ABSTRACT
In recent decades, mining activities have intensified in many regions of the world, leading to conflicts between Indigenous communities and mining proponents. These conflicts are occurring in the context of growing recognition of the rights of Indigenous peoples at the national and international levels. Using a comparative law approach, this chapter analyzes how and to what extent the rights of Indigenous peoples are recognized and protected when they run up against mining legal frameworks in Canada and the Fennoscandian countries (Norway, Sweden, and Finland). Following a brief overview of the foundations, sources, and modes of the legal recognition and protection of Indigenous peoples’ territorial rights in the jurisdictions studied, it describes the mining legal frameworks and specific forms that Indigenous peoples’ rights take when intersecting with these frameworks in each country. Despite recent changes to the mining legal frameworks in Canada and Fennoscandia to account for Indigenous peoples’ rights, this study shows that in all of these jurisdictions, mining development is still largely prioritized over land uses by Indigenous peoples, whose pathways to participation in formal mining decision-making processes remain narrow and limited. This chapter concludes that the increased recognition of Indigenous peoples’ rights has not fundamentally altered the preexisting structures and rationales of the mining legal frameworks in the countries studied.
