The Conflict with "Conflict Free" Canadian Diamonds

The knowledge of, and outrage with, conflict diamonds from the Congo has been a popular stand among diamond consumers since Leo DiCaprio gave us his uber-sexy performance as Danny Archer in the movie ‘Blood Diamonds,’ released in 2006. The problem with getting your news (and ethics) from a movie is all too clear if you just reflect on it for one second.

The conflict with conflict region diamonds remains, do we boycott all minerals from the Congo, copper, tin, coltan (read cell phones and computers) and diamonds and resolve to make an impoverished people more…is there a lower economic scale than poverty? Amazingly the native people of the Congo want to mine and sell their lands resources; they desperately need the flow of business to continue to survive even on the most meager economic level.  While Congolese pastors and village officials continue to ask the free world not to stop purchasing their mineral exports or they will all perish from poverty, the Canadian Conflict Free diamond industry is riding the green wave straight to the destruction of a resistant aboriginal people, poisoning the environment of the boreal region in the Northwest Territories of Canada and through habitat devastation are accelerating the extinction of the Polar Bear.

As a jeweler, I never jumped on the Canadian diamond bandwagon. People envision men “Eh? Make mine a double-double, eh,” wearing waders and panning for gold, sipping coffee from Tim Horton. Canadians are just like Americans, same continent, same educational opportunities, just like the coal miners of West Virginia. The problem is that Canadian diamond mines are raping the land, enslaving and dividing the people, destroying villages and the natural habitat of an impoverished community. The whole story reads like the US Army (played by DeBeers) stealing the American Indians' land, killing the animals on that land into extinction  and displacing the land owners onto reservations, and no one wants to be a part of THAT history.

The Attawapiskat Indians of the North West Territory are living in a toxic environment created by the millions of gallons of petroleum and the mercury used in the mining process. They have toxic schools, toxic water, deformed fish (like the wild animals in Chernobyl) and changes in large animal migration.

A quote from Mike Koostachin, a native Attawapiskat and activist, “They are the same regime, a modern day regime. They have our tribal government. Instead of cutting off your arms and feet like they did in Africa, they are cutting off our land, our food from the land. The people are the land.”

The mines in Canada are now producing a third of all new diamonds sold and are looking to ramp thing up, all in the name of 'conflict free' as big business. As quoted by Marc Choyt, jeweler and founder of Fair Jewelry Action, “Meanwhile, companies selling Canadian diamonds continue to market their goods as “conflict free” – perpetuating a myth that is destroying North America’s last Serengeti.”

In my opinion, the key to being an ethical jeweler is to have a voice, ensure your personal work is as low impact as possible, stay informed, use the products you know are helping move corporations to be more green, there’s money in green and corporations love profits, and finally support when possible start up small mining companies, and recycled products, small is the key here.

True ethical policies will eventually take hold and bite into the mining industries, like organic products and energy conservation. The market will never completely change, the militia with its decades old history in Western Africa will maybe always exist, but with effort there will be consumer supported alternatives. The most important thing one can do is NEVER purchase a piece of jewelry, a diamond or a share of stock from a DeBeers source…EVER.

Image: The Diavik diamond mine in Canada