If your company has interests in the mining field, one of the players in the mining industry is native lands. The history of natives around the world, was to move the natives from the land which they were on to another piece of land that is not needed for now. The government of the past, for a variety of reasons used the process all sorts of natives. One of the examples was a native group was moved to the oil fields of Oklahoma because at the time, oil was not used and the land was considered to be of lower value. When the economy changed and embraced the oil, the natives had to be moved again. At the present time, it is much harder and much less desirable to move people, which means land claims have to be agreed to. This pushes the natives from being a less desirable on the land to a partner on the land. In is natural for corporate and native interests to conflict – one wants to exploit the land and go on to he next mine, the other wishes to stay in the area for that is their home and they have adapted to it.

There are many books on the topic and one is written by Ellen Bielawski called Rogue Diamonds, Douglas and McIntyre, Vancouver, 2003. In this case, diamonds were found in northern Canada, but to do the mine the land would be changed. Although things have changed, the concept of time and the demands for making a decision likely have not changed much. The company wants to develop, it pressures the government to give them approval sooner than later; the natives ask were the diamonds there last year, so what is the reason for making a decision now? for many decisions in the band were made after all had a say. In most groups, some wanted more development, some wanted no development and some read the tea leaves and expected something to happen; for the divide between traditional and consumer society gets smaller every year. Questions about benefits would we get? should we get? what is our interests? come from the natives. Not surprisingly there are fewer, black and white answers many of them are grey or it depends, but it is no longer the old one of trust us.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, if you deal or work with a company that has paid dividends for a long time your expectation they will continue to pay increases as you expect the company to have ups and downs but continue operating for a long time. The company is made of people and relationships of humans will decide the answer. If the company can work with different suppliers there is no reason why it can not work with native groups. All over the world, people are people.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions