Norilsk Nickel continues to support indigenous peoples

When interacting with indigenous peoples, Norilsk Nickel is primarily guided by the Standard of Responsibility of Arctic Residents to Indigenous Minorities of the North (INN), developed taking into account, among other things, the company’s extensive experience adopted in Russia. This was stated by Vice President of PJSC MMC Norilsk Nickel Andrey Grachev at the session of the Eastern Economic Forum “Residents of the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation: implementation of standards of responsibility for business with indigenous peoples”. “This document mentions the term Free Prior Informed Consent (FPIC) of representatives of indigenous minorities in the event that they move from places where industrial facilities are being built and in other similar situations. This is an attempt to create a fundamental document, a “bible” at the state level,” said Andrei Grachev. He advocated the adoption of an appropriate law regulating this area.

“Based on this, we adopted the Policy on Indigenous Peoples, which was the cornerstone, the ideology, which laid down the basic principles. The program was developed based on these principles. Its core principle regarding indigenous indigenous peoples was “nothing for us without us”: we surveyed the maximum number of communities, received from them a list of planned events, the vast majority of these items were included in the program. In this sense, the program has become popular,” explained the vice-president of Norilsk Nickel. According to him, an agreement was signed between Norilsk Nickel and representatives of indigenous minorities - the Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East of the Russian Federation, the regional organization and the Taimyr. The document provided for more than 40 measures with a total cost of 2 billion rubles for a period of 5 years. Control over the implementation of this plan and its adjustments is carried out by the Coordination Council at the polar branch of Norilsk Nickel, in which more than 60 communities are represented. A department for working with indigenous minorities was created in the Polar Branch, which made it possible to work on a daily basis and increase the efficiency of the Coordination Council.

Among the implemented projects is the resettlement, in compliance with the FPIC procedure, of representatives of indigenous minorities from the village of Tukhard, said Andrey Grachev, “The scientists gave an opinion and recommendations on the resettlement of people to an ecologically clean area. Now a new village is being built there. An ethnological examination was carried out, which made it possible to find out the opinion of each resident.” Among other programs, the top manager of Norilsk Nickel named the delivery of keys to their own apartments to orphans from among the indigenous minorities, the construction of houses, fish and venison processing workshops, and clubs.

“We also support large-scale projects in the field of culture. We implemented a project to restore the Nenets written language. Another interesting project is songs of the war years in national languages. Together with the Federal Agency for National Affairs and MGIMO, they created the School of Public Diplomacy. This project is aimed at training representatives of indigenous minorities to speak in various international organizations to protect their interests and protect the interests of Russia. At the Polar State University we are implementing the “Students of Taimyr” program, which provides a quota of 20 places for representatives of indigenous minorities who are fully supported by Norilsk Nickel and receive scholarships.”

Every company operating in the regions of the North, Siberia, and the Far East should have similar programs, Andrey Grachev believes. “This is nothing unusual. All you need is desire, creativity and appropriate funding,” he added.