The “David and Goliath” story Stuart Kirsch tells in Mining Capitalism (2014)—of global underdogs triumphing over a powerful mining company, aided and abetted by Global North activists—is replicated in another story from Papua New Guinea (PNG), albeit concerning a different mine: the Porgera gold mine in the PNG highlands, the country’s second largest mine (Columbia-Harvard 2015: 20). In brief, the Porgera Landowners Association (PLOA) and the Porgera-based Akali Tangi Association (ATA; commonly translated as Human Rights Association), operating in tandem with MiningWatch Canada (MWC),1 pressured Porgera Joint Venture (PJV) to give reparations to women who claimed to have been gang raped by PJV’s security guards. At the time, the Canadian company Barrick Gold Corporation, then regarded as the world’s leading gold mining company, was the majority shareholder. Although Barrick continues to manage the mine, it shares that honor with Zijin, a large Chinese gold company, which bought 50 percent of Barrick’s equity in May 2015.
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