In 2012, a pregnant woman and two of her children were killed in their own home in Tampakan, South Cotabato province, on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. Tampakan is the site of a new mine with Australian interests. The woman was the wife of a B'laan tribal leader agitating against the mine.
On Mindanao, vast acreage with high mining potential also happens to be ancestral domain. Lumad, the umbrella term for around 15 ethno-linguistic groups on the island, have over recent years been harassed, displaced and killed by militias, some allegedly with the imprimatur of the Philippine army.
Much of the conflict has passed without notice in Australia, where mining companies are better known in terms of their contribution to revenue, lobbies against climate change policy and their apparent entanglement with elected officials. It makes political discourse lively, but also reflects the pervasive insularity of antipodean debate.
Canadians, by contrast, have long interrogated the implication of Canadian mining companies in human rights and environmental abuses overseas — in academic journals, the media, and parliament.
A well-documented pattern of conflict and despair occurs in parts of the developing world where foreign companies have created a mining boom. It is a phenomenon discernible to the extent that it is named: the resource curse, or the paradox of plenty.
In such disparate countries as Guatemala, Papua New Guinea and Sierra Leone (and many others), the presence of foreign-listed mining companies has not translated to better socioeconomic outcomes for the communities in which they operate. The paradox here is that resource-rich regions somehow remain underdeveloped, relative to the countries that avidly consume what they produce.
Domestic corruption and environmental damage goes some way to explaining this injustice, but is only a fraction of the picture. The reality is that even before anything has been dug out, the mere prospect of mining operations destabilises the area.
On Mindanao, Lumad from Bukidnon, Davao del Norte and Surigao del Sur provinces have fled to capital cities by the hundreds, after their leaders were executed and villages militarised. Dulphing Ogan, secretary-general of a confederation of various Mindanao tribes, believes the common denominator is their opposition to mining activities.
Prominent academic and lawyer Tony La Viña agrees. In an uncharacteristically strident editorial, he rejects the narrative of counter-insurgency being peddled by the national government and military.
'The truth is that this is not even principally about the insurgency even if both sides are using the Lumad for propaganda,' he