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The Aika People Say Freeport’s Grasberg Mine Operates Without Their Consent and Dumps Its Waste in the River. Copper Mark Certified It Anyway.
Just weeks ago, Copper Mark awarded PT Freeport Indonesia a renewed certification claiming that their Grasberg facility “fully meets” all but one of its 33 criteria for responsible mineral producers. The Indigenous Aika Tribe in Central Papua filed a grievance challenging the credibility of the company’s claims.
The Aika People’s complaint against a Copper Mark audit is of global significance. Voluntary mine site audits are on the rise across the world. The majority of deposits of energy transition minerals are located on or near the lands of Indigenous Peoples. The mining industry’s use of voluntary standards to hide or dismiss Indigenous Peoples’ rights violations is an ever-growing concern.
Company Claims Don’t Match Reality
The complaint, submitted on May 25th by the Aika Indigenous Council (LEMASAI), accuses Freeport Indonesia of excluding their community from consultation, compensation and land governance processes despite operating on territory recognized as their ancestral and customary land.
At the center of the dispute is the assessment conducted by auditor Ernst & Young, published on April 8, 2026. That assessment concluded that Freeport “Fully Meets” Copper Mark criteria on Indigenous Peoples’ rights, stakeholder engagement and tailings management.
For the Aika Tribe, the certification renewal represents a glaring contradiction between corporate sustainability claims and realities on the ground.
“How can a company receive ‘Fully Meets’ status when the Indigenous People most affected by the operation say they were never properly recognized or consulted?” asked Mombiot Yoseph Akoha, chairman of the Aika Indigenous Council.
Aika Excluded from Negotiations
According to the filing, the company relied on what the community describes as “proxy representation” through an MOU from 2000 involving other Indigenous Peoples. It excluded the Aika People from negotiations over compensation and benefit-sharing.
The Aika People cite a 2019 decree issued by Majelis Rakyat Papua (a government body charged with protecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples) recognizing the mine’s operational area as part of the customary territory of the Aika Tribe.
In another development highlighted in the grievance, LEMASKO — one of the other Indigenous institutions previously involved in the compensation arrangement — issued a declaration in 2024 acknowledging that the territory in question belongs to the Aika People and suggests that there had been manipulation in the processes that led to the signing of the 2000 MOU and its exclusion of the Aika People.
River Dumping Threatens Livelihoods
Weak Audit Affirms Concerns About Industry-Backed Standard
The Copper Mark is one of four industry-backed standards bodies that joined together to form the Consolidated Mining Standard Initiative (CMSI). The CMSI has been widely criticized by civil society organizations, including numerous Indigenous Peoples’ rights groups, for the risks it poses. The weak standard has the potential to uphold and normalize the systematic abuse of Indigenous Peoples’ rights, human rights and ecosystems by the mining sector.
Both of the Copper Mark-audited mines in Indonesia have resulted in grievances by Indigenous Peoples for the failure of these audits to accurately identify and capture the harms and rights violations they face.
That trend has broad implications. Downstream buyers and investors rely on audits as data points in their due diligence and risk evaluation processes. Policymakers should also be concerned since they integrate voluntary certification schemes into legislation (as the European Commission has in the EU Batteries Regulation and Critical Raw Materials Act).
Learn more about efforts to strengthen voluntary mining standards from the Mining Standards Accountability Alliance.