Photo by Emily Varisco • varisco@mscd.edu

Photo by Kate Johnson • jokathry@mscd.edu

Carrie Dann, representative of the Western Shoshone Nation, addresses protesters during the demonstration outside the Newmont Mining Corporation’s shareholders meeting Tuesday, April 25, at the Inverness Hotel in Greenwood Village.

   Students and activist groups took to the streets Tuesday for the second leg of a two-day, independently run educational effort to raise awareness of the environmental devastation that has occurred at the hands of Newmont Mining Corporation.

   The protesters, who began the rally at Newmont’s headquarters at 1700 Sherman St. in downtown Denver, were bussed to the Newmont shareholder’s meeting at the Inverness Hotel near the Denver Tech Center, where they resumed the rally.

   Newmont, one of the biggest gold producers in the world, has facilities operating on five continents. They also mine copper, silver and zinc. Newmont declined to make a statement in regard to either of the day’s events.

   The protest was marked by the presence of several members of the Western Shoshone Defense Project. In Nevada, where the Shoshone’s traditional land is located, Newmont continues to operate several mines without the consent of the Shoshone people. This, they argue, is in direct violation of the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley, in which the United States recognized the Shoshone’s land rights.

   The most recent data available from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxics Release Inventory shows that Newmont released 617 pounds of mercury into the air in 2004 alone. Mercury can cause severe health problems, including brain damage, birth defects and cancer.

   Although the state of Nevada has adopted some regulations, activists are concerned that enforcing them would be impossible because the mining companies would be in charge of performing the tests. In addition, these new standards don’t require companies to reduce their mercury emissions.

   The Shoshone face other potential health risks, including contamination in the ground water from the Pipeline Mine in Crescent Valley that is just 35 miles east of the heart of Western Shoshone territory.

   “ How do you clean up underground water contamination? I don’t know how, and one of the words they use is ’mitigate.’ ‘We (Newmont) will mitigate.’ How do you mitigate life? Water is life; how do you mitigate that,” said Carrie Dann, resident of the Western Shoshone Territory.

   Armed with drums and sacred chants, the Shoshone began the procession to the police line. Following behind them were the remaining protesters, who carried with them signs baring various slogans, all with similar messages—Newmont must stop its path of destruction or face the consequences of the global community.

   The requests activists have made are numerous. The Stop Newmont Coalition has asked that Newmont and all it’s subsidiaries immediately cease mining in protected areas, as well as areas in which the community has not given consent. They also request that independent parties be allowed to conduct environmental reviews of mining facilities, and that the indigenous people be compensated for ill effects previous mining has had on the community.

   Protesters cited a variety of violations from other parts of the globe as well. One in particular seemed to fuel an especially heated dialogue that spilled over onto the streets after being discussed at Monday’s conference “What Price Gold” in Tivoli 320.

   The submarine tailing disposal, or STD, is a method of disposing of mine waste by piping it into neighboring bodies of water. Activists have labeled it as a highly illegal and “immoral” process.
   The most widely known implementation of STD is at the Newmont Minahasa Raya mine in Buyat Bay, Indonesia. There, the Newmont Minahasa Raya mine has dumped more than 4 million tons of waste into the bay at a depth of 82 meters, according to the No Dirty Gold Campaign, co-directed by Earthworks, a nonprofit organization.

   The result of such dumping can be widespread. Populations of open-ocean species that depend on the coastal habitat have been decimated and heavy metals have been found in the fish and plankton.

   A 2003 report made by the Indonesian Forum for the Environment showed that NMR’s tailings carried four times the legal limit of cyanide levels. It also found elevated levels of mercury, cadmium and arsenic in the water.

   In addition to the ecological damage mine tailings have caused, many indigenous people have suffered health problems from toxins in the environment. Villagers who live in close proximity to Buyat Bay—the outlet site for the tailings—have reported skin rashes, body sores, headaches, tumors and reproductive complications.

   As the protest continued, Dann approached the megaphone to the sound of applause as she addressed the crowd for the second day.

   “ Whenever you buy a little gold ring, you are one of the people that are also destroying the land. It takes approximately 38 tons of waste rock to build a man’s wedding ring. That’s a hell of a lot of waste rock,” Dann said.

   The protesters eventually boarded their double-decker bus and returned to Newmont’s headquarters to resume their efforts.

   “ Visibility,” as one protester said, was the key word of the afternoon.