First semester Trinidad State Junior College student Chris Hanks has been honored by his former employer with the prestigious 2005 HSEC Environmental Award of Excellence at ceremonies recently in Sydney, Australia. Hanks, 52, was honored by BHP-Billiton, a world-wide mining conglomerate. One of the top five awards from nearly 300 nominees, Hanks won in the Environmental category for his part in producing the Naonaiyaotit Traditional Knowledge Project.

The Naonaiyaotit project, Hanks said, was a massive project to understand native language, land use and culture, and then apply that understanding to build a positive relationship between industry and the native Inuit population. BHP-Billiton, an Australian and South African combination, has more than 60 mining operations worldwide, Hanks said. His work was in the area around the Ekati Diamond Mine in the northern reaches of the Canadian Northwest Territory, north of Yellowknife.

“Traditional knowledge is unique to a people,” Hanks said. He characterizes his work as a ‘how to’ manual for industry and natives to work together toward a common goal—in this case, operation of a huge mining complex that takes into account the customs and needs of the indigenous people and then incorporates their knowledge into environmental management.

The mine is included in lands of the Copper Inuit, beneficiaries of the Nunavut Land Claim agreement, Hanks said.

With a master’s degree in anthropology, Hanks, 52, may seem an unlikely candidate for the TSJC Gunsmithing program, where he is a first semester student. “He’s really a representative of the diverse nature of our student body,” says Assistant Dean, Patrick Blake. “He represents the quality of people that the program attracts.”