A Valentine's Day You’ll Never Forget: Ziibiing Lab Publishes Study on Indigenous Diamonds

The Sakha Republic produces 99% of Russia’s diamonds, which is approximately 25% of the global diamond market

Toronto, February 14, 2024 — Diamonds symbolize romance and love in many parts of the world, but there is another side to this precious gem. Today, the University of Toronto’s Ziibiing Lab published a research study entitled “Indigenous Diamonds: Extractivism and Indigenous Politics in the Diamond Province of Russia” which investigates the hidden dynamics that sustain the global diamond industry. Dr. Sardana Nikolaeva, author of the study, provides new insights on how this industry impacts Indigenous peoples in the diamond province of Russia.

Russia supplies 25% of the diamonds on the global market and 99% of them are extracted from the Sakha Republic in the Arctic. This study focuses on diamonds to examine the historical, political, economic, and social relations between the Russian central government, the diamond mining industry, and Indigenous peoples in and around the Sakha Republic known as the diamond province of Russia.

“Indigenous Diamonds,” says Uahikea Maile, Director of Ziibiing Lab and Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, “is a ground-breaking study shedding light on the adverse harms created by intensifying extraction of Indigenous lands and exploitation of Indigenous peoples in Russia.”

The political and economic transformations around indigenous diamonds, the primary export commodity in the Sakha Republic, produce contradictory and exploitative discourses about Indigenous identities, cultures, and experiences that conceal the structural inequalities and unstable, violent present within Indigenous communities in the Russian Arctic.

In recent years, local mining corporations have transformed marketing strategies, responding to allegations of human rights violations in the diamond industry, to justify expanding resource extraction due to increasing consumer demands globally. Operating in the Sakha Republic, ALROSA, the global leader in the diamond industry, is currently indigenizing diamonds.

“Corporate narratives and representations fantasizing about exotic Indigenous peoples,” argues Dr. Nikolaeva, a Postdoctoral Researcher in Ziibiing Lab, “strategically seek to inflate prices and raise profits by advertising not simply rare and authentic but indigenous diamonds to consumer markets around the world.”

Answering the question of who is Indigenous to Russia, the study illustrates the historical development of Indigenous politics to unearth how law and policy was shaped in relation to the burgeoning industry for extraction and exportation of diamonds. Dr. Nikolaeva observes, “The promotion of indigenous diamonds in the global market produces material effects on the Indigenous territories where the diamonds are extracted, on the Indigenous peoples who come to economically and culturally depend on extractivism, and on local Indigenous identities which become reshaped through global consumerist ideas and desires.”

Understanding how local Indigenous communities are affected by resource extraction is useful to unpack the global political-economic order governing extractivism in the diamond province of Russia. This study will be valuable to researchers, policymakers, non-profit and non- governmental organizations, grassroots activists, and others seeking to understand Indigenous politics and interrogate extractivism globally.

“Indigenous Diamonds,” Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota Nick Estes praises, “is a critical historical and ethnographic study of diamond extraction in the Sakha Region. Dr. Nikolaeva makes several important interventions and brings new information about diamond mining and production, Indigenous peoples, and the global diamond trade. This is an important and well-researched study that will resonate beyond academic circles.”

This study on global Indigenous politics from the University of Toronto’s Ziibiing Lab is now available to read and download at ziibiinglab.org/indigenous-diamonds.

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Press Contact:

Sardana Nikolaeva — sardana.nikolaeva@utoronto.ca
Ziibiing Lab: Global Indigenous Politics Research Collaboratory
University of Toronto
100 St. George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 3G3
info@ziibiinglab.org