'To Be a River'

Babbling, flowing, rushing, thundering…

Trickling, stagnant, cracked, dust... 

Despite this obvious statement, rivers continue to be under threat. Humans are pumping out too much water, catching too many fish, damming free-flowing rivers for hydropower, and flooding rivers with chemicals, pollutants, feces, and decaying bodies. Over the past 50 years, we have lost 84% of our freshwater species populations, and food systems are responsible for 50% of biodiversity loss in freshwater habitats.  ¹  

How do you protect something that flows, constantly changes, crosses borders, and covers (in some cases), more than 6,992km? Perhaps, in addition to local laws and sanctions, there needs to be a change in our language and understanding of the entity of rivers.

Rivers play such an integral role in the lives of humans - environmentally, culturally, and spiritually - that some say they deserve to be considered as beings with individual rights and freedoms. This idea may sound far-fetched, but it is not unheard of, and in some countries the notion of environmental personhood has been taking hold.

In 2017, a New Zealand river was granted the same legal rights as a human being, the first designation of this kind in the world. The local Māori tribe of Whanganui in the North Island of New Zealand fought for the recognition of their river – the third-largest in New Zealand – as an ancestor. The Māori people of the river, the Whanganui Iwi, have an ancestral connection with the river, existing long before the colonization of New Zealand. The Whanganui River legislation upholds that pre-existing relationship. The decision is significant not only for granting legal rights to a natural entity; it models a practice to evolve the common law to better respect and reflect Indigenous legal principles.  ² 

"We have fought to find an approximation in law so that all others can understand that, from our perspective, treating the river as a living entity is the correct way to approach it, as an indivisible whole, instead of the traditional model for the last 100 years of treating it from a perspective of ownership and management" - Gerrard Albert, lead negotiator for the Iwi

The  Ganges River in India is sacred in the Hindu tradition. It is understood as the personification of the Goddess Ganga. Hindu belief holds that bathing in the river on certain occasions causes the forgiveness of transgressions and helps attain salvation. Several weeks after news of the Whanganui River broke, the Ganges was ruled to be the first non-human entity in India to be granted the same legal rights as people. The decision meant that polluting or damaging the river would be legally equivalent to harming a person. The judges cited the example of the Whanganui river in New Zealand.  ³  Unfortunately, this river’s status as a person was very short. Not long after this declaration, the `Uttarakhand's state government took the issue to the Supreme Court. It argued that the declaration was legally unsustainable and the motion was overruled.  ⁴ 

Most recently, in February 2021, the Muteshekau Shipu (Magpie River) in Canada joined the growing collection of global environmental persons as the first of its kind in the country. The river runs nearly 300 kilometers in Québec’s Côte-Nord region and was continually threatened by potential new hydroelectric dam development. The river is culturally significant for the Innu people. This was a local decision made through a joint resolution by The Innu Council of Ekuanitshit and the Minganie Regional County Municipality (RCM). Together, they recognized Muteshekau Shipu’s “right to live, exist and flow,” to maintain its biodiversity, to be free from pollution, and to sue for its rights to be respected.  ⁵  

"The river protects herself, we protect the river, we’re all protected.” - Chief Jean-Charles Piétacho of the Innu Council of Ekuanitshit

In all three of these examples, the river already played an important role in the lives of the indigenous people who had lived by and on it for generations. Through ancient ecological knowledge, they know the value the river brings to their lives, and that their very livelihood depends on the river’s well being.

This notion that the river is a ‘being’ already exists for many indigenous peoples. In fact, in many cases it is written into their very language. Indigenous scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer describes struggling to adapt her perspective from the English language when learning her ancestral language of Potawatomi, the language indigenous to peoples of the Great Lakes Region in North America.  In Potawatomi, she explains, nouns and verbs are divided into the animate and the inanimate. The inanimate is restricted to objects made by human hands, like a table — everything else is treated more like a verb. In English, she describes, one would say “the bay” or "the river" and would refer to it as "it", but in Potawatomi the noun “bay” becomes the verb “to be a bay.” She eventually realized that “to be a bay” makes water living and, in a way, gives water personhood. The water could be a bay, a stream, a waterfall, or a river. It is moving and living, not an object, but a being.  ⁶  

So “to be a river” is to flow, rush, babble, thunder, trickle, foam, froth, wind, cascade. 

It is to be lifegiving.

 ¹ 3 ways you can protect rivers—and the communities and wildlife that depend on them. (n.d.). World Wildlife Fund. https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/3-ways-you-can-protect-rivers-and-the-communities-and-wildlife-that-depend-on-them

 ²  New Zealand river’s personhood status offers hope to Māori. (2022, August 15). AP NEWS. https://apnews.com/article/religion-sacred-rivers-new-zealand-86d34a78f5fc662ccd554dd7f578d217

 ³  Safi, M. (2018, February 14). Ganges and Yamuna rivers granted same legal rights as human beings. The Guardian; The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/21/ganges-and-yamuna-rivers-granted-same-legal-rights-as-human-beings

 ⁴  India’s Ganges and Yamuna rivers are “not living entities.” (2017, July 7). BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-40537701

 ⁵  Bunten, A., Iorns, C., Townsend, J., & Borrows, L. (n.d.). Rights for nature: How granting a river “personhood” could help protect it. The Conversation. Retrieved September 21, 2022, from https://theconversation.com/rights-for-nature-how-granting-a-river-personhood-could-help-protect-it-157117?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

 ⁶ Kimmerer, R. W. (2015). Braiding Sweetgrass. Milkweed Editions.

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