01/18/2026
Sharing from Northern Ontario Business:
Too many of the people in Treaty 9 territory are living without basic necessities like potable water, proper health care, or even a comfortable place to live.
And now, with the development of the Ring of Fire on the horizon, Michel J. Koostachin worries that the area’s waterways will soon be under threat as well, as mining companies seek to extract the area’s mineral riches for critical minerals applications around the globe.
“With this proposed Ring of Fire, with these minerals being extracted, we are concerned how it affects us as Indigenous people; our rights are being violated,” Koostachin said during a Jan. 13 webinar hosted by Above Ground and MiningWatch Canada.
“So also our land, the environment, it's going to be destroyed. So anything where there's going to be destruction is going to be devastation within the Treaty 9 area where the proposed Ring of Fire is.”
Koostachin is Cree, a member of the Attawapiskat First Nation, and the founder of the Friends of the Attawapiskat River, a grassroots organization advocating for environmental protections and opposing Ontario’s Bill 5. The legislation was passed last summer to fasttrack infrastructure and resource projects in the province.
He and other Indigenous speakers from around the world gathered online to discuss Indigenous perspectives on the global critical minerals rush.
Treaty 9 covers a vast area of muskeg in Ontario’s Far North, incorporating the James Bay and Hudson Bay watersheds.
For Koostachin and others living in the area, the concern is that any mineral extraction or processing that takes place will involve the release of toxins that will then find their way into waterways, impacting fish habitat and aquatic life, moose, caribou and migratory birds.
With such a significant potential impact on the region and its people, Koostachin believes the consultation to date has been unsatisfactory.
“There is no reports coming directly to grassroots people,” he said. “There is no consultations under the United Nations’ UNDRIP (Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) for free, prior, informed consent to the people.”
Last summer, the Friends of the Attawapiskat River joined a court challenge that seeks to find Bill 5 unconstitutional. Koostachin and a youth leader, Ramon Kataquapit, want to be given intervenor status, which would allow them to give the court their personal perspectives, including traditional knowledge about the land.
“With that court challenge, we want to tell the government that this Bill 5 is violating our Indigenous rights,” Koostachin said.
“We have inherent rights, we have sovereignty rights, we have treaty rights, and also we have Aboriginal rights, along with the United Nations UNDRIP.
“We are concerned for our young yet to be born. We have to say something.”
In other areas of the world, Indigenous peoples say they’re experiencing similar violations.
Brian Bixcul is Maya-Tzutujil from Guatemala and the global coordinator for Securing Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in the Green Economy Coalition. The organization advocates for Indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination and consent.
He calls the current shift toward renewable energy and electric mobility technologies a “pivotal moment” that’s putting disproportionate pressure on Indigenous peoples and the lands they call home.
That includes a lack of free, prior and informed consent, respect for self-determination, and human rights protections.
“These are not isolated incidents,” Bixcul said. “There is a pattern behind what’s happening on Indigenous lands related to the extraction of transition minerals.”
In the West African country of Guinea, which has two thirds of the world’s reserves of bauxite — used to make aluminum — mining has been taking place since the 1970s, noted Kounsa Bailo Barry, president of that country’s Humanity and Sustainable Environment Association.
Mining activity ramped up in 2010 when the country, and the region of Sangarédi in particular, experienced a mining “rush,” Barry said, and with it came pollution, environmental degradation and exploitation.
Waterways have become polluted, people have become ill and died, and, prior to 2015, agricultural lands could be expropriated without any compensation paid to individuals or communities, Barry said.
“This is having an effect on the economic, social, environmental conditions in communities,” he said.
“We’re talking about a subsistence livelihood in small villages, but now the water courses and the lands, the soils are contaminated, a number of aquatic species are threatened and disappearing, and this … leads to companies blocking access to certain areas, certain water courses.”
It’s difficult to combat these efforts when there is no national body or legislation overseeing compensation and a requirement for consultation and consent, he added.
The grassroots organization Friends of the Attawapiskat River are concerned about the environmental impact Ring of Fire mining could have on the river. Friends of the Attawapiskat River/Supplied
Yet despite lack of political will, Barry’s organization is working to advocate for Indigenous peoples’ rights on mining projects, in addition to calling for an “earth-friendly model” of extraction, along with community-driven initiatives like reforestation and water protection plans.
“We’re also putting a lot of energy behind those community initiatives, creating international networks between communities and between Indigenous peoples in different parts of the world and within the country,” Barry said, “so that we can have more of an impact on this energy transition that is really going to completely change and alter the lives in our communities and also on workers.”
In the Cree community, Koostachin said, there are prophecies that predict the destruction of the land and water, and with mining encroaching on their territory, he believes those prophecies are dangerously close to coming true.
But before even one shovel gets in the ground, he believes there’s still time to intervene to protect the land, the water, and Indigenous rights.
“We need everyone to help us Indigenous people; we have to come together as one,” he said.
“We have to showcase our rich heritage, our cultures. We’re not protestors; we’re protectors
