Threat of a Hundred KIs Drives Agreement Bonanza

The KI litigation coincided with a commodity boom in the mineral sector.Gold and nickel prices are ridiculously high.

Let's face it mining companies are nothing if not practical. They want to stake, mine the market for some suckers and sometimes they even want to drill.They don't want a hundred KIs.SO they sign deals with communities.

Do they do it on principle? No.But they are quick to cloak their deals with all the right corporate social responsibility buzzwords.Kind of like those Shell oil adds after Ken Saro-WiWa( put his name and ogoni into google) was hanged.

So, are we surprised that there are a lot of deals being signed with mining companies in NAN? No.

What is surprising is the lack of recognition that, "but for KI" and the important legal precedents set in KI 1(the interim interim injunction) and KI 3( the Court imposed MOU at the early exploration stage) we wouldn't be seeing the depth and breadth of these exploration agreements.

Many First Nations had seen their negotiations with resource developers and the Crown stutter and stall in the days before KI said No.But after the first decision in the KI litigation the negotiation climate changed. No one wanted the KI scenario.

And so we have a commodity boom, the KI hammer and a First Nation agreement bonanza.