Waking the Snake
Written by:
Gay Bradshaw
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. —Loren Eiseley
We need to wake up the Snake! This is the clarion of Dr. Anne Poelina. She is Yimardoowarra Marnin, a Nyikina Warrwa woman from the Martuwarra, Western Australia, and an international leader with doctorates in law and philosophy. Waking the Snake is the urgent call to wake up collective human consciousness—to discard the clawing extractive mindset that has polluted, distorted, dammed, and damned so many Rivers and replace it with the primacy of Nature’s Consciousness. These are the values and ethics of the Land and Waters responsible for creating the beauty and riches upon which all of us living in the Applegate and Rogue Valleys depend.
The Martuwarra joins a global movement vesting epistemic and legal authority in bodies of water. Rivers around the world—including the Ganges River in India, the Atrato River in Colombia, and the Whanganui River in Aotearoa (New Zealand)—have been declared to possess legal standing superseding the rights, powers, and duties of humans. “Martuwarra River,” maintains Poelina, “owns me. So, I have a duty of care and a fiduciary duty to protect this River’s right to life. … The First Law of the Martuwarra recognizes the River as the Rainbow Serpent: a living ancestral being from source to sea.” These laws of personhood extend the scope of a River beyond the material. The 2017 Aotearoa Te Awa Tupua Act, for example, “embraces the spiritual aspects of the River and includes the indivisible River system, from the mountains to the sea and all its tributaries and ecosystems.” Personhood rights position Rivers as decision-makers.
While these implications may startle some, the Rights of Rivers movement is commonsensical. Rivers like the Applegate and the Rogue are vital arteries whose health is essential for human health and survival. They know how and what to do just like the Insects, Fish, and other Animals and Plants populating these mountains and valleys. A nonhuman world existed well before the ancestors of Homo not so sapiens wiggled from Water to Land. As Poelina maintains, Rivers contain the essential wisdom that can guide humanity through the climate crisis. So let’s start a liberation and legal movement for the Rights of the Applegate and Rogue Rivers, in gratitude for all they have given and do give us, and in recognition that they know a lot more than we do.
Gay Bradshaw
kerulos.org
Editor’s note: The author feels that all animal and nature capitalizations are integral to the spirit of her writing. We have respected her stylistic choice and retained these capitalizations throughout the piece.
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Photo: Richard Bell, Unsplash.
