History, scale and the political ecology of ethical diamonds in Kugluktuk, Nunavut

Abstract

Canadian diamonds are marketed as ethical alternatives to so-called 'conflict diamonds.' This research analyzes a series of focus groups conducted in Kugluktuk, Nunavut, an Inuit town impacted by diamond mining. The article sheds some light on the risks and benefits of mining, but it also examines the broader historical and geographic context of commodity networks for diamonds as an entry point into a critique of the possibility of consumption as ethical praxis. What the analysis shows is that the risks and benefits assessed by focus group participants manifest themselves in a context of colonial dispossession of sovereignty over resources. This dispossession is part of the very process of market regulation that is necessary for capital accumulation. Accumulated capital professes to satisfy this created need ethically. In much of Arctic Canada, for example, this takes the form of a dependency on the market in order to secure the wages now necessary to engage in subsistence activities. The purpose of this article is not to unveil exploitive conditions of production or to claim that Canadian diamonds are in fact unethical, but rather to question what we mean by 'ethical' commodities by examining the claim within a broader historical political ecology.Keywords: Diamonds, political ecology, market regulation, Nunavut, ethical consumption.

Problems of abstraction and extraction in cultural geography research: implications for fieldwork in Arctic North America

“…1 In short, I ran a series of focus groups in the Inuit village of Kugluktuk, Nunavut, in 2011, as part of a project to triangulate the history and practices of the global diamond industry, their construction of Canadian diamonds as "ethical" alternatives to African diamonds vis-à-vis images of polar bears, ice bergs, snowy white landscapes, maple leaves, etc., and the reaction to the above by residents of Kugluktuk, which exists about 425 km down the Coppermine River from three of Canada's four diamond mines. This research, buttressed by semistructured interviews and archival research, has been published elsewhere (Schlosser 2013a(Schlosser , 2013b. Focus groups have a number of advantages in such a context, especially their ability to facilitate intragroup communication (Litosseliti 2003).…”

The Community Readiness Initiative in Kugluktuk, Nunavut: Mining, neoliberalism, and state interventions in arctic Indigenous community development

“…Canada's first Diamond mine, Ekati, began production in that region in 1998 (Dominion Diamond 2013). Following Ekati, the Rio Tinto Diavik diamond mine was opened in 2003, and in 2008 DeBeers opened its Snap Lake Diamond mine (Schlosser 2013). Although these diamond mines are situated in the Northwest Territories, Kugluktukmiut are connected to the Lac de Gras developments through employment and its water catchment area.…”

“…Although these diamond mines are situated in the Northwest Territories, Kugluktukmiut are connected to the Lac de Gras developments through employment and its water catchment area. The Ekati and Diavik mines are connected via Lac de Gras to the Coppermine River, which empties into the Coronation Gulf, where Kugluktuk is located (Schlosser 2013). In 2015, of the 1,134 employees at the Diavik mine, 18%, or two hundred and thirteen, were northern Indigenous employees.…”