Gold panning in the Canatuan Creek area was first recorded in the mid-1980s. The quantities being recovered were substantial enough to attract prospectors searching for the bedrock source, and in 1990 they found it: an extensive field of gold-bearing boulders. Reports of the discovery drew experienced small-scale miners from across the Philippines. By 1994, nearly 1,500 people were working the area. The influx transformed Canatuan from a remote mountain community into a chaotic mining camp where armed migrants competed for claims. In 1994, TVI Pacific, a Canadian company, reached an option agreement with the initial prospectors and began exploration. Their Mineral Production Sharing Agreement was approved by the Philippine government in 1996.

TVI began mining the oxide layer in 2004, producing gold and silver dore from the gossan ore deposit. Over four years, the operation extracted roughly 100,000 ounces of gold and 1,700 ounces of silver using a hybrid Merrill-Crowe and carbon-in-leach process. In 2008, as the mine reached ore with different composition, the gold and silver operation was decommissioned and the facility converted to produce copper and zinc concentrates from the underlying sulphide deposit. The first copper concentrate shipment left in March 2009. At its peak, the mine moved 6,700 tonnes of material per day using a fleet of 54 haul trucks, 9 excavators, six bulldozers, and four loaders across a surface area of approximately 26 hectares.

The Subanon are the indigenous people of the Zamboanga Peninsula, and Mount Canatuan lies within their ancestral domain. But the community's relationship with mining was complicated long before TVI arrived. The small-scale mining boom of the early 1990s had already displaced many Subanon from control of their own land. Migrant miners introduced the Subanon to the cash economy while often employing them at low wages under poor conditions. Some Subanon leaders benefited from arrangements with the migrant operators. When TVI's industrial-scale operation replaced the small-scale miners, it inherited -- and deepened -- tensions that were already present. The company employed nearly 900 people at its peak, with 31 percent of the workforce being Subanon, and it paid royalties equivalent to one percent of gross sales to the indigenous community.

International NGOs including Christian Aid, MiningWatch Canada, and Survival International criticized TVI's operations, citing the Subanon's view of Mount Canatuan as sacred and raising concerns about free, prior, and informed consent. Rights and Democracy published a 2007 report titled "Mining a Sacred Mountain." But Timuay Juanito Tumangkis, president of the Siocon Subano Association and chairman of the Council of Elders, wrote an open letter pushing back. The Subanon desired development, employment, and freedom from poverty, he argued. He said TVI had met the conditions of their partnership, that the mine did not embrace the community's sacred places, and that many of those speaking against the operation were not Subanon at all but had commercial interests in the artisanal mining that had employed child labor and caused pollution. The dispute illuminated a tension with no clean resolution: whose voice speaks for an indigenous community when the community itself is divided?

The mine's ore was depleted in January 2014. Rehabilitation had been underway progressively throughout operations: by the end of 2009, approximately 39,300 trees had been planted within and outside the concession area, including rubber trees and mahogany. In 2013, TVI signed an agreement with Mars, the American food company, to convert 1,600 hectares of mined land into cacao plantations within three years. Water management remained the most critical concern -- five sediment ponds, a neutralization pond for acid mine drainage, and monitoring at 14 locations on streams and rivers surrounded the project area. The mountain that the Subanon once held rituals upon had been transformed into something new: a landscape of tailings ponds, tree plantings, and open questions about what reclamation truly means.