Vedanta Resources, a British company, intends to dig an open-pit bauxite mine on Niyamgiri mountain in India.
The mine will destroy the forests on which the Dongria Kondh depend and wreck the lives of thousands of other Kondh tribal people living in the area.
India’s Supreme Court has given the go ahead for the mine, but the Kondh peoples are determined to prevent the destruction of their most sacred site.
To be a Dongria Kondh is to live in the Niyamgiri Hills in Orissa state, India - they do not live anywhere else. Yet Vedanta Resources is determined to mine their sacred mountain's rich seam of bauxite (aluminium ore).
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| Watch Survival’s 10 minute film ‘Mine: story of a sacred mountain’ narrated by Joanna Lumley |
The Dongria and other local Kondh people are resisting Vedanta and are determined to save Niyamgiri from becoming an industrial wasteland.
Other Kondh groups are already suffering due to a bauxite refinery, built and operated by Vedanta, at the base of the Niyamgiri Hills.
The Niyamgiri Hills are home to the more than 8,000 Dongria Kondh, whose lifestyle and religion have helped nurture the area’s dense forests and unusually rich wildlife.
The Dongria farm the hill slopes, grow crops in among the forest, and gather wild fruit, flowers and leaves for sale.
They call themselves Jharnia, meaning ‘protector of streams’, because they protect their sacred mountain and the life-giving rivers that rise within its thick forests.
Vedanta’s open pit mine would destroy the forests, disrupt the rivers and spell the end for the Dongria Kondh as a distinct people.
Your support is vital if the Dongria Kondh are to survive. There are many ways you can help.
