A group of Geology students from Davao City toured Tampakan, South Cotabato on Tuesday to study the preparations of a mining company that Malacañang had contracted to operate the Tampakan Copper-Gold Project, slated to start next year. Local executives and Blaan tribal leaders in Tampakan, some 16 kilometers from this city, were quoted in radio reports on Wednesday, April 17, 2024, as saying that the tour of the 27 students from the University of Southeastern Philippines in Davao City complemented their efforts to show to outsiders how the local communities are cooperating in helping push the planned copper and gold exploration in the municipality forward. Part of the study tour of the 27 students and their professors was a visit to the core sampling storage warehouses and other facilities in Barangay Liberty in Tampakan of the Sagittarius Mines Incorporated (SMI) that Malacañang had permitted to explore estimated US$ 200 billion worth of copper and gold deposits in Blaan ancestral lands in the area. Wednesday’s radio reports here mentioned barangay officials in Liberty as saying that the 27 students from Davao City were briefed on how the SMI is to operate according to international mining standards by one of the company’s geologists, Victor A. Jamio. Domingo N. Collado, an appointed Blaan tribal representative to the Tampakan municipal council, said that they have an extensive campaign to educate the public outside of South Cotabato province that their local indigenous communities, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources 12 and the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples 12 shall together oversee, along with the SMI, various environmental-protection programs once mining operation in their domains begin. (APRIL 17, 2024)