Gary Horvitz

Each situation is adjudicated according to whatever opposition has been mustered and whatever degree of engagement the state chooses as well as the anticipated value of the proposed project. Thus, in concept and practice, the original votes in the UN for Free, Prior and Informed Consent were toothless.

Mining is already part of the poly-crisis, the Great Unraveling, the center of the conversation, debate, or struggle, whichever it turns out to be, at the intersection of our fossil fueled past and our so-called clean future. Indigenous communities everywhere will increasingly, visibly, loudly, and painfully, be at the forefront of that conversation.

Though science must put a pin in a moment of history as a baseline, and even though that pin is a valuable composite of economic conditions, what is coming unraveled is the underlying commitment to a way of seeing the world that contains its own seeds of destruction.

Are we capable of reforming our relationships with each other as well as with the planet? Nothing short of that will suffice.