Matawa Chiefs’ Ring of Fire Pullout Puts Mining Project in Peril

The stakes are high in Ottawa this week as the Chiefs of the Matawa First Nations lobby for the Canadian government to change their environmental assessment plans for a massive chromite mine in the resource-rich Ring of Fire in Northern Ontario.

The Chiefs of all nine Ojibway and Cree communities of the Matawa First Nations pulled their support for development in the Ring of Fire located in the James Bay lowlands after the government ignored their calls for a Joint Review Panel environmental assessment (EA) for the Cliffs Chromite Project. Cleveland-based Cliffs Natural Resources plans to have its proposed Black Thor chromite mine in production by 2015. It would be the first mine in the Ring of Fire, a swathe of resource-rich land in northern Ontario that has industrialists slavering and First Nations wary.

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