Indigenous experiences and perspectives on a mining corporation's community relations and development activities

This article adds to the resources policy literature by taking the unusual stance of examining corporate engagement from the perspective of an indigenous people affected by the activities of a mining corporation. Qualitative fieldwork was carried out in Amungsa in Papua, Indonesia, among the indigenous Amungme. The fieldwork included in-depth interviews, casual conversations, field observations, and perusing physical documents and web pages. All data were analysed with due regard given to previous literature about the mining in question, the mining industry, and this and other indigenous peoples. The Amungme had lived for centuries traditionally, self-sufficiently and virtually undisturbed. Their world has turned upside down since miners entered and encroached on their territory 60 years ago. After 30 years of conflict over the mining and its varied consequences, the mining corporation chose to acknowledge grievances and engage the indigenous peoples. It initiated community relations and development activities (CRDs), which are provided in conjunction with other organisations which the mining corporation established. These organisations are funded from a small proportion of the profits from the mining, nicknamed the One Percent Trust Fund, and are governed with involvement of representatives of the peoples intended to benefit, including the Amungme. While the Amungme acknowledge that the corporation's CRDs contribute to their development and corporation officials are trying to address some shortcomings in how the CRDs are occurring, various issues still trouble the Amungme. These range from specifics about each programme, through asymmetries and imperialism in how the people and corporation relate to each other, to continuing discontent over loss of homelands, and over their treatment for being “in the way” of mining activities. Even so, many Amungme see the presence of the corporation as more beneficial than either the still fledgling local government authorities or the military and civilian representatives of the central government. The findings attest to how important it is for engagement to be multi-sided, allowing expression of indigenous, corporate and civil authority perspectives. The results of the analysis may help the Amungme and similar peoples elsewhere gain greater agency vis-à-vis corporations. The findings provide insights into indigenous theory.