Rice Rights? Hey, It’s Really A Thing
Sometimes trying a different approach is important
The concept of ‘rights’ took an odd but necessary turn a while back. Native Americans — our own Indigenous people, the rightful owners of all of ‘the home of the free and the land of the brave’ — took a bold step in 2018 in the form of Minnesota’s White Earth Band of Ojibwe when their tribal council enacted a law to protect the right of manoomin — wild rice — to “exist, flourish, regenerate and evolve”.
This is, In These Times reported this month, “Part of a growing movement led by Indigenous people to give legal rights to nature and to change its status as property; The tribe argues that the diversion of 5 billion gallons of groundwater for the construction of Enbridge’s Line 3 oil pipeline would violate “manoomin’s rights”.
“This is,” tribal attorney Frank Bibeau declared, “a daring move. We’re doing something that hasn’t [ever] been done.”
Even Bibeau doubts the potential for success of their action against The State of Minnesota — to void a water permit for taking of 5 billon gallons that, somehow, are believed by the pipe line people to be necessary for the completion of their project. And a lot of others hope he’s right:
