Greenland Ruby

When European scientists first arrived in Greenland over 200 years ago to study the geology, they encountered native Inuit (“eskimo”) people who were already familiar with the red gemstone variety of the mineral corundum, known as ruby (Giesecke, 1833).

The native inhabitants continued to assist the European explorers with their ruby exploration, leading them to some half dozen locations, spread out for over a hundred miles along the southwest shores of Greenland, known as the Kitaa Coast (Boggild, 1953).

Ruby and sapphire are the red and blue gemstone varieties of corundum (Al2O3). Ruby is colored red by the presence of minute amounts of the element chromium, whereas sapphire is normally blue due to the presence of minute quantities of the elements iron and titanium (Hughes, 1997).

Discovery

In 1966, gem-quality ruby was finally discovered in outcrop on what became known as Ruby Island by Dr. Martin Ghisler, with the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS). Ghisler’s scouts and support staff drew heavily from the native population of the nearby village of Fiskenaesset. The exploration team discovered ruby in association with the minerals sapphirine, kornerupine, pargasite, and phlogopite, confirming six ruby deposits in the Fiskenaesset district (Petersen and Secher, 1993).

During the 1970’s, a succession of junior Canadian mining companies, among them Platinomino, Fiscannex, and Valhalla, explored the region for chromite and platinum and attempted, unsuccessfully, to commercialize the ruby occurrences near Fiskenaesset (Geisler, 1983).

Peter Appel (1995) with the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, published a comprehensive review of the six ruby deposits then known in the Fiskenaesset district and recognized sufficient potential to encourage further exploration. Based on his recommendations, two independent geologists named Bill Brereton and Bill Anderson consolidated the land holdings at Fiskenaesset (Anderson, 1995).

Exploration

In 2004, William Rohtert identified the Greenland Ruby as the most important colored gemstone occurrence in the entire Arctic while working on behalf of True North Gems, Inc., a small Canadian exploration company established to search for colored gemstones at high northern latitudes. True North acquired the Fiskenaesset property from Brereton and Anderson. The company was motivated by the success of their competitors in the Canadian diamond fields beginning in 1991 (www.truenorthgems.com).

Rohtert hired local Inuit from Fiskenaesset and Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, to help explore the district and, over the course of the next three years, his team increased the number of ruby occurrences known from six to twenty nine. They bulk sampled the main deposits and demonstrated the economic potential for a ruby mine (Rohtert and Ritchie, 2006). True North Gems paid for Canadian gem and jewelry experts to come to the community and train the locals in order to assist them in developing a cottage industry making ruby jewelry and mounting collector specimens. By the time Mr. Rohtert left True North Gems in early 2007 after presiding over an exploration budget that was seriously overspent due to such activities as airlifting massive ruby encrusted boulders into a playground at the village, virtually every home in the village of Fiskenaesset (population 250) had ruby in it.

After replacing management over the ruby project, in 2007 True North Gems began to drill a ruby deposit in the Fiskenaesset district at a place called Aappaluttoq Ridge. The new management was accused of discouraging the villagers from Fiskenaesset, as well as Inuit from elsewhere in Greenland, from coming onto the area of their exploration license, even though it was argued that the Greenlanders had the right of mineral access under “Section 32” of the country’s Mineral Resources Act administerd by the Bureau of Minerals and Petroleum (www.bmp.gl). Section 32 was argued to confirm not only native people's right of access to the land to hunt and fish and prospect for minerals for their own purposes, but also to hand mine gem grade ruby material, even on the legal exploration licenses of other parties. Later interpretation of this Section excluded this clause from being used for the commercial exploitation of gem grade material, which is clearly not an Inuit tradition.

Mining Rights

In the decades prior to significant commercial potential of Greenland's ruby being recognized, small numbers of Greenlanders had been supplying their friends and family, as well as the gift shops serving international tourists visiting the island, with ruby and ruby jewelry hand mined from Fiskenaesset. Under the “One Handful” rule, every visitor was allowed to take one handful of rocks or mineral specimens home as a souvenir of their trip to Greenland.

On 16 August 2007, less than two weeks after a small Arctic newspaper reported that an American man was arrested for attempting to smuggle ruby out of the country (http://www.sikunews.com/art.html?catid=6&artid=3593), a Greenlandic former employee of True North Gems named Niels Madsen and his friends went to Aappaluttoq Ridge to remove gem grade ruby that had been discovered under exploration license by True North Gems. Mr. Madsen spent much of this day with a video camera pointed in the face of True North's project director, Greg Davison, in what apparently was an attempt to illicit a reaction and stage an incident as part of a broader agenda. True North called the Bureau of Mines and Petroluem due to the resulting interference and apparent confrontational stance of these arrivals, and the Greenland Police arrived by helicopter to detain and expel Madsen’s group. The Bureau of Minerals and Petroleum (BMP) then forbade these Greenlanders from taking gem grade material from True North's legal exploration claim, an activity historically referred to in other locales as "claim-jumping". In protest of being excluded from profiting from True North's legally protected discovery, the handful of Greenlanders evicted formed the “16 August Union” to politicize the incident in melodramatic fashion in the hopes that they and foreign based potential purchasers of their material who were assisting their efforts could benefit financially from True North's property. Their attempt was to frame the issue as one of Greenlander rights to remove any mineral from any location within the country without complying with mining laws. The financial interest of small foreign-based "ethically sourced" jewelry firms whose associates have moved in to write one-sided articles sourcing the radical August 16th Union group's agenda-driven version of events, can only be speculated upon at this point.

Recent Politics

This summer, the 16 August Union generated a paper and electronic email petition in support of their cause (http://www.sten.underskrifter.dk/) They obtained over 2600 signatures from a country with only 57,000 people, about 4.5% of the population. Another 750 people internationally signed over the internet. As of September 2008, the Greenland Parliament is now debating the rights of the native people under Section 32, versus a new proposal by the BMP that would require Greenlanders to follow the same rules and regulations of taxable corporations, which are accountable for their mining activities and must pass a number of hurdles in demonstrating public benefit before they mine and generate any profit. The 16 August Union contends that the natives cannot afford the high cost and the new burdens, in spite of the fact that staff of foreign jewelry companies have worked in association with them to generate publicity. They claim that BMP’s actions amount to an economic Apartheid, where the government favors foreign mining interests who have followed the rules set out for mining over Greenlanders such as Madsen who would mine these without oversight and allow foreign purchasers of these goods to benefit without oversight. True North Gems contends that it has the support of the community of Fiskenaesset, where the rubies are located, and that the 16 August Union are self-interested outsiders who do not represent the local community or Greenlanders in general. Furthermore, True North is operating in full compliance with Greenlandic law, which only allows commercial ventures in exploitation of mineral resources by those who demonstrate environmentally sound projects that benefit local communities and all Greenlanders through fair taxation and jobs opportunities. (http://www.fairjewelry.org/archives/364)

ee also

* Greenland
* Inuit
* Smuggler
* [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/claim-jumper Claim-Jumper]

References

* Anderson, W.J., 1995, Economic geology and exploration potential of the Frederikshab Isblink – Sondre Stromfjord area: Greenland Geological Survey Open File Series 94/18, 30 pp.
* Boggild, O.B., 1953, The mineralogy of Greenland: Meddr. Greenland, v. 149, n. 3, 442 pp.
* Geisler, R.A., 1976, The ruby deposits at Fiskenaesset, Greenland: Canadian Gemmologist, v. 1, n. 2, p. 4.
* Ghisler, M., and Windley, B.F., 1967, The chromite deposits of the Fiskenaesset region, west Greenland: Greenland Geological Survey Report No. 12, 39 pp.
* Giesecke, K.L., 1833, Mineralogiske Rejse I Gronland (1806-1813): ved C.F. Jornstrop v. 35.
* Hughes, R.W., 1997, Ruby and sapphire: RWH Publishing, Colorado, 511 pp.
* Petersen, O.V., and Secher, K., 1993, The minerals of Greenland: Mineralogical Record, v. 24, n. 2, 88 pp.
* Rohtert, W.R., and Ritchie, M.R., 2006, Three parageneses of ruby and pink sapphire discovered at Fiskenaesset, Greenland: Gems and Gemology, v. 42, n. 3, p. 149-150.

News

* [http://www.sikunews.com/art.html?catid=6&artid=3593 Man tries to walk out with rubies]
* [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/claim-jumper Dictionary.com claim-jumper]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/country_profiles/1023393.stm BBC: Country profile]
* [http://www.fairjewelry.org/archives/434 The Politically Hot Greenland Ruby]
* [http://www.fairjewelry.org/archives/364 Andrew Lee Smith, CEO of True North Gems: An Exclusive Fairjewelry.org Interview]
* [http://www.fairjewelry.org/archives/372 Inuits From Greenland Ask You to Support Their Mining Rights!]