As the mayor of Clyde River, a small Inuit hamlet in the territory of Nunavut in northern Canada, Jerry Natanine had seen local opposition to an iron ore mining project building for years.

So, when a group of Inuit hunters this month set up a protest blockade at the Mary River mine on Baffin Island, in the Arctic Archipelago, he was not surprised. “They’re not here to listen to us at all,” Natanine told Al Jazeera in a phone interview, referring to Baffinland Iron Mines Corporation, which runs the site.