Indigenous Languages Project at COP26, Te Urewera, and the Legal Rights of Mother Earth
I wanted to share this article describing a project that is sharing 26 words from Indigenous languages that highlight the connection between language and place. This is a connection I care about deeply, and it seems to be popping up all over my readings and explorations lately.
I know I’ll be writing a full post about Rebecca Solnit’s book Men Explain Things to Me for Reflection #2, but there is one quote I wanted to share that relates to the article above and to the larger issue of climate justice:
“It is difficult, sometimes even impossible, to value what cannot be named or described, and so the task of naming and describing is an essential one in any revolt against the status quo of capitalism and consumerism. Ultimately the destruction of the Earth is due in part, perhaps in large part, to a failure of the imagination or to its eclipse by systems of accounting that can’t count what matters. The revolt against this destruction is a revolt of the imagination, in favor of the pleasures money can’t buy and corporations can’t command, of being producers rather than consumers of meaning, of the slow, the meandering, the digressive, the exploratory, the numinous, the uncertain.” (from the essay “Woolf’s Darkness: Embracing the Inexplicable,” p. 82)
Lastly, I wanted to share this article and video from the BBC about Te Urewera, a rainforest in New Zealand that gained legal rights as its own entity (i.e., as a person) and was returned to its traditional caretakers, the Tūhoe people who are now its legal guardians. There have been similar laws passed in Bolivia that were intended to be adopted internationally but have not been that grant legal rights to natural resources like water and forests (read more here and here if you are interested). These are all, in my opinion, efforts to “name and describe” things that our current accounting systems make it nearly impossible to value.
Hi Mollie,
Great articles, and I love the quote. It’s so interesting how different languages name and value different things, and how that language then shapes what we value as human beings. I love learning new words in different languages for concepts we don’t have in English because I feel like it gives me a broader understanding of more than just the world that English can describe. It broadens my horizons.
I also found your article and video from the BBC interesting. I hadn’t heard about Te Urewera, and I find it interesting that it has gained legal rights as its own entity. I would be interested in seeing how that would play out on a global scale, where instead of us owning the land, the land is its own entity and we are merely the ones taking care of it. I think that would bring a much greater awareness to climate change if we started seeing it that way.
Mollie, ngā mihi nui (thank you very much) for sharing these beautiful articles, and the quote from Rebecca Solnit (a GREAT connection to this topic)! Māori have slowly but surely reclaimed some of their land and resources from the Crown through the Waitangi Tribunal and the treaty settlement process, but it is only a fraction of the wealth (and I don’t just mean financial wealth here) that was violently stolen from them by the British. There is much work left to be done. However, I must say that Aotearoa New Zealand is providing a really good example and model for what reconciliation, redress, and restitution could look like in other settler colonial countries (e.g., the U.S., Canada, and Australia). It’s not perfect, but it is a place to start from. Also, settler colonial governments issuing an official apology for the genocides that they have perpetrated against Indigenous peoples does not end the matter, but it is an important step on the path to ongoing, continuous, and unending reconciliation–i.e., saying sorry and paying pennies on the dollar for the wholesale theft of land, resources, children, culture, language, ways of knowing and being, etc is the STARTING POINT of an equitable, respectful, and bilateral relationship with Indigenous peoples, NOT the end of the matter.
I’m grateful for you bringing up these legal recognitions! The same legal status of personhood was accorded to the Whanganui River (links below) in 2017. Similar rights of nature (RON) legislation has been enacted in Ecuador (2008 in their constitution), Bolivia (2009; as you mentioned above), and India (2017 for the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers) (source: “As Long as Grass Grows” by Dina Gilio-Whitaker, ca. 6:45:00 into the 2019 audiobook).
Here are the links the Whanganui River:
https://waateanews.com/2016/05/26/unique-model-for-whanganui-settlement/?story_id=MTM3MDQ%3D
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/te-manu-korihi/326689/whanganui-river-to-gain-legal-personhood
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