environment, the natural resources and of those sites the alleged victims consider sacred.
This month, the Eastern Navajo Diné community of New Mexico submitted a petition to the IACHR, challenging the U.S. federal government’s award of a mining license that would allow Hydro Resources Inc. to source uranium from the aquifer that is the community’s only source of drinking water. [Indian Country Today] The health of the Navajo community has reportedly previously been affected by uranium mining sites across the southwest United States. The petitioner, the New Mexico Environmental Law Center states:
After 16 years of legal fighting, the New Mexico Environmental Law Center has exhausted all avenues offered by the U.S. legal system to overturn the mining license granted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to Hydro Resources Inc. (HRI). Should HRI be allowed to mine, the drinking water for approximately 15,000 people will be contaminated.
[NMELC] The petition asks the Commission to make several recommendations, including:
- The NRC should suspend HRI’s materials license until such time as HRI has remediated the radioactive surface contamination on Church Rock’s Section 17, and the United States has taken significant and meaningful steps to remediate the abandoned uranium mines within the boundaries of the Church Rock Chapter;
- That the NRC require HRI to submit comprehensive baseline groundwater quality and other hydrological, geological and geochemical data, subject to a public hearing;
- That the NRC rescind HRI’s license for the Church Rock Section 17 and Unit 1 sites which are subject to the Navajo Nation’s ban on uranium mining and processing;
- That the NRC or other appropriate administrative agencies prohibit forced removal of Petitioner Larry King and his family from Church Rock Section 17 or forced disruption of his subsistence grazing practices or cultural activities.
[NMELC]