Entering Vindelkroken

Mining for minerals and ore in a natural reserve. Taste the words and reflect upon that notion for a short while. This is what mining company Blackstone Ventures wants and has acquired prospecting rights to, in the northernmost parts of Sweden. They will soon start to drill for minerals near the Sapmi summer village Vindelkroken.

If you wish: watch this short video created by independent documentary creator Stéphane Lombard.

The legalities are complicated and I have read about the company using juricial loopholes to be able to prospect the area, but no matter the legal sides and turnabouts, I really hope that they will not be able to continue this project.

Syterskalet - Used here under a Creative Commons license, originally from Wikipedia.

I am not alone in this notion. Communities of people with Sapmi background and culture, being an indigenous culture which inhabits the northern part of Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia, are largely against mining in their traditional area of living.

Parts of the Sampi's historical way of making a living for themselves has been trough herding reindeer's. There are claims being made that mining would disrupt the animals natural habitat and also change what has this far been left untouched.

I am writing this because I think it's shady at best to start industrial projects in natural reserves, there is something I believe that many people would recognize as wrong on a very fundamental level.

I also believe that values which includes a support of biological diversity and the preservation of the beauty of the natural habitat needs to be strengthened, so that there is a balance between industrialization and biological sustainability.