PERSPECTIVE


Defending the Indigenous Rights of Nature


BY ALEXIS CELESTE BUNTEN I


consider nature, said Ho-Chunk attor- ney Samantha Skenandore. “That’s what this movement is about,” she said. “to get in front of the problem as opposed to just constant triage.” In the United States, dozens of citi-


zen-led rights of nature laws have been passed, and yet no court has upheld any. The challenge to municipalities who have adopted such laws is that when a feature of nature such as a river or an ecosystem sues for damages, it must fight its way up the legal ladder, chal- lenging the state first, before moving up the system to the Supreme Court. No case has made it this far. As sovereign nations, tribes gen-


first heard about the Rights of Nature movement in 2008, when I


heard the news that Ecuador became the first nation in the world to grant constitutional rights to Mother Nature. While many people understand the inherent common sense of granting nature rights to exist, flourish and evolve, this takes on a special meaning for Indigenous peoples, who steward up to 80 percent of the world’s remain- ing biodiversity. As an Alaska Native, I wasn’t sur-


prised that a country with a significant Indigenous population would cham- pion this movement. Ten years later, as co-director of Bioneers’ Indigeneity Pro- gram, I began collaborating with a coali- tion of American Indian tribes working to bring the rights of nature into their legal systems. Many legal scholars believe that


the Rights of Nature movement was born with Christopher D. Stone’s 1972 Southern California Law Review arti- cle, “Should Trees Have Standing?” In it, he states just as lawsuits have treated corporations and other inanimate objects as “persons” with constitutional rights, nature too should be protected by the highest laws in the nation. Yet unlike U.S. environmental laws that are designed to award compensation


8 SPRING 2022 AMERICAN INDIAN


to aggrieved property owners, rights of nature laws ensure that ecosystems are not only protected but, if needed, brought back to their natural com- plex, interdependent states. In essence, rights of nature are designed to ensure the environment’s ability to exist, evolve and thrive. However, the core of Stone’s concept


was not new. Indigenous cultures have always asserted that nature has such rights—and that humans have a respon- sibility to protect the environment and maintain it in a healthy state. In recent years, the Rights of Nature movement has steadily gained momentum, with laws supporting it being passed in Bolivia, Kenya, New Zealand and sev- eral other nations with significant Indig- enous populations. American Indian tribes are now pro-


pelling the movement forward in the United States. Already, the Ho-Chunk Nation in Wisconsin, the Ponca Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma, the White Earth Band of Ojibwe in Minnesota and the Yurok Tribe in northern California have adopted various resolutions to protect the rights of nature. While such laws do incorporate ways


to restore nature to a functional state, in truth, they are intended to make law- makers, corporations and developers


erally have the right to govern them- selves. However, the U.S. federal government has minimized this sover- eignty in a number of cases, and “states, local municipalities, towns and cities have even more restrictions in their local governance in some regard,” Ske- nandore said. “So they are typically not in the best position to create the rights of nature.” This is why two tribally led cases in


the courts today are so exciting. They have the potential for catapulting the Rights of Nature movement while reen- forcing tribal sovereignty. In 2018, the White Earth Band of


Ojibwe adopted the rights of “manoo- min” into its tribal law. This wild rice is an essential traditional food, cultur- ally and economically, for tribal mem- bers. The law recognizes manoomin’s rights to “exist, flourish, regenerate and evolve” as well as to “restoration, recovery and preservation.” In 2021, the White Earth Band


Tribal Court filed a lawsuit, Manoomin vs. Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, stating the department cir- cumvented notifying the tribe when it issued a permit to Enbridge that would allow the company to take 5 billion gal- lons of water from the local aquafer and pump it through its Line 3 oil pipeline. The tribe states that the pipeline’s pro- posed route through Minnesota’s water- ways will siphon water out of sensitive ecosystems and potentially pollute them if there is an oil leak. These threats infringe upon manoomin’s rights to thrive across 389 acres and 17 different water bodies.


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