CKUT 90.3FM – Off the Hour

Panel on the Mining Industry and the Plan Nord coproduced by Carla Green and Robin Dianoux for CKUT 90.3FM in Montreal. Videos of the panel and of the interviews inside the job fair shot and edited by Robin Dianoux.

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Article by Carla Green published on March 9th, 2013

On February 9th, as Montréal’s environmental activists chanted, marched, and were piled into police buses outside the Palais des congrés, we wound our way through the Palais’s numerous security checkpoints to the nearly-deserted Salon des ressources naturelles, buried deep within the building.

The result is a series of interviews with Salon participants and presenters. In a building surrounded by protesters but isolated from their cries of protest, we took a look at the mining industry from the point of view of those who live and work within it.

This multimedia panel discussion examines the mining industry’s discourse on mining. Live in CKUT’s studio, we screened clips from the interviews for PAQG’s Marie-Dominique Langlois, Cree activist/musician Pakesso Mukash, and environmental activist Cleve Higgins, and solicited their reactions, opinions, and often, a hearty reality check. The discussion spans the breadth of the controversy around the mining industry, from the rights of indigenous groups to the meaning of sustainability.

Marie-Dominique Langlois is the co-ordinator at the Projet Accompagnement Québec Guatemala (paqg.org), which is co-organizing a conference on the human rights violations association with the spread of Canadian mining on March 21st and 22nd at UQÀM. Find more details here (defenddissenttour.wordpress.co…).

Pakesso Mukash is a Cree activist and musician in the band CerAmony (ceramony.ca). You can find the group’s music on iTunes.

Cleve Higgins is part of the Anti-Colonial Solidarity Collective and has conducted research on the mining industry in Canada and Latin America. He was involved in organizing the February 8th protest against the Salon des ressources naturelles.