ORISSA, INDIA, July 24, 2008: High in the monsoon mists in eastern India there is place called Golgola, home of the Dongria Kondh. Only 7,950 of them are left today. They have lived in the Niyamgiri hills in a remote part of eastern India’s Orissa state for centuries and survive by gathering fruit, growing small crops of millet and selling jungle plants in the towns at the foot of the hills. The modern world has yet to reach Golgola – there’s no electricity, no school, no television, no telephones. “We get everything from the jungle like the fruits we take to the market. This is like our source of life for our Dongria Kondh peoples,” says Jitu Jakeskia, a young Dongria Kondh activist.
The Dongria are animists and every hill is home to its own God. “Niyam Raja is our supreme god. His name means Lord of Law, he made all things,” explains Jitu. “Niyamgiri mountain is the most important place for Dongria Kondh people, it is like Niyam Rajah’s temple, that is why our people worship nature, they have to protect nature.” But an arm of the mining giant Vedanta Resources, one of Britain’s biggest listed companies, wants the minerals from Niyamgiri hill, which is rich in bauxite, from which aluminum is derived. Orissa is one of India’s poorest states, but also one of the richest in natural resources, so the government is keen to tap its potential. “If you compare iron ore, alumina and coal we can say Orissa has about 60 to 70% of the reserves Australia has,” says Dr Mukesh Kumar, chief operating officer of Vedanta Aluminum Ltd.
India’s Wildlife Institute has said that mining threatens an important ecosystem with irreversible changes. A Supreme Court committee which investigated the project said Vedanta Aluminum violated guidelines in the Forest Conservation Act. And Norway’s official Council on Ethics, which monitors investments for the country’s huge state pension fund, said investing in Vedanta Resources, which has many mining interests, presented “an unacceptable risk of complicity in current and future severe environmental damage and human rights violations”. Norway’s government sold all the Vedanta shares it held which were worth $14m.
Jitu Jakesika insists they won’t let mining happen in their sacred hills without a fight. “If the Supreme Court will give a decision to allow mining here, all our Dongria Kondh people from children to old women will go to the factory and sleep on the road and say first you will kill us then you can mine, because we cannot live without our mountain,” he says.