The Magpie River was recently granted legal personhood by the Innu Council of Ekuanitshit and the Minganie Regional County Municipality in Quebec. Our speaker, Yenny Vega Cárdenas, President of the Observatoire international des droits de la nature/ International Observatory of Nature Rights, will describe how this process unfolded and what 'personhood' means for the Magpie River.
This event is part of the Webinar Series, Reimagining Rivers: Rethinking and Reframing Relationship with the Environment. Legal rights govern how we interact with each other and with the world around us. Various jurisdictions, for example, are now granting legal rights to aspects of the environment such as rivers. This webinar series, jointly organized by the Centre for Constitutional Studies and the Environmental Law Centre, provides opportunities to learn from expert speakers about jurisdictional hurdles that impact the thriving of our environment as well as innovative approaches to rethinking relationship with it. The series will culminate in a Symposium next spring 2022, where we explore different conceptions of the North Saskatchewan river: as a legal person, as an agent, as a relation.