This river in Canada is now a ‘legal person’
Category: Environment/Climate
Via: hallux • 3 years ago • 5 commentsBy: Jillian Kestler-D'Amours, 3 Apr 2021, Al Jazerra
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The designation – a first in Canada – aims to give the Indigenous community an added tool to defend the river, known as Muteshekau Shipu in the Innu language, from potential environmental harms.
“The Creator put us on this piece of territory called Nitassinan, which encompasses all these rivers, all these mountains, all these trees,” Pietacho, chief of the Innu Council of Ekuanitshit, told Al Jazeera in a phone interview. “The Innu people always believed that you had to protect the earth. It’s water – it’s life.”
The Magpie River, which sits on the north shore of the St Lawrence River and is known for its strong rapids, currently has one hydroelectric dam on it, but the provincial energy authority has said it has no plans for further development on the waterway.
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She walks like a river
weaving currents of wisdom and desire,
moving memory to myth.
She is the Ganges turning north,
her eddies a dreamscape upon the other shore
and all you dancers, fishers and sadhus …
all you fit in full muscular display …
all you living and dying and yet not gone …
Her eddies shallow or deep
will not be your whore.
If corporations can be people, why not?
Nibi gaa-bimaaji'iwemagak (water is life).
Protect the waters since they are the lifeblood of the planet.
Meanwhile in the USA:
Rivers have been granted legal rights in countries such as India and New Zealand. It would be interesting to see if the Canadian government (through the courts, if necessary) would grant such personhood.