Rights of the River : Peace, Protection and Personhood

by | Mar 12, 2024 | Past Events

Rights of the River: Peace, Protection and Personhood

 

When : March 24, 2024, 3-5 PM

Where : online or in person at Centre Wakefield La Pêche

What:  Screening of the Film “I am the Magpie River”  followed by panel discussion

In celebration of World Water Day, Friends of the Gatineau River and Transition écologique La Pêche Coalition for a Green New Deal organised a screening of the documentary film,     I am the Magpie River.

Breathtaking in its cinematography, I am the Mapgie River, is produced by award-winning documentary filmmaker, Susan Fleming, Q Films Inc., and Terre Innue Productions Inc..  Stunning photography captures the strength, beauty and peace of the Magpie River in northern Quebec and how the Innu community, who have always believed that rivers are a living spirit,  were determined to protect it by declaring its legal personhood.

“Legal personhood means, in law … that we cannot destroy [the ecosystem]. That it’s not an object to exploit, but a person to protect,” says Yenny Vega Cárdenas, lawyer and president of the International Observatory on the Rights of Nature, who took on the case of protecting the Magpie River. This approach to conservation falls under the legal framework of the rights of nature, which recognizes that natural phenomena, like rivers and forests, have the intrinsic right to exist outside of their relationship to humans.

 

The film was followed by an illustrious panel discussing the legal rights of a river; how the Magpie River was granted personhood and Gilbert Whiteduck’s proposition to obtain legal rights for the Gatineau River and the forming of the Tenagadino Alliance.  Panelists included:

 

Here is a few images that highlighted the day!

Performances