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#Written by David Tam, 1997. #
#davidkftam@netscape.net Copyright 1999#
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David Tam
Thursday, March 13, 1997.
Business Press Review
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Gibbon, Ann. "Papua witch doctor to put hex on VSE". The Globe and Mail.
Wednesday, March 12, 1997. B1, B15. ------------------
This article is about a protest that will be staged at the Vancouver Stock
Exchange by a group of aboriginals from Papua New Guinea. The group will be
protesting because they are angry at Indomin Resources Limited, a company
traded on the VSE.
Indomin Ltd. had plans to develop a gold mine on the property of the
aboriginal group but pulled out of the deal when land ownership rights were
uncertain. Supposedly, this left the aboriginal group "high and dry" on the
proposed gold project. Indomin became involved when they proposed to finance
the group's 30% ownership rights in the gold deposit. This percentage was
granted by the Papua New Guinea government, which had previously given only 10%
ownership to the group and 90% ownership to Matu Mining Pty. Ltd. The new
division of ownership caused Matu Mining to sue the government. This made the
30% ownership by the group questionable, leading Indomin to pull out of the
development proposal.
This article was chosen for review because it could possibly deal with
ethics. Protests occur because one group believes that another group is doing
something that is unethical. In this case, the aboriginal group is angry at
Indomin and believes its sudden pullout was unethical, especially when the
group had such high hopes for the project. However, based on pure business
decisions, this act was probably seen as very reasonable given the situation.
From this article, we can see that different groups may have different ethical
standards. The clashing of the two cultures clearly showed these differences.
As mentioned in our lectures, ethics is not a black and white issue.
Ethics is about what the individual and society perceives as right and wrong,
what is good and what is evil. However, we must remember that right and wrong
are only relative terms. There is not such thing as an absolute right and an
absolute wrong. Without a fixed base to judge rightness and wrongness, no
conclusion can be made. It can be clearly seen that Indomin's decision was
right (using economic reasoning as the fixed base) and wrong as well (using the
aboriginal group's reasoning as the fixed base).
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