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The growing recognition of the rights of nature is a blend of both modern conservation efforts and principles reflected in traditional Indigenous stewardship that should be an essential component of the discourse around environmental justice. This article will provide an overview of the laws that invoke the rights of nature that Indigenous perspectives and practices regarding environmental preservation have influenced. This discussion will pay particular attention to the White Earth Band of Ojibwes "Rights of Manoomin" law and Manoomin v. Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (White Earth Band of Ojibwe Tribal Ct. 2021), the first rights of nature case filed in a tribal court. This article explores this tribal law and tribal court case for the implications they may have for tribal and other governments, as well as individual citizens, to further explore the acknowledgment of environmental personhood as a means to promote environmental justice.
The Rights of Nature Movement
The rapidly growing rights of nature movement recognizes that elements of nature, including whole ecosystems, plants, animals, and natural landscapes such as mountains, possess legal rights. Many trace the idea of the rights of nature within the U.S. legal framework to legal scholar Christopher Stone, who first analyzed the concept in his 1972 article Should Trees Have Standing? Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects, 45 S. Cal. L. Rev. 450 (1972). Stone originally argued that courts should grant nonhuman ecosystems standing as nlaintiffs in court, laying the foundation for the burgeoning movement to grant legal rights and legal personhood to elements of nature. Nevertheless, the same year Stone published Trees, the Supreme Court in Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727 (1972), held that nature does not have standing under the Administrative Procedure Act, signaling a reluctance of federal courts to support this form of legal rights and personhood for nature, despite Trees' notable citation in the dissent.
Although litigation to assert the rights of nature in federal forums has not yet proven particularly fruitful, rights of nature approaches still exist in the United States. In particular, both tribes and municipalities have enacted-with varying long-term success-rights of nature laws.
For centuries prior to the modern rights of nature movement, many traditional Indigenous conceptions of nature were rooted in a respect for the agency of nature...