Challenges and Strategies: How Rights of Nature Activists Work to Achieve Radical Change in

Perceptions of Nature and Legal Systems

Abby McConnell

Department of Sociology, University of Colorado at Boulder

Defended on March 30th, 2020

Committee:

Dr. Jill Lindsey Harrison, Department of Sociology (Thesis Chair)

Dr. Lori Mae Hunter, Department of Sociology (Honors Council Representative)

Dr. Caroline Conzelman, Department of Anthropology (Bolivia Global Seminar Director)

Acknowledgements

To all of the participants who so willingly offered their time and experiences, thank you for your openness and enthusiasm in participating in this project. I enjoyed every one of our conversations, and learned so much.

To Dr. Jill Lindsey Harrison, for your willingness to take on this project, as half-formed as it was when I first came to you to ask you to be my chair. Your guidance, support, and good humor throughout the process has been incredible.

To Dr. Lori Mae Hunter, for your constant support, pointers, and enthusiasm throughout the process. We are a lucky cohort indeed to have had you as our Honors Council representative.

To Dr. Caroline Conzelman, for introducing us to the incredible country and people of Bolivia, and for providing the contacts and resources that were the kindling of this project.

To those who volunteered their time and energy to help with this project or keep me sane- you know who you are and I appreciate you. Special thanks to Dr. Michael Haffey for your pep-talks and book recommendations, to the cohort of 2020 for your helpful feedback and camaraderie, and to my parents, for your love and support through it all.

A small portion of the content of this Honors thesis was developed in a paper I wrote for HONR

4000: Racism in American Culture (Fall, 2019) with Dr. Abby Hickcox.

2 Abstract

Despite the dedication of environmental activists, many scholars have raised concerns about the limitations of U.S. environmental movements. The Rights of Nature (RoN) movement holds promise for inspiring the creation of more effective environmental laws as well as providing a possible link to increasing collaboration between Indigenous activists and non-

Indigenous environmentalists. This study situates the RoN movement within the broader context of environmental movements in the United States and identifies the challenges one RoN organization faces as they work to further their cause. To do this, I conducted ten qualitative, semi-structured interviews. Nine of these interviews were with members of a local RoN organization and one was with a city-level elected official. I also conducted participant observation at the RoN organization’s board meetings and public outreach events. Finally, I reviewed written materials such as books and articles written by those in the RoN movement for additional insights from those outside the organization I worked with. I found that the key challenges this organization faces include lack of political opportunity for getting preferred changes implemented, difficulty in achieving a “paradigm shift” in both the public’s thoughts and actions regarding nature and within the legal system in the way nature is viewed, and a fraught past between early environmental movements and Indigenous peoples that makes collaboration today difficult to navigate. Throughout, I note RoN activists’ attempts to overcome these barriers. These findings from a case study of one RoN activist group based in one U.S. city are a preliminary step in understanding the RoN movement in the U.S. context, and placing the

RoN movement in the canon of U.S. environmental movements.

3 Table of Contents

Introduction...... 5

Review of Literature on Environmental Social Movements ...... 8

Environmental Social Movements ...... 9

Challenges Facing ESMs ...... 11

Social Movement Theory: ESM’s Strategies to Meet Challenges ...... 14

A Missing Piece: Rights of Nature as an ESM ...... 18

Background on The Rights of Nature Movement ...... 18

Characterizing RoN: Systems Thinking and an Ecocentric Ethic ...... 18

Differing Levels of Implementation & Contemporary Examples ...... 22

Data and Methods ...... 25

Recruitment and Data Collection ...... 25

Data Analysis ...... 27

Findings and Discussion ...... 28

Political Opportunity ...... 29

Public Education and Outreach ...... 34

Grievances with Current Law and Strategies for Implementing RoN ...... 37

Pushback Against RoN Ideas ...... 50

Recognizing RoN’s Roots and the Challenge of Collaboration with Indigenous Peoples ...... 54

Conclusion ...... 64

Works Cited ...... 69

Appendix ...... 72

4 Introduction

“Human needs always seem to come first. But plenty of people are fighting for human needs,” explained one activist during the first board meeting I attended in August, 2019 at the start of this project. This sentiment resonated with me. It’s not that humans don’t deserve to have all their needs met; absolutely they do. But to me, and to many of the folks I interviewed for this project, the balance between meeting human needs and the needs of species and ecosystems in our home country of the United States seems off. One participant said, “…[deep ecologist]

Joanna Macey at one point… said that any society that… suppresses feedback from its actions is suicidal,” referring to the environmental concerns of today. This essential frame resonated with me, especially given my chosen emphasis of study in environmental sociology. A third participant encapsulated some of my feelings as they talked about their experience when they were around my age: “I was alive in the ‘60s when a lot of things changed. I was in college at this time when we realized that our parents’ generation were just pretending… in their lives and they weren’t really dealing with reality.” With all the prominent young climate activists today, I couldn’t help but feel that history was repeating itself. One participant captured what I and the activists I spoke with feel might be one answer to the myriad environmental issues present today.

They said in an interview that perhaps what they wanted to do in their work is “Deprioritize the human perception of the world.” This sentiment is a good encapsulating phrase of many RoN issues. That argument that if we made decisions based on what is good for ecosystems instead of what is good in the immediate and medium-term for humans, the health of the natural systems of

Earth would be better maintained, and that would be beneficial to all species, including humans.

I began this project to learn more about the Rights of Nature (RoN) movement out of personal interest in the topic. The underlying notions of the RoN movement come from

5 Indigenous groups, and their thoughts and teachings about humans and their place within nature.

These ideas have traveled from localized settings to the international level, with entities as influential as the United Nations discussing them in the form of the proposed Universal

Declaration of the Rights of Nature. I was first introduced to the concept of RoN while studying abroad in Bolivia in the summer of 2019. The project I was working on at that time had an environmental focus, but was based on the concept of Vivir Bien, or “living well,” in multiple aspects of life, including with nature and the environment. Bolivia adopted a law entitled Ley de

Derechos de la Madre Tierra in Spanish, or Law of the Rights of Mother Earth, in 2010, which contains strong RoN language. Through being in Bolivia, I came to know of the RoN movement, and I was thrilled by it. Environmental issues are important to me, and I felt that this movement was the best idea I’d heard to perhaps solve our big problems such as climate disruption and various types of pollution, habitat destruction and species extinction, and give nature broadly writ the same tools to be protected as corporations have to destroy it, namely, a set of legal rights. I returned home determined to make RoN the center of my Honors thesis, and had the excellent fortune of connecting with an organization focused on exactly that. Although I have great excitement about this movement and the possibilities for change it represents and have grown to sympathize with the activists I learned from through many hours spent with them, my goal in this study is to offer a fair, balanced look at this movement in the context of the group I was able to spend time with. The name of the group will remain undisclosed for the privacy of its members.

This study analyzes the RoN movement as an environmental social movement (ESM).

The literature on this movement is sparse, so this study describes some of the key challenges faced by a local RoN activist organization, and situates the RoN movement within the canon of

6 ESMs in the United States, a country in which it is relatively new. The study of social movements is an integral part of the field of sociology, and a deeper understanding of this movement and its philosophies and approaches to protecting nature could provide environmental policy direction in the future.

The study was based on qualitative, semi-structured interviews with ten participants.

Nine were RoN activists and all associated with the same organization, and one was a local elected official. The purpose of these interviews was to start to identify what the organization does, the challenges they encounter, and their experiences doing this type of work. Additionally,

I spent time doing participant observation at board meetings and at a public outreach event put on by the organization. This allowed me to experience some of what the activists described in the interviews first hand, witness the debates and challenges of their efforts, and further learn about what the organization does. I also reviewed RoN proponents’ written materials, including publications (Boyd 2017, La Follette 2017, and Leftwich 2011) and numerous websites on the

Rights of Nature. The research questions I aim to answer in this study are: (1) What types of barriers or challenges do Rights of Nature activists face in furthering their cause?, (2) What strategies do they use to work to overcome them?, and (3) How does the Rights of Nature movement fit into the canon of environmental movements in the United States?

I begin this Honors thesis with a review of selected literature on ESMs, focusing on their location in society and the societal needs this position enables them to address, some challenges they face, and how ESM theory provides insight into solutions to those challenges. I then move on to background on the RoN movement, including this unique approach to thinking about the world and the underlying environmental ethic of the movement. I also provide two contemporary examples of how RoN principles and practices are being applied at differing scales worldwide.

7 The Data and Methods section provides details of my study, including the population studied, data collection methods, and analysis process. I then present my findings and discussion, in which I lay out five key sections: Political Opportunity, Public Education and Outreach,

Changing the Law, Pushback against RoN Ideas, and Recognizing RoN’s Roots and the

Challenge of Collaboration with Native Peoples. I conclude with a summary of key findings and a call for more research pertaining to the RoN movement.

Review of Literature on Environmental Social Movements

All environmental social movements (ESMs) face challenges because at their core, they are trying to change the status quo that powerful actors benefit from (Harrison, forthcoming).

This means that these movements will face resistance from various actors, as well as from the social and structural systems that are currently in place. This literature review synthesizes a selection of existing works on ESMs to situate my research questions pertaining to the RoN movement in a larger body of scholarly knowledge. I draw on examples from the animal rights movement (a movement focused on obtaining rights for a population that currently has few to none in the Western world) and from the animal and earth liberation movements (both of which are similar to RoN in their “radical” ideas of how “nature” should be treated). These movements share some similarities to the RoN movement, and I use them to draw parallels with my own findings. First, I discuss ESMs and their position in civil society - outside of the control of markets or direct influence of government - which puts them in a unique position to create change. Next, I identify two challenges that ESMs and the activists involved in them often encounter, including structural barriers in the form of existing policies, and direct threats to activists’ credibility and professional careers. Last, I lay out a few pieces of social movement

8 theory which help to explain how ESMs and the activists within them deal with these challenges and work to pursue their goals despite meeting resistance in various forms.

Environmental Social Movements

The rise of environmental concerns in the 20th and 21st centuries has brought an increasing number of movements and organizations into existence, all aiming to address environmental issues in some way. Although the size of the environmental movement in the United States is difficult to accurately measure, Brulle (2000) offers the following data points from his analysis, which give a picture of environmental organizations in the United States in 1995. The total number of U.S. environmental organizations was approximately 10,000, with a membership of between 19 million and 41 million, an annual income of $2.6 billion, and assets of $5.8 billion

(Brulle, 2000). With these figures, Brulle (2000) concludes that the environmental movement is a major social movement in the United States, but notes that it lacks the resources of other organizations such as churches or businesses (Brulle, 2000). Several of the newer environmental organizations, including “the Environmental Defense Fund (formed in 1967 to get DDT banned), the Natural Resources Defense Council (formed in 1969 to improve federal pollution laws), and the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund (now Earthjustice, organized in 1971 to litigate cases on behalf of the environment)” (Salzman and Thompson, 2019, p. 87) place a particular emphasis on legal reforms to protect the environment in various ways.

The discipline of sociology views the environmental crisis as a fundamentally social problem, because its roots can be traced back to human actions and behaviors. Therefore, solutions to the crisis lie in the “social and institutional change brought about through collective action by mobilized citizens” (Dunlap and Brulle, 2015, p. 236). One way this change is likely to

9 occur is through actions undertaken by social movements. Social movements are located in civil society, which is a unique space outside of both economic markets, which are constrained by the imperative of maximizing return on investment, and outside of government, which is constrained by imperatives such as providing security, economic growth, and maintaining legitimacy

(Dunlap and Brulle, 2015). This location lends freedom for social movements to go against the status quo, and provides a space for people to advocate for their collective interests that may not be addressed in these other two spheres (Dunlap and Brulle, 2015). Environmental concerns are one example of issues that are often not sufficiently prioritized or addressed by either economic markets or government in the United States. This may be because markets under the dominant neoliberal system consider environmental damage an externality and so function without taking environmental costs into account (Salzman and Thompson, 2019). Government, meanwhile, is run by those in the policy sphere who are generally driven by “ideology, subjectivity, voters, the objective of maintaining/attaining power and being re-elected” (Slunge et. al., 2017, p. 7). Since certain issues are largely ignored by markets and government, they must be taken on by the formation of a social movement of concerned citizens in the sphere of civil society.

Social movements may create change in multiple ways. For example, the

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) identifies three ways in which the climate change movement influences policy, including “Policy advocacy, providing policy research, and opening political spaces for new political reforms” (IPCC, 20007, p.713 in Dunlap and Brulle,

2015, p. 236). Environmental organizations have been effective in getting stronger environmental regulations passed in the United States than might otherwise have been predicted

(Salzman and Thompson, 2019). Examples include the Natural Resources Defense Council helping to pass the Clean Water Act, and the Environmental Defense Fund helping create the

10 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, including sulfur dioxide emissions trading programs to help address acid rain (Salzman and Thompson, 2019).

Challenges Facing ESMs

There are certain barriers and constraints that are common to multiple ESMs. Here I look at two types of challenges ESMs may face, including existing policies that function counterproductively to the goals of the activists and direct threats to the activists themselves.

It can be the case that at least part of the problem that activists are addressing stems from current policies. ESMs are often working against phenomena that are deeply entrenched in the very laws and policies on the books, making their goal of changing the status quo that much more difficult. These policies are often put in place by government under pressure from strong, niche interests, and so may not serve the needs of most people, and may even provide benefit to certain sectors while inflicting harm on humans or other non-human nature and animals.

Winders and Nibert (2005) illustrate one example of the goals of activists in civil society can be in opposition to conditions created by the free market and government policies. In their

2005 article, “Consuming the Surplus: Expanding ‘Meat’ Consumption and Animal Oppression,”

Winders and Nibert argue that “The expansionary and profit-driven market economy underlay each dimension of animal oppression, and that this development is fueled and maintained by state policies” (p. 77). To address the issue of falling prices of agricultural products such as corn and soybeans, the Agricultural Adjustment Acts (1933, 1938) (Winders and Nibert, 2005, p. 78) were created to apply supply management principles. These principles, such as government price supports (subsidies) and production controls, actually incentivized production and further increased surpluses of these commodities. With the large failure of these policies to control

11 surpluses, farmers looked for another way to use them, and expanding meat consumption seemed to solve many of the issues they were facing. By increasing meat consumption, the demand for these feed grains that were in abundance would go up, allowing the surpluses to be sold. This worked in part because animals raised for meat consume seven times as many acres of these products as humans do (Kline, 1947 in Winders and Nibert, 2005, p. 80). This was attractive to farmers for several reasons, including that it allowed them opportunity to expand instead of shrink their production of feed grains, and because meat has a higher value than grain, increasing its production further increased profits (Winders and Nibert, 2005). State policies shifted to support meat production through price supports and began providing research on more efficient ways of livestock production, leading to massive increases in meat consumption after 1945

(Winders and Nibert, 2005).

These policies resulted from government following the economic necessity of the market.

While they addressed the problem of feed grain surpluses, many activists today are working against some of the problems these policies created, including the treatment of animals in the industrial agriculture system. These activists are confronted with an entrenched system of policies that solve one problem but create others, and which are difficult to change because of the benefits to groups such as farmers and meat consumers they provide. This example is one that demonstrates how activists may face long, contentious battles in furthering their cause if they identify the root of the issue they are working on in existing policies. It is often the case that these policies are favored by some who don’t want to see them go, and that solutions activists provide instead will be perceived as radically outside the status quo, which requires a favorable political climate to change (this strategy for change is addressed in the following subsection).

12 A second type of challenge activists may face is threats to themselves for the activism they are doing. The example I take here focuses on threats made by the state (which often has an interest in maintaining the status quo), but these threats may come from other sources, such as professional associations or fellow citizens. Threats to activists are more common when the causes they support are considered more radical. David Pellow’s 2014 book entitled Total

Liberation: The Power and Promise of Animal Rights and the Radical Earth Movement provides several definitions of terms and ideas that help name and explain ways in which activists can be threatened by the state.

First, Pellow (2014) defines state repression as “a set of practices that involves coercion or violence against people who contest existing power arrangements” (p. 163). State repression carries the intent to stop actions in the present and dissuade activists from future action. Pellow

(2014) distinguishes between two types of state repression; direct violence, which involves sanctioned violence against activists, and suppression, which is less obvious and involves actions such as “infiltration, manipulation of media reporting, firings, extraordinary rules and laws, harassment, propaganda, surveillance, and grand jury interrogations and indictments” (p. 163).

Pellow (2014) found that although repression produces fear and obedience in some cases, many activists push through these feelings and continue to pursue their causes.

Pellow (2014) also identifies and defines ecologies of repression. These are the “ripple effects” that discourage those considering activism from joining when they see the consequences imposed on those currently engaged in activism (Pellow, 2014, p. 166). Finally, Pellow defines cultures of repression as “the discourses, ideas, language, and behaviors— both explicit and implicit— that publics practice wherein resistance movements and dissent are discounted, refused, disallowed, misrecognized, and devalued in the public sphere” (Pellow, 2014, p. 166).

13 These cultures of repression can be seen in the “automatic cultural response that the ideas and actions [of a movement] are violent threats that must be contained” (p. 166), or may also arise within movements themselves and may involve disagreements around ideologies or tactics and strategies (Pellow, 2014). These forms of repression are employed with the goal of dissuading activists from attempting to change the status quo.

Next is an example of how states can use labels to discredit activists and the work they do while simultaneously threatening the activists themselves. Pellow (2014) found that earth and animal liberationists face the threat of being labeled ecoterrorists. This label places these individuals, who Pellow (2014) describes as “primarily white, middle-class, and therefore privileged” (p. 189) people, outside the bounds of citizenship, and therefore reduces their rights and protections. This increases the vulnerability of this otherwise relatively secure group of people, and increases the likelihood that they will back down from their demands and abandon their tactics. States employ this tactic to decrease the likelihood that these activists will continue to pursue activities that are threatening to the state. For example, tactics that liberationists might employ include monkeywrenching or otherwise destroying property. Treating private property as

“sacrosanct” is at the core of a capitalist society, and much of antiterrorist legislation (Pellow,

2014). Therefore, activists who threaten private property must be contained by the state to keep order and the status quo stable. This keeping of a specific order is often the very function of states in the first place. Therefore, activists who are trying to disrupt and change this order must be marginalized or punished.

Social Movement Theory: ESM’s Strategies to Meet Challenges

14 Social movement theory offers up some explanations as to how movements and the activists in them respond to the aforementioned and other challenges as they work to disrupt the status quo in favor of their proposed policies, paradigms, and behaviors. It also suggests why different groups employ different strategies. For example, Hilson (2002) notes that groups within the environmental movement may use different tactics at different times. Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth (FoE) have been known to use whichever strategy fits best with the substantive goal they are pursuing at a given time. This may take the form of protest, or conventional strategies such as lobbying or lawsuits. Alternatively, the use of direct action might serve doubly as a strategy and as an identity marker for the group, in the case of counter-culture groups such as

Earth First!. The choice of direct action fits with the ideas and values of Earth First!, which holds anarchist ideals and so would be unlikely to adopt strategies viewed as “working within the system” (Hilson, 2002). Here I address theory surrounding how activists use framing and political opportunity structure to meet some of the challenges they face.

The process of framing involves identifying a focus issue and then defining the problem, placing blame, and identifying a proposed solution (Dunlap and Brulle, 2015). Framing has two main effects. One is “changing the hearts and minds of civil society” (Poletta, 2002 in Dunlap and Brulle, 2015, p. 237), and second is increasing support for the cause and motivation take action (Dunlap and Brulle, 2015). One way in which Cherry (2010) suggested that animal rights activists go about changing people’s hearts and minds is through boundary work. The activists, confronted with the entrenched idea that humans are to culture while animals are to nature, such that humans are seen as deserving of higher standards of treatment, set about changing the symbolic boundaries between humans and animals (Cherry, 2010). To shift this boundary, activists engaged in persuading others to “lump” previously distinct categories, such as humans

15 and animals, or even companion and farm animals, into the same category of sentient beings, as opposed to distinguishing them based on species (Cherry, 2010). Cherry (2010) points out that while framing can be used by movements as a tool for achieving goals around changing public perception, “the act of framing a social problem rarely represents a movement’s primary or terminal goal” (Cherry, 2010, p. 452), and thus should not be the only focus when attempting to understand activists’ goals and strategies.

A second part of social movement theory revolves around political opportunity.

According to Hilson (2002), political opportunity can be thought of as both “…the structural openness or closedness of the political system” and “…contingent [on] reciprocity of political elites to collective action” (p. 242). This definition points to the importance of political elites being receptive to activists’ claims. Even if the political system is built so that activists have access to those with the power to make the changes they want, they will likely meet with little success if those in power are not persuaded to see their cause as worthy of pursuing. Activists may have a favorable political opportunity structure in terms of access or openness of the government, but if the political opportunity is low because those within the government are not receptive to their ideas, they may have trouble advancing their cause.

Hilson (2002) argues that Social Movement Organizations (SMOs) adopt strategies that make sense with their resources, which may include funding, but also the professional and educational backgrounds of the activists within them. In this example, the strategy of political lobbying is typically undertaken only if the activists have professional experience with it, since policymakers will respond more positively if the activists employ their lingo and have relevant expertise. The strategy of litigation, moreover, is even less likely to be undertaken. This is due to the high cost of hiring lawyers, and the likelihood that if the activists’ side loses, they will likely

16 have to pay for the other side’s costs. It follows then that SMOs that have frequently worked through the courts, such as Greenpeace and Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), also have lawyers on their staff who already have direct experience with law (Hilson, 2002).

Depending upon the strategy a SMO chooses, it might also consider the legal opportunity, in addition to the political opportunity. Legal opportunity consists of structural factors such as “stable access to laws on standing and availability of state legal funding,” and contingent features such as “judicial receptivity to policy arguments in particular cases” (Hilson,

2002, p. 243). Using the environmental movement in the UK during the 1990s as an example,

Hilson (2002) shows that a Conservative government was one factor that caused the litigation strategy to become more popular. This strategy did not always produce easy success, as environmental groups were often denied legal standing to bring their cases, especially in those involving development planning (Hilson, 2002). Political opportunity can also be limited by other interest groups, as was the case with the animal welfare movement in the UK in the mid-

1990s. In that instance, the close ties between the Conservative government and farming interests made it difficult for animal welfare activists to find receptive ears for their demands (Hilson,

2002). Nevertheless, ESMs may be able to harness political opportunity as one strategy to be able to implement changes in policy that are supportive of their end goals.

To summarize my arguments so far: ESMs are engaged in important work. They take advantage of their unique place in civil society to address issues that aren’t always addressed satisfactorily by markets and governments. They often face challenges, such as existing policies and direct threats to activists themselves. However, they are often able to counteract these and other challenges. Social movement theory explains a few methods employed by ESMs, including

17 framing and political opportunity structure, which help the activists achieve their goals in spite of the challenges they face.

A Missing Piece: Rights of Nature as an ESM

This thesis adds to the limited scholarly literature I found pertaining to RoN as an ESM in two ways. First, it analyzes the movement from an academic perspective by laying out key challenges the movement faces as I observed through this case study of one RoN organization. Second, it compares the RoN movement with other environmental movements such as the animal and earth liberation movements and the conservation movement, in an effort to compare and contrast these movements and illuminate what is unique about the RoN movement.

Background on The Rights of Nature Movement

The following Background section aims to familiarize the reader with two key characteristics of the RoN movement, and provide examples of what it looks like in practice. I first discuss the systems thinking approach prevalent in RoN work, and contrast this with the more mainstream reductionist mechanical worldview. Next, I review three environmental ethics, noting how the underlying ethic of a movement shapes it goals and corresponding actions.

Finally, I present two examples of RoN being implemented at different scales internationally.

Characterizing RoN: Systems Thinking and an Ecocentric Ethic

Understanding the thought process of a movement helps to make clear how it arrives at the root problems it aims to address and corresponding solutions it implements. Within writings by RoN activists, there is a tendency towards applying a systems thinking approach. Systems thinking,

18 although not mainstream, can be found in diverse places, including some Indigenous teachings and practices, as well as in Western sciences (see Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows

(2008), for an accessible explanation by a physicist). Systems thinking emphasizes the need to understand how the parts (for example, different species and habitat types within an area) interact with each other in such a way that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. RoN activists thus argue in favor of making every effort to preserve entire ecosystems containing different types of habitats and life. For example, if the goal were saving the whales, RoN activists would approach the problem by also addressing the whales’ need for a clean, quiet habitat with sufficient prey and other survival necessities. This line of thinking helps to stop the endless cycle of treating isolated symptoms while keeping the (extractive, polluting, habitat depleting, etc.) system itself in place. An illustrative example from my own interviews was the worry that the use of poison to control prairie dog populations would result in poisoning more than just the intended species, and affect the larger system. This could include the soil the prairie dogs live in, as well as the water if runoff were to occur, and even predators of the prairie dogs, if they were to prey on a poisoned individual. According to environmental advocate and writer

Cameron La Follette (2017), “Dramatic, fundamental change in the form of systemic thinking and action is necessary if we are sincerely committed to attaining environmental sustainability and the social justice it engenders” (p. 143).

The systems thinking approach often used in the RoN movement is in contrast to the reductionistic mechanical worldview, which is dominant in the western world. La Follette (2017) explains that reductionist thinking is rooted in the work of rationalist thinkers such as Francis

Bacon, Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, John Locke, and Isaac Newton. This view holds that living systems can be reduced down to their component parts and rearranged, so as to more

19 greatly benefit humans, as if the world was like a machine with interchangeable parts.

Compounding the effects of this way of thinking on the environment, after the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution, the expansionist economic worldview became entrenched as a dominant paradigm (La Follette, 2017). This was problematic, because material wealth is derived from natural resources. This paradigm treats nature as simply a storehouse of resources, which has meant that it is increasingly exploited as a growing human population seeks higher material status (La Follette, 2017). This line of thinking, thus, is a primary driver in the destruction of nature. RoN activists attempt to challenge this dominant paradigm by placing more value in functioning and flourishing natural systems, instead of natural resources that could be extracted from the land to the detriment of the system.

Another distinguishing feature of the RoN movement that differentiates it from mainstream ESMs in the United States is its underlying environmental ethic. To understand why different groups disagree so fundamentally about the environment, it is helpful to examine three underlying environmental ethics that guide people’s starting assumptions, beliefs, and actions, as laid out by Merchant (1992). Environmental ethics are important, Merchant argues, because they

“are a link between theory and practice” (Merchant, 1992, p. 62). Further, “They translate thought into action, worldviews into movements. Ideas generated from social conditions must be transformed into behaviors in order to change those conditions” (p. 62). If we are to understand social movements and the actions taken in their name, understanding their underlying ethics is useful. Merchant (1992) goes on to define three such ethics.

First is egocentric, which is generally associated with the mechanistic worldview and laissez-faire capitalism. It is grounded in the self, and assumes that “What is good for the individual will benefit society” (Merchant, 1992, p. 63). In practice, according to Merchant

20 (1992), “An egocentric ethic permits individuals (or corporations) to extract and use natural resources to enhance their own lives and those of other members of society, limited only by the effects on their neighbors” (p. 63). Environmental problems inevitably arose as everyone followed this ethic, which gave rise to a new ethic, one that is homocentric. This ethic is grounded instead in the social good, and underlies the “model of politics and the approach of environmental regulatory agencies that protect human health” (Merchant, 1992, p. 70). Both the egocentric and the homocentric ethics have religious roots, with the former aiming to subdue nature, and the latter maintaining more of a spirit of stewardship. This stewardship, however, was aimed at managing nature for the good of humans, and was also consistent with the reductionist mechanical worldview (Merchant, 1992). Homocentric ethics are “…designed to keep human needs in balance with natural cycles…Such an ethic sets up the fulfillment of human needs as a priority, but gives full consideration to nonhuman nature in the process of decision making” (Merchant,1992, p. 73). The third ethic Merchant (1992) describes is ecocentric.

Ecocentric ethics are grounded in whole ecosystems. According to Merchant (1992), “Of primary importance is the survival of all living and nonliving things as components of healthy ecosystems. All things in the cosmos as well as humans have moral considerability” (p. 75). This ecocentric ethic is commonly embraced in RoN writings. It follows that there would be disagreements among ESMs about what should be done with regards to humans and the environment given different starting ethical assumption.

The broad goal of the RoN movement is to protect nature. In this, it seems on the surface not unlike other environmental movements. However, RoN activists would likely say that more drastic measures need to be taken to effectively protect nature than might other environmental groups holding homocentric ethics. A large amount of the work revolves around trying to change

21 the legal system so that nature’s rights are recognized and protected. RoN stems in part from the observation that “The current legal framework … offers but narrow opportunities to create true sustainability … [and] only in terms of what would benefit human needs” (La Follette, 2017, p.

20). For RoN activists, the U.S. government isn’t doing nearly enough to protect the environment, and in fact, many of the structures in place actually condone its destruction.

Differing Levels of Implementation & Contemporary Examples

To provide global context as well as familiarize the reader with some significant developments in the RoN movement, I present the following two examples of how the rights of nature are being incorporated into legal systems outside of the United States. These can be thought of as occurring on different scales. The larger of which is Ecuador’s constitutional-level implementation, and the smaller is the example of several different countries recognizing the rights of rivers.

Constitutional Level (Ecuador)

In 2008, the country of Ecuador adopted the rights of nature into its constitution. It was not well supported in the beginning, as many people thought it odd to allocate rights to nature that they felt should be reserved only for humans. However, after an article by Eduardo Galeano, a

Uruguayan writer, which noted that the U.S. Supreme Court had granted rights to U.S. corporations “…as if corporations breathe” (Galeano quoted in Boyd, 2017, p.169) the opposition dissipated to a great extent (Boyd, 2017).

Another factor that pushed the new constitution forward was that various groups within

Ecuador were excited by it. The strong Indigenous populations found the RoN language to be in line with their goals of living in harmony with nature, while conservatives saw the opportunity

22 for Ecuador to demonstrate global leadership (Boyd, 2017). At its foundation is the idea of vivir bien, or “harmonious coexistence,” (Boyd 171). This concept rejects “…industrial capitalism, the subjugation of nature, the pursuit of endless economic growth, and the corrosive influence of consumerism,” (Boyd, 2017, p. 171), promoting instead the opportunity for people, communities, and nature to flourish by utilizing “organic agriculture, renewable energy, ecotourism, and recycling,” (Boyd, 2017, p. 171), as alternative practices.

The constitution itself lays out a comprehensive list of provisions to protect Pachamama

(Mother Earth). Importantly, it places human rights and nature’s rights on equal footing, ties in the human right to a clean and healthy environment, recognizes the need for economic activities to respect the rights of nature, and lays out laws and programs needed to fulfill its goals (Boyd

2017). It is not perfect, however, with built-in contradictions and loopholes that still allow, for example, the extraction of natural resources (which is central to the economy) if approved by the president and National Assembly (Boyd, 2017). The new constitution has not stopped many environmentally harmful practices in Ecuador. The country faces the challenge of developing and improving the lives of its citizens, and often the most straightforward way to do this involves making money from activities that harm the environment. These practices can be more successfully stopped in the courts now, and there have been multiple examples in which the rights of nature were brought up in litigation in Ecuador (see Boyd 2017, chapter 10). Boyd

(2017) concludes that,

In a world where virtually all legal systems define nature as property and natural

resources as intended for human use and exploitation, Ecuador’s ground-breaking

2008 constitution suggests that hundreds of years of conventional legal, judicial,

and political wisdom need to be reconsidered (p. 183).

23 Entity Level (Rivers)

A second way that RoN concepts are being applied is at the entity level. O’Donnell and Talbot-

Jones (2018) performed an analysis of rights granted to rivers in three countries, Australia, New

Zealand, and India. The authors identified three practical factors that must be in place for the rights of nature to be enforceable, and thus, to be effective. These include the necessity of an individual or organization to be appointed to advocate for the river’s rights and interests on its behalf, second, that there must be the capacity (in the form of time, money, and expertise) to uphold the river’s rights in court, and third, the representatives of the river and the funding for it must be independent from government, yet hold sufficient power to stand on their own when their decisions are politically unpopular (O’Donnell and Talbot-Jones, 2018). The article notes that these factors are largely absent in Ecuador and Bolivia, two countries leading the movement in implementing rights of nature at the national level, and argue that consequently, the language they have adopted is not regularly enforced, even if the rights themselves are recognized by the court (O’Donnell and Talbot-Jones, 2018). One of the keys to the success of the system is to ensure that nature itself has legal standing, as explained in Stone’s 1972 paper, “Should Trees

Have Standing?”

The authors present a comparison between rivers in Australia and New Zealand, which they argue have been fairly successful examples, with the Ganges and Yamuna rivers in India.

The trouble for the successful defense of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers’ rights, according to their analysis, stems from the following conditions. First, both rivers are transboundary, crossing both national boundaries with neighboring Bangladesh, as well as state boundaries within India.

This means that each place the river flows through must be on board with the plan. Second, the individuals designated to enforce the rights of the river also hold positions within the various

24 state governments, creating likely conflicts of interest. Third, no additional funding was given to support the rights of the river (O’Donnell and Talbot-Jones, 2018). This example demonstrates the need for RoN concepts to be widely embraced and for there to be commitment in the form of resources in order for them to work as intended.

Data and Methods

Recruitment and Data Collection

In order to build an understanding of the challenges RoN activists face and the solutions they implement, I collected data over a five-month period from August 2019 to December 2019.

While interested in RoN activism writ-large, my study population consisted of one activist group as well as a local elected official in the state of Colorado. I recruited participants by first sending an introductory email about myself and my study to the activist group’s email address listed on their webpage. I received a positive reply from the group’s president that I would be welcome to attend their board meetings and contact members of the group inquiring about one-on-one interviews. I employed snowball sampling and arrived at the majority of my sample by early

September. I was given the names and emails of many board members, as well as contact information from those in the activist group’s email list that responded to the president’s email about my study. The combination of these resulted in 11 interested participants. I was later given the names and email addresses of three elected officials that had worked in the past on issues with the group by activists, and ended up interviewing one.

Confidential, semi-structured responsive interviews (See appendix A for list of questions used, not all of which were asked of every individual) allowed me to better understand how interviewees interpreted events and made meaning of the world (Rubin and Rubin, 2012). I

25 conducted 10 interviews in total, which ranged in length from 35 minutes to an hour and seven minutes, with an average interview length of 51 minutes. Nine of these interviews took place in locations such as coffee shops, libraries, and local restaurants, as were suggested by and convenient for the participants, and one interview took place over the phone. I received consent from all participants to audio record our conversation, and transcribed the full text from the interviews for analysis. The interviewees were promised confidentiality to give them space to express a wider range of criticisms, if they chose. Questions were designed to help me understand the types of challenges these activists face, and the types of solutions they employed to work around them. For example, the question “What is your greatest success in doing this type of work?” generally allowed activists to present a narrative of a project they were involved in that presumably overcame a challenge while addressing an important aspect of their cause.

The participants were majority Caucasian adults of mixed age (early thirties to early seventies, with more clustered in the 50-70 range), six male and four female. The participants had a mixture of professional backgrounds, including, but not limited to, law, biology, and other

“hard” sciences. I make the assumption that the participants are middle to upper class, based on their careers, the city in which they live, and their ability to devote time to unpaid activism.

I also conducted participant observation in three board meetings of the group and at one public outreach event. Participant observation allowed me to be in an unfamiliar setting and learn through the experience of being there (Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw, 2011). I attended three board meetings mostly as an observer and took notes on the items discussed and observed the general feeling of the room and interactions that took place. I participated only to the extent of chatting with other attendees before and after, giving reports on the progress of my project when asked, and occasionally offering knowledge I had about possible student groups at my home university

26 that the group was interested in contacting about future collaborations. After these meetings and the outreach event, I wrote up fieldnotes to be analyzed in concert with the interview transcripts.

In addition to these two main methods, I also read materials written by RoN advocates including books (La Follette, 2017 and Boyd, 2017), articles (Leftwich, 2011), and various websites with content about RoN. Most of this reading was done at the beginning of the study, as

I began to familiarize myself with the movement and possible topics of interest before starting the interviewing process.

Data Analysis

I analyzed the interview data using the following procedure. I coded the data in Microsoft Word and marked code categories by inserting comments in the margins (Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw,

2011, p. 176). I then sorted and grouped coded chunks of text into files using highlight and copy functions. After six interviews I did a preliminary check of the data to make sure that the questions were eliciting answers to my research questions, and to see if other themes were emerging that I might probe further in the rest of the interviews. Then, after all of the interviews were in and transcribed, I read through all of the data, which consisted of both fieldnotes from board meetings, the outreach event, and interview sessions, and transcribed interview text and compiled a list of broad themes and a summary of my understanding of the kinds of work the group was doing. During this reading I also extracted blocks of text from each interview that spoke directly to either the original research questions, or that corresponded with other themes that were emerging. From there, I selected themes by prioritizing both regularly discussed topics and by what seemed the most important to the interviewees, based on what they emphasized.

Then I sorted the data into these broad themes, and proceeded to do a round of more focused

27 coding in which I further sorted data into subthemes to distinguish differences and variation within the topics and make connections (Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw, 2011). During the process of focused coding, I wrote “integrative memos,” to elaborate on ideas and tie the codes and the data together (Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw, 2011). During the process of reading other works by RoN activists, I took notes and wrote up the challenges identified in these works in the form of a short essay. Some of what I gathered from this process is presented below in concert with the findings from interviews and participant observations.

Findings and Discussion

The RoN organization I spent time with works on two main fronts- creating political and legal change by drafting RoN language to include in official documents and ordinances, and education of the general public about RoN. These two different spheres each offer their own sets of challenges. Through conducting semi-structured interviews and engaging in participant observation, I became familiar with some of the challenges both types of work present, which I lay out below. Although an exhaustive account of everything I came to understand over the course of the five months of data collection would be beyond the scope of this paper, I discuss in the five sections below some of the most pertinent thematical findings to answer my original research questions. In the first section I lay out some of the challenges of implementing RoN at the local level of government given the current political opportunity, as this is the level at which this group places its focus. In the second section, I discuss work the group is doing in the realm of public education and outreach. In the third section, I cover key grievances RoN activists have with the current system of law in the United States, and provide a discussion of strategies used by the activists as they craft legal language to move toward implementing RoN. The fourth

28 section examines two types of pushback that are present against implementing RoN ideas. The fifth section is devoted to a theme that emerged unexpectedly during data collection, which is a recognition of the Indigenous roots of RoN, and a desire coupled with uncertainty about the best way to attempt to collaborate with local Indigenous tribes on environmental issues. Quotes in the following findings and discussion section come from my own interviews, unless otherwise cited.

Political Opportunity

“I guess I would say inertia. Human inertia. The human tendency to resist change

of any kind” (RoN member)

As any organization that has tried to create change through the avenue of political or legal institutions has likely found, this process can be slow, frustrating, and riddled with compromise.

However, the reward is often that whatever change that does result from these efforts is more permanent, perhaps written into official guiding documents or even laws, which inform decision- making in the future. However, as RoN activists know, igniting political action around a cause is difficult when it is not high on the agendas of key people such as elected officials in local government. This lack of political motivation to take on RoN-related projects could be attributed to the tendency for these projects to have long timelines, meaning that they don’t mesh well with the timing of the political cycle. Additionally, implementing RoN language represents an option which does not have much of a track record in the United States, although that is changing as it is adopted increasingly at a local scale in order to fight fracking (in the case of Lafayette, CO) or to protect local water systems (in the case of Lake Erie). However, it may seem like a risky option to officials unfamiliar with it or unsure of how it would apply to their communities. Here I

29 present two of the challenges these activists encounter with regards to working with local governments.

One barrier that makes progress on RoN initiatives difficult is the structure of the local government itself. Activists report that city council, which is made up of nine representatives, often defers the projects and changes activists propose to the departments of the city to see if they can be put into practice. From the elected official perspective, city council representatives have a lot of demands on their time. According to one, “…it’s an onslaught being on there. I mean, just a barrage of information and sorting things out…” Given this, council members must prioritize and delegate the requests they receive. However, for the activists making these requests, it is much harder to get things done when working with many people in a department and all of the bureaucracy that is involved than it would be working directly with one city council representative who might even be sympathetic to the activists’ goals.

One activist described the structure of their local government in the following way:

They have what we call a pipeline system there, which means that all the

initiatives come up through the departments.

The activist went on to explain,

So what happens is if you’ve referred something to the council and they’ll say,

“Oh this sounds like an interesting idea. We want to pursue this.” They then turn

over to the departments. Now the Open Space department doesn’t want any more

constraints on activities than it already has and it thinks it’s doing a great job.

Certainly the Utilities and Transportation departments don’t want this… they

don’t want to be constrained. And the departments don’t work together.

30 This bureaucratic structure slows the process of getting things done for the activists, and is a source of frustration. Yet, local government seems to be the best way to go about implementing RoN, at least at first. Activists acknowledged that the federal government of the

United States was simply not ready for this kind of change. They felt that it was perceived as too radical under the current Trump administration as well as under the previous Obama administration. One also noted that gaining access to those higher-level officials is much tougher than gaining access to local officials, who simply have fewer constituents vying for their time and attention.

A second challenge is that non-receptive individuals can become barriers to the implementation of RoN language. One elected representative pointed out that passing an ordinance about the rights of nature or otherwise including RoN language in other guiding documents would take away some of the authority of certain positions within the local government. They explained, “…when laws are passed it means it is taking something from someone else. And often times I think county attorneys, city attorneys, are protecting their own sort of territory, rather than opening it up to elected officials, constituents.” The decision-making power of people holding these positions could be curbed because an ordinance would spell out rules in writing, instead of deferring the issues on a case-by-case basis to them for decisions. City attorneys might be scared to give away that authority because following an ordinance might lead to legal trouble with a powerful entity with interests that would be blocked by a RoN ordinance.

Unwillingness to adopt RoN measures by one key individual, such as a city attorney, can also be a way of letting the rest of city council off the hook and an excuse to avoid tackling certain issues that would require a lot of work and could be risky as well.

31 RoN activists are well aware of this fear of being sued that local officials hold, observing that “…everyone wants to do the least dangerous thing possible, everyone wants to not get sued at all costs and if there’s even a little sniff of a lawsuit in the air they’ll avoid action.” Critics, both inside and outside local government, according to one activist, can take a number of issues with RoN initiatives. They listed everything from there not being an existing legal basis for RoN and concerns about private property rights, specifically the Fifth Amendment takings clause to objections about RoN seeming to be just language and not able to make short-term impact, which is what these critics argue is needed. This hesitancy from local government illustrates a lack of political will on the part of those working in it. One elected official noted, referring to city council, “I think it depends who is on there, their political will, their political constituency, as to whether or not they will actually push to have something more done.” From the perspective of an elected official at the local level, it is important to please your constituency. This may mean giving less weight to a few really loud voices in favor of keeping a larger number of quiet constituents happy with the work you are prioritizing while in office.

The activists I interviewed recognized the importance of getting people sympathetic to environmental issues elected. Although it wasn’t often part of the official board meetings because the entity of the organization couldn’t endorse specific candidates, they often discussed elections and candidates before the meetings started. They recognized that the current council was more recreationist, meaning it was more likely to compromise undisturbed habitat to make it more accessible to human outdoor activities, as well as pro-development, which also put habitat at risk.

One example of the proceeding factors playing out occurred when the activists worked to get RoN language into the Comprehensive Plan, a guiding document for the county. The process

32 went on for a little over a year. Activists drafted the RoN language, met with different members of local government, and attended public hearings in an effort to get their language included. At the last moment, the officials involved rejected the proposed language of the word “rights.”

However, the compromise that they came away with was the word “responsibilities” to nature.

The activists I spoke with were mixed on how great of an accomplishment this compromise was.

Given the many challenges that come with creating change through local government, what they achieved was incremental progress; things didn’t stay status quo.

Even though activists have relatively easy access to their elected officials, through avenues such as attending public hearings, sending emails, placing phone calls, etc., they may find that not enough people in local government are receptive to their ideas for them to be easily implemented. This means that while the first part of which is part Hilson’s (2002) definition of political opportunity, that the political system is fairly open, is met, the second, reciprocity of political elites, is not. Although RoN is not a priority for most people within local government, activists work to get sympathetic individuals elected. Even so, the time scale of the projects and

RoN related changes is long, and doesn’t sync up with the political cycle. Activists feel like the projects and proposals they bring up simply get lost in the system and never implemented fully or for long enough to see benefit. So even seemingly small victories, like getting

“responsibilities” language in a comprehensive plan is progress, although frustrating for those who invested their time trying to get the full “rights” language. The success of RoN initiatives depends heavily on who is in office, their political will, what will please their constituency. This determines whether elected officials will push to have something more done, to go further than they otherwise might in terms of RoN. Activists recognize the importance, then, of educating more people about RoN. It is to this education piece that I turn next.

33

Public Education and Outreach

“It’s sort of mysterious how that works. A lot of people expect for things to just

continue on in exactly the way they are and they don’t expect any major changes

in the way things work. But history shows us that those radical changes do

happen. So I think that’s what’s going to happen with this. It’s almost in spite of

ourselves that people’s whole attitude changes all at once” (RoN member)

A movement with concepts as unfamiliar to most people as RoN needs to dedicate serious attention to education efforts. RoN is both culturally different from how most people in the

United States think about nature and is also complex in what implementation would look like.

Therefore, it is not an easy task to communicate both of these parts to people outside the movement. One part of this communication involves the framing RoN. The concept is broad, and can mean different things to different people. This can make it unclear what initiatives the group should undertake in an effort to inform outsiders about their cause. Current and past efforts have included what can be categorized as Western, Eastern, and Indigenous approaches to ways of knowing things. The group has shown films and invited experts and Western-style scientists to speak, as well as conducted contemplative exercises with experts in those practices.

Framing RoN: Types of Public Outreach

“And it’s hard to communicate some of the things to people so far away from this

concept” (RoN member)

One staple public outreach event the group regularly puts on are film nights with speakers held at a local library. The topic of these films is generally a corollary issue to RoN, not directly about

RoN itself. For example, I attended one event surrounding forest health, management, and

34 change over time. A respected local scientist gave a talk about his research, and answered audience questions which ranged from specific science-related questions about forest management to more implementation-related questions, such as how the scientist dealt with making recommendations for forest management practices when they contradicted the practices that were already in place.

These film events serve several purposes. For one, they are a space to educate and to have conversations. The variety of the films is intentional, because, one activist explained, “You never know what clicks.” And from my interviews, I found it to be true that each person in the group had come to know about and support the RoN movement in a unique way. Some introductions to the concepts were by chance, such as the activist who heard a news story about RoN in Ecuador or Bolivia while driving in their car and reported that “it made me feel good.” Others felt they had always known about the philosophy of RoN from learning about Indigenous mythologies as children, and others came to hear about it through attending a film night, but reported that it took several months to feel that they had a firm understanding of what exactly RoN meant.

At the film I attended, I noticed that although there were tables set up against one wall with professionally made signs and pamphlets about RoN and about some the species this group is particularly interested in, no one was standing by them to distribute the information, and not many people at the event went over to them. I can’t say for sure why this is; it is possible that those who were at the film are regulars and have already seen that information, or it could be that they were attending because they were specifically interested in the topic of the film and talk and not interested in intaking information about other things, or it might have had something to do with the way the room was arranged, so that people immediately got food and found a seat and chatted, instead of taking a lap around the room and looking at the information tables.

35 The films have grown in attendance since they began hosting them from 10-20 people depending on the film to 20-50 people today. There were about 30 people the day I attended. The most attendees they’ve had at a film is 70-80, interestingly for what the activists classified as more of an “entertainment film.” These growing numbers point to the success of the group in building a space that people enjoy coming to to learn and discuss a common interest. This, I believe, is no small feat. Although the film night I attended was attended by a majority of older individuals, it still is impressive to have found something that mobilizes that many people

(mostly members of the group, but I believe a few new faces) to get together in the name of the organization. The film nights seem to be impactful in that they get people together and talking about a variety of environmental issues that could be categorized under RoN issues. It seems that people come to know about RoN from a variety of ways, and it really is hard to know what will click for any individual person. However, it could be that if anyone outside the group came to these public outreach events, they may leave not having a very clear idea about the RoN movement itself, since that topic isn’t directly spoken about each time.

These events seem to encourage biophilia and general awareness of environmental concerns, but they do not directly educate people on the specifics of RoN. This may be because the concepts surrounding RoN are harder to articulate or frame than those of other environmental causes. One challenge an activist noted is that the legal side of the movement is complicated and technical, and therefore it is hard for someone who is not a lawyer to answer questions people may have about that side of the movement. Another theme that came up in several interviews was that people who are drawn to RoN tend to introverted, quiet people, who would rather present the information in writing and let others read it instead of actively promoting it at public events. Compounding that sentiment was an observation that it’s largely the same crowd at the

36 movie nights, and so that activist didn’t want to “preach to the choir.” Lastly, all those involved in the RoN group I spent time with are volunteers. They have busy lives outside of their activism, and so may not have the time and energy to put into figuring out these hard questions, that have no easy answers or easily implemented solutions.

This issue did come up in a board meeting, however, and the activists agreed that even a minute or two speech about RoN at every event would be worth adding, in case there was anyone new in attendance, and to really get the issue of RoN firmly into the minds of the current attendees, so that they might be more likely to spread the idea to others.

In addition to the film nights with speakers, which might be classified as more in the

Western tradition of knowing, the group has put on other public outreach programs as well.

These have included silent nature walks on solstices, art and singing workshops, and guided meditations, all with the intent of aligning with nature’s cycles. These types of events are put on less often than they were at the beginning of the organization, mainly because of a change in the people involved in the organization.

The group is aware that different things click for different people, and offers a variety of outreach programs that reflect both the diversity of people’s interests and the multifaceted nature of RoN itself. From the philosophical side to the legal side, RoN has the potential to speak to many people as a solution to some of the environmental problems we face today. However, for many other people, especially in the United States, RoN is still a big leap to make. So great, in fact, that it is often referred to as a “paradigm shift.” I explore what activists said about this paradigm shift, and more details about the legal process of it in the next section.

Grievances with Current Law and Strategies for Implementing RoN

37 “So, it’s the same as anything else. Whoever’s benefitting from that whole

structure is not going to give it up easy” (RoN member)

Written work on RoN (such as La Follette, 2017, Boyd, 2017, and Leftwich, 2011), as well as many of the activists I interviewed, spoke about the importance of a “paradigm shift,” or a mass transformation in people’s relationship with nature. This involves both a changing of morals or valuing of nature at a personal, cognitive level, and the translation of that shift into actions taken with regard to nature. Activists are clear that part of what is needed in this paradigm shift is a re- working of the legal system, because they are dissatisfied with how current law fails to protect nature to the level they think is needed. When asked about the challenges they saw facing the movement, one activist emphasized this concept of a paradigm shift:

Sort of bucking the status quo…our perspective [now is] that we as

humans, superior life form on this planet, own the planet… and it’s up to

us to make the right decisions, and so [our] chosen paradigm now is… we

will make use of resources, we will allow damage to occur, we will

monitor the damage… how much harm will we allow ourselves to do to

this ecosystem. So, it comes from a view point of ownership, and even

more importantly I think, an allowance for harm to be done. And of

course, those [environmental] rules recently have become weakened even

more.

Here the activist expressed frustration with the homocentric nature of environmental protections in place now, and pointed to the perception that humans own nature as a primary driver of its destruction. He continued on to explain the RoN perspective of how humans and nature relate to each other:

38 And so now we’re trying to come at it from a completely different perspective by

saying that we are all part of the same ecosystem. We’re part of earth; we don’t

own earth, we are subservient to nature. And, if you look at it from that

perspective you have to acknowledge that, just as we give ourselves rights to live

a life without being harmed…those same rights have to be extended to…this

whole gradient of life…all along the spectrum we should respect rights. And it’s

an idea that is radical, it sounds weird when you first hear it… Now, it’s become

sort of woven into the way I think, and I wonder why I didn’t realize this earlier,

but it’s because the status quo, the culture we live in…

This activist spoke about the paradigm shift incorporating themes such as challenging the status quo (something ESMs attempt to do), dissatisfaction with the current environmental protections, systems thinking as a better, post-paradigm shift way of looking at the world, and un underlying ecocentric ethic. These themes showed up repeatedly both in written works by RoN proponents and in the interviews I conducted.

Grievances with Current Law

“I was always aware that there was something that didn’t sit well with me about

law…” (RoN member)

I begin with frustrations with the current environmental law in the United States I identified from

RoN proponents’ written works. The main argument that came through was that neither the regulatory nor marketplace solutions that have been applied go far enough to protect nature. As articulated by Boyd (2017), summarizing two other prominent figures in the RoN movement,

According to Linzey and Margil, environmental laws merely slow the rate of

environmental damage by requiring corporations to take modest precautions when

39 mining or fracking or polluting, even though these activities are inherently

harmful. The environmental agencies of governments approve and legitimize

these activities (p. 111).

Often-cited examples of this failure of regulatory environmental law to go far enough include the approach of the U.S. Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Clean Water Act of 1972.

Although both of these Acts have been very important in reducing threats to public health compared to before they were passed, RoN activists point out and criticize that they operate on the assumption that there will be harm done to the environment, mostly in the form of pollution caused by processes to better the material experience of humans, and simply regulate who can pollute and how much pollution is acceptable in terms of human health standards. Therefore, because they stem from a homocentric ethic, they do not go far enough to protect nature itself, only going far enough to protect human health in the short and medium term.

Also noted as not going far enough to protect nature are emissions trading programs, which aside from being complex to calculate, often allow, according to La Follette (2017),

A heavily polluting project [to] go ahead, as long as the polluter pays enough

money for a distant, qualified endeavor, such as sponsoring a forest plantation in

South America, to “offset” the pollution or other environmental damage in the

United States. Clearly, however, such a distant venture has few, if any, benefits to

the ecosystem being harmed by the project in question. Instead, it simply provides

a financial rationalization to allow many massively destructive environmental

projects to persist (p. 117).

This criticism highlights the focus within the movement on systems thinking, which sees the destruction of one part of a local habitat as irrevocable damage that will alter that local

40 system, and that the attempt to substitute in a fix elsewhere in the great “earth machine,” as a mechanistic worldview would promote, does not make up for the harm in the local system.

Additionally, there is frustration with the very language of the law, and the results it produces.

“In other words,” stated Boyd (2017), “Environmental laws treat the environment as a natural resource, a bundle of commodities to be used in our economy, rather than an ecosystem with intrinsic value and rights,” (p. 112). This language stems from a reductionist mechanical frame, and so does not speak to the problems the RoN movement has identified.

For RoN activists, the current environmental protections in place aren’t enough to protect nature to the standard they deem necessary. Instead, they call for a paradigm shift in not only the legal system, but in individuals’ very ways of thinking about their relationship with nature.

According to La Follette (2017),

The answer to the original question, whether the legal system should be

regulatory or market-based, is that it cannot be either. It must be revamped in a

Rights of Nature framework, guaranteeing Nature’s integrity and freedom to

flourish. That framework must be designed, created, supported, and enforced at

all levels of government (p. 117).

Certainly, this type of massive change is not an easy thing to achieve. As was demonstrated in the case of the Comprehensive Plan that several of the activists I interviewed explained, changing even small parts of documents with legal consequences is difficult, given all the different interests in play. Even in the case of Ecuador’s 2008 constitution, in which the RoN language is fully implemented, the spirit of the language is not always followed, and human needs are put first at the expense of nature. This speaks to the need to shift people’s values, as well as the legal system under which they operate.

41 This paradigm shift goes against many deep-seated beliefs, especially in Western culture.

There are several barriers to establishing the rights of nature in the United States. These include both examples in case law and in the precedent of corporate personhood, which gives corporations legal protections to pursue environmentally harmful activities based on Fourteenth

Amendment rights. Current environmental law, whether regulatory or market-based, also fails to deliver the protection standards Ron activists would like to see, but these methods are deeply entrenched, in part due to their congruence with dominant western worldviews. It is to these world views that I turn to next.

Cultural Challenges and Changing Deeply Held Beliefs

Merchant (1992) observed, “It can be hard to formulate a philosophical argument for valuing humans and nature the same, when the rest of nature is considered by many to be inherently valuable to humans as resources,” (p. 78). This section examines some of the cultural or ideological barriers RoN proponents identify in their writings. I provide examples of the dominant anthropocentric worldview, and how it comes into conflict with pursuing the rights of nature. I also briefly present a discussion that suggests private property rights and individual rights need to be rethought within a rights of nature paradigm in order to better protect nature for the long term.

The umbrella of anthropocentric thought is central to the typical Western worldview, and encompasses many of the currently widely-held beliefs that do not mesh well with the rights of nature. The paradigm shift in thinking, then, calls for humans to be able to reconceptualize the world in such a way that humans are less separated and elevated from nonhuman nature. One of the earliest manifestations of this anthropocentric mindset can be seen in the concept of Manifest

42 Destiny. Early settlers from Europe saw it as their God-given duty to spread throughout the land they had stumbled upon which they termed the Americas, and bring it into what they saw as productive uses. To be sure, operating on the belief that your God means for you to do something is a strong motivator, and leaves little room for doubt that what you are doing should in fact not be done. Even today, though less likely to come from a religious source, La Follette (2017) observed that “It is often said that a particular piece of land is ‘unproductive’—a strictly human concept based on commodity-oriented, monetary outcomes—and needs to be ‘brought under management,’” (p. 34). Humans are still in the process of looking at the land and deciding what a

“more productive” use for it would be, without valuing its role in the larger local ecosystem and fully comprehending what changing that land will do to the local system’s function.

Tied to the use of land for “productive purposes” is the idea of private property rights.

These property rights can be granted to both individuals and corporations. Corporations have different interests than human beings, however. “Corporations,” says author David Korten,

Are pushing hard to establish property rights over ever more of the commons for

their own exclusive ends, often claiming the right to pollute or destroy the

regenerative systems of the Earth for quick gain, shrinking the resource base

available for ordinary people to use in their pursuit of livelihoods, and limiting the

prospects of future generations (Quoted in La Follette, 2017, p. 98).

Property rights came up throughout the interviews as well and were framed as a barrier to implementing RoN. This is discussed further in the findings under the subsection Corporate

Control.

43 A second set of rights- those of the individual- are very important in the U.S. perspective, and there is an accordingly big focus on them in the legal system. This is a difficult thing for the

RoN movement to try to counter. Leftwich (2011) stated that,

The preservation of ‘individual rights’ has become so paramount in the

consciousness of most people in the developed countries that we have lost sight of

the inherent rights to existence of every other living thing on the planet (p. 5).

The challenge is not that humans are generally afforded rights; it’s that all other species have few to no rights in comparison. This elevation of the human species above other animal species is what puts the other species in peril.

This anthropocentric mindset can be seen clearly in international environmental agreements such as the Stockholm Declaration (1972), which produced language such as, “Of all things in the world, people are the most precious,” and the Rio Declaration on Environment and

Development (1992), which bluntly stated, “Human beings are at the centre of concerns for a sustainable environment,” (Both quoted in Boyd, 2017, p. xxv). This type of anthropocentric language is enshrined in international environmental treaties, lending it legitimacy and power as national governments decide how to act in terms of environmental practices. Yet in the end, elevating immediate human needs and desires above the good of the natural system imperils humans as well. As decisions are made with only human welfare in mind, we slowly destroy the very systems on which we depend on for survival. We can see this in the declining availability of important resources in many areas, including fresh water, topsoil, and rainforest. To counter this trend, one RoN proponent offers the following advice: “Only by setting human use of resources within the Rights of Nature paradigm, in which Earth’s integrity comes first, can human societies flourish, living in harmony with Nature’s Laws of Reciprocity.” (La Follette, 2017, p. 24).

44 The activists I interviewed tended to hold many similar beliefs and opinions to those I identified in written works. Three themes arose in the interviews regarding this discussion of the paradigm shift on which an interviewee elaborated on at the beginning of this section. First were the frustrations activists voiced with how the legal system is now. I focus specifically on activists working on the legal front of the movement, and their frustrations with the status quo of environmental law and the legal system in the United States. Encompassed within the theme of the status quo were observations that current laws pertaining to environmental regulations and property rights are anthropocentric and outdated. In the following subsections, I provide insight into the strategy of how these activists go about drafting new laws, so that they have a chance at being accepted and put into practice, given that they are seemingly at odds with what has been legal precedent in the United States. Even when great care is taken to provide credible legal backing for RoN cases, one of the barriers that lawyer-activists can face are threats of disbarment, usually on the basis of filing what is termed a “frivolous lawsuit,” a suit deemed to be a waste of the court’s time. Finally, another large barrier to the paradigm shift required for full implementation of RoN is what activists identified as the corporate control of society.

The activists I interviewed were in agreement with the works I read on the position that current U.S. environmental law is ineffective in protecting nature to the extent that they feel it should be protected. One activist described the experience of pinpointing exactly what they felt was wrong with the current system of laws when they were in law school several decades ago in the following way:

It was literally an experience of having a tree trunk bash into my sternum. It was

like, how could I have missed this? …There’s no place in our constitution for

45 nature. Except as property, which is equivalent to slavery. And it’s just so obvious

once you see it, but it was never obvious to me before.

In the current system of law in the United States, humans are seen as separate from, and superior to, nature, and this forms the basis of humans’ ability to own nature. The main issue for activists becomes that owning or at least superiority to nature leads to the ability to do whatever one wants with it. One activist recounted this illustrative story of an experience with this viewpoint:

The regulatory approach [of environmental law] just comes through a different

channel in the structure of law. This channel is as deep as American democracy.

It’s at the bottom of it, it’s the source spring of American democracy, but it’s not

spelled out in the Constitution, and it’s not spelled out in the state constitution.

What is spelled out is, “If I have property rights I can do what I damn well please,

including destroy that property.” And one of the folks in one of the hearings I

attended actually said that. …He used an image of a chair. He said, “If I owned

that chair I could do anything I wanted to with it including destroy it and it would

be perfectly legal.” And he said it with a great deal of pride.

The attitude of this individual at the public hearing seems to be fairly standard in terms of what RoN activists encounter. It is challenging then to move forward with RoN language that seems to deny people of these rights to own and destroy things that they see as obvious and unquestionable. In this view, current regulatory approach to environmental law goes hand-in- hand with property rights.

46 There are many RoN activists with backgrounds in the legal world that are working to formulate a different sort of law. One activist explained that having standing when a RoN case is brought to court is an important step in the path to enforcement of the RoN:

How’s it going to be enforced? …what would you need to bring a case for the

RoN, you know, as opposed to let’s say, being a landowner who’s impacted by an

EPA regulation, or, impacted by pollution from some other source? Number one

is standing. Who has standing to bring a case on behalf of nature, and then what is

a rational or reasonable level of proof that you would need in order to show that

you, as an individual, have injury? That’s part of the standing issue. Standing in

courts is really two-fold. One you have a legal right to be the person who comes

in the court and states a claim, and that right has to come from somewhere, either

the constitution or a statute or common law or some source. And then the second

part of standing is, are you injured? Can you show that you are injured by the

actions that the law seeks to control? …the RoN movement has had trouble with

both elements.

This activist pointed out that people in the RoN movement “…couldn’t show that they had a legal right to represent nature, because it’s not addressed in the statutes anywhere.” They also asserted that showing that one was harmed by the destruction of nature wouldn’t be difficult, because using systems thinking, everything is connected if you take enough steps to show it. So the solution proposed by this activist is to get ordinances, even at the local level, to recognize

RoN to give people a leg to stand on, so to speak, when RoN cases are brought to the court.

As one activist pointed out, a great many of the laws of the United States are simply old and outdated:

47 … all the laws were made up by lawyers and politicians and most of the ones

were made up by slave owners and anti-rights bigots and people that would have

no respect today and be in the extreme part of the population, yet those same

frameworks they set up still stand.

This is one reason, the activist argued, that it is time to “re-envision the legal system from a more ecocentric perspective.” The strategies for how to write the laws to do this are outlined below.

Strategies for Drafting New Legal Language

“Someone’s got to make up the new laws that are better” (RoN member)

In response to a question about the process of drafting a law with the rights of nature built into it, an activist emphasized the need for balance in crafting RoN laws, especially at a local government level:

This is a new movement, so there’s a lot of ways you can write these laws. You

can write one of these RoN laws in a way that says “corporations don’t have

rights,” or in a way that says it’s illegal to pollute without cleaning up your source

of pollution. And if you do that it sends a really strong message, but probably you

will get sued and you probably will lose in court- that’s actually happened in at

least five or ten cases in the U.S.

Or you can write it a little softer. You can have RoN be sort of the paradigm

under which various environmental protections are passed. And those

environmental protections that you pass can be legally defensible and not trying to

strip corporate personhood or require a Constitutional amendment. [Also,] not

trying to make it illegal to pollute which would require changing the Clean Water

48 Act and the Clean Air Act because those make it legal to pollute. So doing it a

little softer… getting as close to the line as you can for what you’re allowed to do

as a local or county government.

There is a balance to be struck between achieving meaningful change, but not causing enough upset that opposition forces that stand to lose from these new laws will act to stop them.

Therefore, activists are careful when formulating new laws with RoN language. The following is the same activist continuing their narration of the basic process of legal drafting for RoN, based on an ordinance for the rights of a watershed they are working on. Generally written with two distinct sections,

The preamble is kind of the “why are you doing this?” and so in there we tried to

write something that really embodied the watershed and its importance

ecologically and culturally. [We] tried to write something that was even a little bit

poetic in terms of our respect and awe of the watershed and what it does. And so

it’s supposed to inspire, how we wrote this is supposed to excite people and it’s

supposed to be a tribute to the subject of the law, which is the watershed.

And then the operative part, that’s a little trickier, because you know you’re trying

to navigate these fine lines of what you can do. We decided to start with a

nonbinding resolution, this is a soft foot in the door to get conversation going, and

the reason we did that is that another town that we worked with did that approach.

They started with a nonbinding resolution and it basically says the city is going to

study the topic, write a report, come back in a year with a text for a binding

ordinance, and it kind of gives people a little time to think about it, for the city to

49 organize and come up with something. So the idea would be about a year later to

do a binding law…

This narrative is demonstrative of several themes around this process. One is that this simultaneously feels like a slow process from the inside, and yet is gaining traction relatively fast in the bigger picture. Change is slow and incremental, if it comes at all in each effort, and so patience for and faith in the process are key traits that these activists must have to persevere through what at times feels is an impossibly slow battle for something at needs to be addressed urgently. Even when patience is applied, and their cases are carefully constructed, those on the legal front of this movement can face serious consequences if they try to push this process too fast.

Pushback Against RoN Ideas

“And the head of the trade group in New Mexico had said, ‘This is game over for all of corporate America if this succeeds’” (RoN member)

Certain groups feel that their interests would be threatened by the implementation of RoN language. Although activists also mentioned groups such as recreationists, who also appreciate nature but want to make it more accessible for human-centered activities, I focus here on corporations, the most powerful opposing force the activists spoke about. I provide two examples of pushback RoN activists can encounter. The first applies to lawyer-activists who attempt to file lawsuits and advance RoN through the courts. The second is the interplay between powerful corporations and the services they provide to a growing population.

Threats to RoN Activists

“I got a family to feed” (RoN member)

50 Several activists noted cases in which lawyers working to get RoN language implemented were threatened with disbarment, often on the grounds of filing a frivolous lawsuit that is claimed to waste the court’s time. One activist explained:

And there’s a rule in professional responsibility that if you just make up

something that is outlandish, that you’re just on some kind of personal vendetta

and wasting the court’s time, and everybody else’s time and it’s all so

expensive…you get your license dinged and you have to pay a fine.

This type of threat, in addition to being scary for the individual on the receiving end, is disheartening for the entire movement. It is a reminder of how radical their cause is considered by those who are able to frame it as “frivolous” and not worthy of consideration in court because it is so outside the current precedent.

Activists noted that young lawyers who took RoN cases were most vulnerable, because generally they had the least stable financial situation and simply could not afford that type of blow at that point in their career. They usually have their families to provide for, or student debt to pay off, or they just don’t want to jeopardize their career that early on. “So it has to be an old guy who’s already sort of said, ‘I’m not doing that any more,’ who you could convince to do it for not much money,” concluded one activist in regards to the type of person who would have the least to lose if they brought a RoN case.

These threats and attempts at intimidation usually come from those who are benefitting from the status quo and do not have any obvious interest in stronger environmental protections.

One activist explained:

It’s typically corporations. So there’s a case brought in Colorado to protect the

Colorado River…And as soon as it was brought, corporations basically

51 intervened, and threatened to ask the court for sanctions, because it was a

frivolous claim, right?

This observation tied in with an underlying theme in many interviews, which pointed to the fact that, even if regulations to protect nature where in place, they often were ignored by those powerful enough to do so which were usually corporations.

Corporate Control

“I think business dictates our politics and our lives.” (RoN member)

Another theme that emerged as an ever-present undertone that represents a challenge to the paradigm shift and the implementation of RoN is that of corporate power and control in U.S. society. Activists generally agreed that although there are environmental protections in place, they are simply not enforced at best and being weakened at worst. One of the main reasons that these regulations are not always effective in serving to protect ecosystems and species is that more powerful actors, mainly corporations, are able to insert their interests and make such regulations less effective.

During the reading I conducted of RoN activists’ publications, I noted that one part of the legal structure that RoN activists find stands in their way is that of the case law that grants corporations personhood. This is a challenge for those wanting to protect nature, because the establishment of corporate personhood by the U.S. Supreme Court “has created a mindless, faceless entity shorn of all accountability that thrives on profit” (La Follette, 2017, p. 25). This sets up a situation in which a corporation, which is not a sentient being and functions in the pursuit of goals such as higher profits and increased market share, has more legal ability to pursue its goals than nature - which it often exploits to achieve these goals - has to protect itself.

But since nature, many RoN activists would argue, is the only reason humans are able to survive

52 and has its own intrinsic right to exist and flourish, it should have the ability to be legally defended in court against these corporate entities which don’t feel the burden of disintegrating ecosystems like living beings do.

In 1886, the U.S. Supreme Court case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, the court held for the first time that “corporations are ‘persons’ that enjoy protections of the

Fourteenth Amendment, which protects personal rights” (La Follette, 2017, p. 169). The recognition of personhood makes it much easier for corporations to pursue their goals free of ecological, social, or moral constraints, and the expansion of corporate limited liability “removes responsibility for company shareholders, directors, and managers of the misdeeds of the company” (La Follette, 2017, p. 173). It is very challenging to place blame within a corporation on actual people, and so the environmentally destructive behaviors of the corporation aren’t easily stopped. This precedent presents challenges for the rights of nature to be put into practice.

Therefore, La Follette (2017) argues that “This fiction of legal personhood must be dismantled, both in the United States and internationally, before we can place Rights of Nature at the center of the legal system and create a sustainable lifestyle” (p. 25).

Several RoN activists posited in interviews that corporations exist to meet the demands of people. They provide goods and services based upon the demand they perceive from the population. Activists tended to tie the issue of powerful corporations with a growing population that demands an ever-increasing amount of goods and services, which require more natural resources to produce and create more waste in the production process.

For example, one corollary issue that the activists referenced was the proposed expansion on a nearby reservoir. The project was to be undertaken by a large water utility, which one

53 activist referred to as “all powerful.” These types of projects are necessary to meet growing demand, but are undertaken at the expense of ecosystems.

One activist demonstrated systems thinking as they explained that the idea that humans are dominant over nature is tied to the

…intersection between corporations’ dominance of governance, and their ability

to extract resources from the planet and overshoot and the link between that and

climate change, in part because everything is connected…we need to shift back to

an understanding that no, we’re not separate from nature. That we’re just another

species. That we’re completely interconnected…because what’s happening in the

oceans is impacting life on the ground in the Midwest in the United States and Sri

Lanka and other parts of the world.

In other words, activists tended to feel that the decisions we make in regards to the environment are made under a faulty set of priorities. Elevating immediate human needs and desires above the good of the natural system imperils humans as well other species and the systems we all depend on for survival. We can see this in the declining availability of important resources in many areas, including fresh water, topsoil, and rainforest. To counter this trend, one

RoN proponent offers the following advice: “Only by setting human use of resources within the

Rights of Nature paradigm, in which Earth’s integrity comes first, can human societies flourish, living in harmony with Nature’s Laws of Reciprocity.” (La Follette, 2017, p. 24).

Recognizing RoN’s Roots and the Challenge of Collaboration with Indigenous Peoples

“…there’s an effort going. But you have to be really patient because it takes so

much time” (RoN member)

54 Over the course of interviewing, one unanticipated theme emerged; an almost unanimous acknowledgment, without any prompting on my part, that the concept of RoN is rooted in

Indigenous cultures. I did not conduct interviews with any individuals who self-identified themselves to me as being of Indigenous affiliation. Therefore, I cannot draw any conclusions on the thoughts of the individuals within this broadly constructed social and ethnic category. What is presented here is only from the perspective of majority white (and likely non-native) activists, and so is an incomplete account of the situation around the possibility of collaboration. However, the topic of collaboration between environmentalists and Indigenous groups reoccurred in one form or another so frequently in the interviews and is of such importance not only to the RoN movement but to all environmental movements, that it will be discussed in detail below. First, I highlight activists’ appreciation for Indigenous ways of thinking, and their adoption of them into their own worldviews. Next, I summarize key concerns expressed by the activists about wanting to collaborate on RoN issues with tribes. I also highlight the uncertainty activists have of how to approach the subject of collaboration, and the awareness they possess of the history and current events that make collaboration between environmental groups and Indigenous peoples difficult. I close this section with a historical example of racist treatment of an Indigenous tribe by early environmentalists in the conservationist movement. I tie this to a discussion of some contributing factors to why collaboration is difficult by turning to the work of other scholars on concepts such as settler colonialism and dominant geographies to help illuminate how we’ve arrived at the point that we have today.

Activists recognized the roots of RoN in Indigenous traditions, and expressed admiration and respect for this way of thinking. They recounted stories, such as a friend of Indigenous descent who asked a grandparent who knew the local language what the word for nature was, so

55 that they could tell the tourist groups they worked with. “And the grandparent thought for the longest time and he was like, ‘we don’t have a word for the wilderness. The closest we can think of is home!’” Anecdotes like these reflected activists’ ideals about living more connected to nature, and their rejection of the mechanistic world view in favor of a systems perspective.

Overall, there seemed to be an interest in attempting to form partnerships with tribes. As one activist put it, they are “Trying to be respectful that we invaders can’t tell the Natives what our relationship should be like. But want to be serious about trying to improve that relationship.”

This is an important recognition on the part of this activist. All that can be done on their side is a good-faith effort at a better relationship, without expectations that any sort of reciprocation is owed for any reason. One activist pointed out that tribes have had some of the most success in the U.S. context in getting RoN laws passed without legal challenge. They attributed it in part to the

…special level of sovereignty, tribal rights, some core precedents

upholding their rights to practice their religions and spiritualities and have access

to some of their traditional lands and practices. A lot of those support rights of

nature as do a lot of their belief systems.

From the perspective of activists who have been struggling to get RoN recognized from a legal standpoint, any additional legal footing they can get could potentially help them further their cause, even in contexts that don’t directly involve Indigenous groups. Even if the legal basis for establishing RoN laws on land controlled by Indigenous populations doesn’t apply directly, it could still be helpful in making a case for RoN principles in other places if it serves as a successful example of implementation. For this and other reasons, most activists shared the sentiment that “it would be a terrific step if we could bridge the gap between Indigenous people

56 and environmentalists once and for all and work together.” However, creating this partnership is a difficult endeavor, for many reasons.

Activists demonstrated knowledge of the historical context of Indigenous groups’ claims to land in the place where their organization is located. As we were sitting in a coffee shop during an interview, one activist leaned over to me and said,

Now do you understand that we are sitting on Arapahoe land right now? I mean,

not because they claim it, because they legally own it. I mean people say ‘Oh

before the Arapahoe were here there was the Comanche and before the Comanche

there were…’ Yeah. But the only thing is, only the Arapahoe have a piece of

paper signed by the U.S. government that says “this is your land.” And no one has

ever negotiated that away. This IS Arapahoe land. So, that’s a HUGE rights of

nature issue and I’d like us to support that in every way we can.

It was clear that this individual saw a natural connection between what the organization should be working on and the interests of Indigenous populations with ties to the area. However, this individual as well as other activists who spoke directly about trying to collaborate with

Indigenous peoples also recognized that this had been attempted in the past, and that it had not gotten very far. They continued:

One of the issues is any time a gringo shows up in a Native American meeting

and says we want to partner with you on rights of nature what we hear is “well

how about the rights of Native People first” you know, and finding a bridge

between our immediate concerns and their immediate concerns…I don’t think

people have tried very hard, but I think people get discouraged very quickly.

57 Multiple activists also noted that “…some of the Native American tribes don’t get that excited about rights of nature because they say that legal rights are… unnecessary- that that’s just the way they live. It’s just natural to live in balance.” If activists and Indigenous people don’t share the same goal about what RoN ought to look like, it’s harder to find common ground and reason to work together. Activists also acknowledged some of the laws passed by the U.S. government connected to early environmentalism that had racist outcomes for Indigenous people, such as the Wilderness Act’s language about wilderness being defined as one activist lamented, “‘untrampled by man with no human imprint on it,’ ignoring the fact that we kicked out Native Americans that used to live there.” The uncertainty of activists about how to “do it right” when it came to making connections with local tribes seemed to come from a place of respect and of frustration for the wrongs that have been committed up to this point.

This conundrum these activists face has been taken up increasingly in more recent years by the academy. There is growing recognition and attention being given to the history of environmentalism in the United States and the intense racism that often came with it, as well as issues that have carried through to today that stem from this past (Jacoby, 2003 and Smith,

2012). I pivot now to a discussion of this history based in scholarly work on the subject to help contextualize the experiences of the activists who spoke about this challenge.

One example of early environmental movements causing lasting harm to Indigenous people is that of the creation of National Parks by the conservationist movement (Jacoby, 2003).

This example is relevant to RoN because at a very basic level, both movements aim to preserve nature. However, the underlying goals and philosophies of the two movements are divergent in key ways. In its earliest days, the conservationist movement spoke to concerns about the overexploitation of natural resources, and put to work the skills of an increasingly concerned

58 elite group of professionals who specialized in the technical and managerial side of these resources. Accordingly, “The early conservation movement took the form of a top-down effort to develop a program of resource conservation to ensure the continuation of economic development” (Brulle, 2000, p. 148). This was a very specific goal which understood wilderness as a tool for human use and benefit, and also placed people with certain skills in the position to manage nature through the use of their specific training. Two of the underlying philosophies of the movement as stated by Brulle (2000) include “The proper management philosophy for natural resources is to realize the greatest good for the greatest number of people over the longest period of time” and “Nature can be managed by humans through the application of technical knowledge used by competent professionals” (p. 146). These are both heavily utilitarian views of nature, centered on a homocentric view, which favors the greatest good for the greatest amount of people (Merchant, 1992). Given these starting assumptions and goals, conservationists went about creating laws to govern land according to what they perceived as the correct way to interact with nature, as well as defining which spaces counted as “wilderness.”

One of the manifestations of the conservationist’s goals and philosophies was the creation of National Parks. Here I take the example of the creation of the Grand Cañon Forest Reserve

(later known as Grand Canyon National Park) in 1893 by the federal government. This park was created on land that the Havasupai tribe had claimed for generations, and its creation forced them to a reservation encircled by newly-appointed national forestlands (Jacoby, 2003). The creation of the park brought with it new rules and regulations that applied to the land. These rules conflicted with practices that the Havasupai had been using for generations as they lived on the very land that suddenly their practices were illegal on. While these policies were supposed to be racially blind, Jacoby (2003) argues that:

59 The movement’s arrival shut off vast portions of tribal hunting and foraging areas

while also inhibiting Native Americans’ use of fire to shape the landscape around

them. Even more strikingly, conservation interlocked on multiple levels with

other, ongoing efforts—treaties, the establishment of reservations, allotment—to

displace Indians’ claims upon the natural world in order to open up such areas to

non-Indians (p. 196).

As is often the case with policies designed to be racially blind, these made life disproportionately difficult for the Havasupai, even if they were not directly named as the targets of the new policies. Because the policies were labeled “racially blind,” this created a sort of social cover for the polices by disavowing them as racist before anyone had the chance to label them as such. The policies simply took the European way of interacting with the land as the unquestioned standard, and criminalized practices that did not fit in to that set of expected, normalized behaviors. As policies intended to protect the land, they did not stop to examine the impacts of the two sets of practices on the land itself. The fires the Havasupai set on occasion likely benefitted the land in the long run, while the grazing practices of the white policies makers certainly altered and likely harmed the land in the long run. Thus, there is evidence that either the conservationists did not fully understand the ecology of the land which they were trying to manage, that they did understand, but felt that their way of management was still better overall given their starting assumptions, or alternatively, that these racially blind policies were not as blind as they claimed and in fact were targeted towards making like more difficult for the

Havasupai. Regardless of the actual intent, the outcomes of these policies provided negative outcomes for the Havasupai, while furthering the goals of the conservationists.

60 This possessing of the land, expelling of Indigenous peoples, and creation of new laws to govern the newly-designated area involved in the creation of national parks has many similarities to a larger project of settler colonialism. The difference between colonialism and settler colonialism is that the former involves settlers going to a place, establishing their rule, and then returning to their home country, while the latter involves going to a place, establishing rule, and staying long-term. Veracini (2010) describes settler colonialism as a historical and ongoing process in which a new group of people establish their own physical presence, lifestyles, and political structures on land that was already occupied by at least one other group. According to

Bonds and Inwood (2016), “This ongoing project requires the continued displacement of

Indigenous and other marginalized peoples who are an impediment to capitalist development, as well as particular forms of labor exploitation that extract value from appropriated land” (p. 721).

This is very much in line with the goals of the early conservation movement, which sought to use wilderness strategically to provide the most good for the most people while allowing for continued economic growth.

One reason it is difficult to be aware of settler colonialism is that it “Obscures the conditions of its own production” (Veracini, 2010, p. 14). This occurs in numerous ways. One is the assertion that colonizing is not a violent activity. This is because of a belief in terra nullius- that the land is empty and waiting for the colonizer (who was perhaps persecuted themselves in their land of origin) to come and start a new life by working the “new” land. In this process,

Indigenous peoples “naturally and inevitably ‘vanish’; it is not the settlers that displace them”

(Veracini, 2010, p. 14). The displacement of Indigenous peoples is lost behind the narrative of the settler struggling with the land itself to provide for their family (Veracini, 2010), while any violence toward them is left out, or even considered part of that struggle with the land.

61 A second reason that settler colonialism is hard to detect for most Americans is that because it is a continuous process, it is hard to acknowledge that it is happening in the present.

Dominant geographies have taught us that any wrongs committed against Indigenous peoples happened in the past. Indeed, they have been successful in convincing many that Indigenous peoples themselves are closer to the past than they are to the present, and so harm cannot be occurring to them now. This is certainly false, but it is nonetheless a wide spread sentiment. This history of settler colonialism and historical injustices is mostly overlooked. However, the erasure of Indigenous peoples that was advanced by settler colonial processes has been carried through to the present but masked by the dominant geographies taught to the majority of Americans through the education system, the process of which I turn to next.

McKittrick (2006) explains the concept of dominant geographies- the widely accepted versions of a history and uses of space that hide or discount the struggles and experiences of less powerful groups while privileging the favored version of the dominant group. In the case of the

National Parks example, the dominant narrative paints them as only a positive creation. While in many ways they are positive, the failure to acknowledge the harm they caused (and are still causing), is one thing that makes collaboration difficult between the modern form of the conservationist movement that pushed for them, and modern members of Indigenous groups whose ancestors were directly harmed and who today are still living with the consequences. The dominant geographies surrounding this history include “National mythologies [that] affirm settler histories, sanitizing violent dispossession through narratives of wild, untamed frontiers and rugged white individualism” (Bonds and Inwood, 2016, p. 723). These mythologies fail to acknowledge horrific consequences for groups that exist alongside these tails of triumph. “These narratives imply that somehow the rise of the United States as the world’s largest economy was

62 accomplished despite slavery and genocide and not because of it” (Bonds and Inwood, 2016, p.

723). Dominant geographies encourage the dominant group to sweep under the rug any parts of history that are inconsistent with its narratives about itself, its ancestors, or its country. This is a harmful feature for those who are living today with the harm of the past, because it makes it even harder to reconcile the harms done in the past when they are tucked further and further out of mind by the dominant or offending group.

The idea that environmental movements have produced racist outcomes in the past is novel to many, but not to the activists I interviewed. The existence of two different understandings of the past can lead to difficulty in collaboration because of differing viewpoints between environmentalists and Indigenous people on a harmful past. Although this example focuses on the conservation movement, this movement is not alone in having alienated certain groups in one way or another. Although a thorough discussion of the construction of race is outside the scope of this paper, it is important to keep in mind. When talking about collaboration it is important to also recognize unequal footing groups are on in terms of the racial hierarchy within the united states (Grossman, 2017) as this is one of the many factors that makes collaboration difficult.

Despite these and other points of friction, scholar Zoltán Grossman has examined case studies of collaboration, particularly among Indigenous peoples and rural Caucasian populations.

According to Grossman (2017), “Native/non-Native cooperation has become an important element in the protection of many rural parts of the United States, particularly in the West and

Midwest” (p. 5). Grossman (2017) identified a general four-step process that collaboration efforts went through in the seven case studies examined. The pattern tended to be that Indigenous peoples would assert their autonomy and renewed nationhood, which would be followed by a

63 right-wing populist backlash from some parts of the white community resulting in racial conflict over natural resources. A common threat to that resource would lower the conflict as dialogue ensued about how to protect common interests, and finally collaboration would be pursued

(Grossman, 2017).

One key difference between my study and Grossman’s is that the activists I interviewed live in more populated areas which are not under direct threat themselves. The land they live on is generally not as likely to face the same severity of environmental threats as land that

Indigenous groups live on, as is the case for Grossman’s examples. This means that the activists, in addition to being placed favorably on the racial hierarchy, also live under less of a threat of their homes being directly affected by a threat from an outside force which might harm the local environment. However, these activists care about the protection of less-populated land and the ecosystems and species that are present there.

The desire to collaborate with Indigenous peoples presents its own set of challenges that many of us, from academics to regular folks to members of Indigenous nations are trying to grapple with. It is not easy to overcome historical wrongs that have bled into current day structures and attitudes. However, it is of great importance that efforts be extended, both on principle, and to potentially improve everyone’s quality of life. Perhaps the topic of shared interests in protecting the environment is one place to start.

Conclusion

This study identifies key challenges faced by a group of RoN activists as they work to further their cause at the local government scale in the state of Colorado. Additionally, this study

64 helps contextualize the RoN movement within the canon of environmental movements in the

United States.

RoN activists are trying to achieve something much more radical than environmental movements such as the conservationist movement, which operates within the current paradigm.

Closer to the work of deep ecology and animal liberationists, RoN activists are attempting to create a paradigm shift not only in people’s actions, but also within their deeply held ethical beliefs about their place in the world and how the rights they have as individuals should be in balance with the rights of ecosystems and species.

Key findings about the challenges RoN activists face can be categorized into those of political opportunity, which include working within the constraints of local government systems and navigating around blockages from key individuals. On the education side of the movement, activists struggle to find a framing of RoN that resonates broadly with current U.S. attitudes, although they provide a range of public outreach events to try to offer something that might click for a variety of people. Meanwhile, on the legal front of the movement, activists attempt to draft

RoN language in ways that make meaningful change without triggering lawsuits against local governments that implement the language or disbarment threats against lawyer-activists themselves. They also grapple with high levels of corporate control and power in the United

States that makes change to the status quo difficult. Finally, the organization would like to find a respectful way to collaborate with local Indigenous tribes on environmental matters, but face a long history of wrongs committed against Indigenous groups in the name of environmentalism that make this sort of collaboration difficult.

These findings can be situated in the context of what other scholars have found in regard to other ESMs and the challenges they face. Finding a way of framing this movement that speaks

65 to those outside the group remains challenging. Yet, education efforts by the group seem to be receiving a warm response, at least from the environmental community. As Pellow (2014) found with animal and earth liberationists, RoN activists working on the legal side of the movements can face threats to their personal livelihoods from the activist work that they do. Although working within local government structures provides plenty of bureaucratic challenges, RoN activists actively plan and work strategically within these systems, often setting themselves up for the best political opportunities to advance their cause. According to Hilson’s (2002) definitions, activists have relatively easy access to local politicians, but find that their suggestions for action are not acted on quickly or with enthusiasm from multiple parts of local government. Going beyond Hilson’s (2002) discussion, these activists worked to get candidates they thought would be favorable into office outside of the work they did for the RoN group, to remedy the issue of low political acceptance for their ideas. Lastly, RoN activists understand the entrenched policies and ideals that they must challenge in order to get the broader public to question their own assumptions.

I recognize that this study has limitations. First and foremost is the small sample size.

The results are not generalizable to all RoN organizations, but I hope they present an accurate picture of the experiences of these particular activists, which fills a niche in the current literature.

A second, overarching constraint of the project was the two-semester time frame in which it was conducted. Had there been more time, more literature could have been consulted, more interviews with different actors conducted, and more substantial findings presented.

Future research could address different cultural contexts. For example, what are some factors that make RoN easier to implement in some places rather than others? Activists mentioned that the United States is a hard environment for RoN, but that there has been more

66 success in other countries. Insight into why this is would be valuable as activists work to implement RoN within the United States, where the average carbon footprints of individuals is especially high. Second, a more ethnographic-style study into why these activists care about this particular solution enough to invest their time in it could be interesting. Several activists mentioned that they don’t think RoN is the end all be all solution, yet something about it speaks to them enough to put their time into it. These findings might be useful for more targeted promoting of the movement. If it is better understood what it is that draws people to this movement other than it “feels right,” framing a message to recruit more people to become activists might be easier.

One of the greatest strengths of this organization is the professional diversity of people who are attracted to it. This diversity is reflected in the group I spent time with, which included folks with professions ranging from ecology to physics to film to law. Given this range of backgrounds, the individuals often focused on different aspects of RoN. An excerpt from my field notes reflecting on an interview I had just completed is one example of this:

They talked more about the spiritual and emotional aspects of the movement,

which was very different from the attorney who focused on the legal side, and the

naturalist who focused on the science side, and the other lawyer who focused on

the history of property law in America as a barrier (fieldnotes, 9/30/19).

It is important to start filling the gap in the literature about this relatively nascent environmental movement in the United States context, as the world grapples with how best to address the climate crisis and other environmental concerns that are emerging. Implementing

RoN is an option, and in many ways a promising one. The RoN movement is also a possible talking point for non-Indigenous environmentalists and Indigenous peoples, if both groups are

67 interested in forming mutually beneficial alliances. Though there are disagreements even within the group I spent time with about how implementation should be pursued, or even the way public outreach should be conducted, working through these differences produces a better-thought-out, stronger action plan moving forward. And though individuals have their own priorities they wish to pursue under the umbrella of RoN, there is a cohesiveness and agreement that nature must be protected, and the diversity of thought on how to do this beneficial. The RoN movement is pushing boundaries in the ways we see nature and therefore, how we go about protecting it. The level to which we commit to protecting nature moving forward will have severe implications for what life looks like on this planet in the future. I am finishing this project as the world is learning to deal with the corona virus pandemic. This development further demonstrates that humans are not outside the forces of nature, but subject to the systems we live in and alter. Given the sometimes-fraught relationship between humans and nature, the RoN movement is deserving of our attention as we consider how best to protect our earth in the coming years.

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71 Appendix

Appendix A – Interview Guide (This is a list of the most common guiding questions for the interviews. Not all participants were asked all of these questions, and a few additional questions were tailored directly to the individual based off their role and experience).

• Perhaps we can start with an overview of how you came to know about RoN, and what

your involvement has been in this organization?

• Could you tell me about some of the projects you’ve worked on in the past?

o What were some challenges you ran into, and did you find any solutions you

thought worked particularly well?

• Which issue that this organization is working on is most important to you, and how do you

think it can be best moved forward?

• What’s been your greatest accomplishment in doing this work?

• What are challenges you’ve experienced or foresee for this organization or for the RoN

movement more generally?

o Perhaps we can brainstorm some strategies for those?

• Could you step me through the process of drafting RoN language for, say, and ordinance

or a for the Comprehensive Plan?

• Suppose down the road, RoN concepts become widely implemented. In what ways do you

hope life will be different, or what do you think will change if that happens?

• Is there anything that has come up for you that I haven’t asked about, or that you would

like to return to?

72