Manitoba FN Chiefs want Lake Winnipeg to be declared a legal person with rights

[blackbird]

Make Lake Winnipeg a legal 'person' with Constitutional rights, Manitoba chiefs ask court

The lawsuit says Lake Winnipeg, one of the world's largest, has a spirit and is alive but is suffering

Author of the article:

The Canadian Press

Bob Weber

Published Sep 19, 2024  •  Last updated 3 days ago  •  3 minute read

 

115 Comments

 

Lake Winnipeg has problems with algae, E. coli bacteria and invasive species, as swell as a decline in fish, wildlife and vegetation, the lawsuit claims. Photo by Postmedia/File

Article content

WINNIPEG — A court has been asked to declare Lake Winnipeg a person with constitutional rights to life, liberty and security of person in a case that may go further than any other in trying to establish the rights of nature in Canada.

“It really is that simple,” said Grand Chief Jerry Daniels of the Manitoba Southern Chiefs’ Organization, which filed the suit Thursday in Court of King’s Bench in Winnipeg.

“The lake has its own rights. The lake is a living being.”

The argument is being used to help force the provincial government to conduct an environmental assessment of how Manitoba Hydro regulates lake levels for power generation. Those licences come up for renewal in August 2026, and the chiefs argue that the process under which those licences were granted was outdated and inadequate.

They quote Manitoba’s Clean Environment Commission, which said in 2015 that the licences were granted on the basis of poor science, poor consultation and poor public accountability.

Meanwhile, the statement of claim says “the (plaintiffs) describe the lake’s current state as being so sick that she is dying.”

It describes a long list of symptoms.

Fish species have disappeared, declined, migrated or become sick and inedible, the lawsuit says. Birds and wildlife including muskrat, beavers, duck, geese, eagles and gulls are vanishing from the lake’s wetlands.

Foods and traditional medicines — weekay, bulrush, cattail, sturgeon and wild rice — are getting harder to find, the document says, and algae blooms and E. coli bacteria levels have increased.   unquote

Make Lake Winnipeg a legal 'person' with rights: Manitoba chiefs lawsuit | National Post

This is a very clever move by the Manitoba Chiefs.  Many liberal and left politicians will buy into this idea because they are illiterate on the Biblical truth about the place of man in the world and the false, heathen religion of animism or pantheism.  Aboriginal beliefs were historically centered around the idolatry of animism.

"

Animism (from Latin: anima meaning 'breath, spirit, life')^[1][2] is the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence.^[3][4][5][6] Animism perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, human handiwork, and in some cases words—as being animated, having agency and free will.^[7] Animism is used in anthropology of religion as a term for the belief system of many Indigenous peoples^[8] in contrast to the relatively more recent development of organized religions.^[9] Animism is a metaphysical belief which focuses on the supernatural universe: specifically, on the concept of the immaterial soul.^[10]

Although each culture has its own mythologies and rituals, animism is said to describe the most common, foundational thread of indigenous peoples' "spiritual" or "supernatural" perspectives. The animistic perspective is so widely held and inherent to most indigenous peoples that they often do not even have a word in their languages that corresponds to "animism" (or even "religion").^[11] The term "animism" is an anthropological construct."  Animism - Wikipedia

The Manitoba Chiefs know that this will be a very useful way to gain more control over what they claim as their "traditional territory".   Now with the Manitoba Premier being a FN person, they likely believe that he will also work in their favour as he is one of them.  What the Premier actually believes about this I don't know.  Just how this will play out with the court is another concern.  Is the court going to fall for this argument?  Animism is also easily hidden behind the claim of FN culture and today it is a big belief system with environmentalists as well. 

I should point out not all FN people are animists today and some are Bible-believing Christians.  I would think the Christians are a small minority, just as in many groups and societies. 

The big danger in this is it is dragging man backward into pagan or heathen systems of government.  The historical Judeo-Christian belief has been based on the Bible truth that God created man in his own image and gave man dominion over everything on the earth.  This was unknown by the aboriginals until the arrival of the European founding people and Christian missionaries who brought the word of God to "Turtle Island".

"26  And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28  And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. "  Genesis 1: 26-28 KJV

Trying to change Canada's political system to legally follow animism is a huge step backward into darkness if it succeeds.

 

 

Edited September 23, 2024 by blackbird

[eyeball]

34 minutes ago, blackbird said:

Trying to change Canada's political system to legally follow animism is a huge step backward into darkness if it succeeds.

This is what happens when the political system ignores the mounting environmental problems it causes.

37 minutes ago, blackbird said:

Many liberal and left politicians will buy into this idea because they are illiterate on the Biblical truth about the place of man in the world and the false, heathen religion of animism or pantheism. 

Says the illiterate religion that scoffs at science by maintaining there is a Planet B up in Heaven.

[Dougie93]

Canada just gets stranger & stranger all the time

what a basket case lunatic asylum this Confederation has become

 

Edited September 24, 2024 by Dougie93

[blackbird]

1 hour ago, eyeball said:

This is what happens when the political system ignores the mounting environmental problems it causes.

Says the illiterate religion that scoffs at science by maintaining there is a Planet B up in Heaven.

The political system is not ignoring environmental problems.  There are tons of regulations around the environment, logging, mining, protecting land with park preserves, etc.  In fact the regulations are too extreme in many cases.  It can take ten years or more to get approval for resource extraction.  The government is also over reaching in many areas such as the energy industry.  They also over reached in imposing a carbon tax on the population which does nothing for the environment but does reduce the standard of living of everyone.  We also have systems in place that divide the garbage for recycling, organic and the garbage dump.  Everyone is forced to do that by government and must pay for all of the infrastructure with taxes.

Bible belief is not illiterate.  The Bible reveals how God created everything.  We did not just appear out of nowhere by a chemical accident.  If you want to believe that nonsense, that is your choice.  But there is true science which is empirical science proven by the scientific method and then there is false science which we have heard a lot of, which is nothing but speculation and has no proof to back it up.  That is not science.

 

Edited September 23, 2024 by blackbird

[herbie]

2 hours ago, Dougie93 said:

Canada just gets stranger & stranger all the time

He says from a country that thinks corporations are "persons".

 

[eyeball]

1 hour ago, blackbird said:

The political system is not ignoring environmental problems.  There are tons of regulations around the environment,

The regulations are what the political system is ignoring, at the behest of tons of lobbyists.

They're the real problem.

[Dougie93]

34 minutes ago, herbie said:

He says from a country that thinks corporations are "persons".

the leftists of Canada equating incorporation with a body a water

keep going, inciting a right wing counterrevolution against your own lunacy

please do

[herbie]

He says again, pointing out the right wing commitment to anything anti-environment as something admirable.
Starts with their universal belief than anything to do with the environment is "left".

[CdnFox]

7 hours ago, eyeball said:

This is what happens when the political system ignores the mounting environmental problems it causes.

 

Makes people go crazy and have weird visions imagining that a lake is talking to them?

I believe the last time we saw this was when some watery tart rose up and threw a sword at Arthur and he decided that meant he was king. I guess we're lucky the tribal chief isn't going that far

[Moonlight Graham]

I'm 100% sure Lake Winnipeg isn't a human being and therefore shouldn't have the rights of one.

But we do a terrible job with keeping our waters clean and healthy so agree on that point.

[Nefarious Banana]

14 hours ago, CdnFox said:

Makes people go crazy and have weird visions imagining that a lake is talking to them?

When I flash-up the Sthil, that old Douglas fir is begging . . . wonder if eyeball can see those fish's tears?

[eyeball]

2 hours ago, Nefarious Banana said:

When I flash-up the Sthil, that old Douglas fir is begging . . . wonder if eyeball can see those fish's tears?

I see them when I club them on the head. I fire up my old Sthil for firewood but my back can't take chucking rounds into the truck like it used to.

BTW what's firewood selling for in your neck of the woods? It's up to an unbelievable $400 to $500 a cord around here these days.

[Nefarious Banana]

1 hour ago, eyeball said:

What's firewood selling for in your neck of the woods? It's up to an unbelievable $400 to $500 a cord around here these days.

Clean Hemlock/Fir mix goes for $350.+  dry/delivered.  Maple/Alder junk is a little less.

 

Edited September 24, 2024 by Nefarious Banana

[herbie]

3 hours ago, eyeball said:

BTW what's firewood selling for in your neck of the woods? It's up to an unbelievable $400 to $500 a cord around here these days.

Hard to say. The people who remember WTF a cord even is are in retirement homes. The guys on FB and the community bulletin boards are passing off a pickup (anything from an F250 level to the box or a bloody Maverick with a 4 ft box) for $200 +

Quite a few in town think they're "saving money" with wood heat and some even tell me it's better environmentally than natural gas. Same ones who won't go to the pot store because you never know what the govt is putting in the weed....

[herbie]

BTW declaring a lake a person makes a hell of a lot more sense to native people than declaring it a park or protected area and letting far away govt bureaucrats f*ck it up beyond all recognition.

[CdnFox]

15 minutes ago, herbie said:

BTW declaring a lake a person makes a hell of a lot more sense to native people than declaring it a park or protected area and letting far away govt bureaucrats f*ck it up beyond all recognition.

So what you're saying is that native people are kind of !diots. Feels a little racist but you're entitled to your opinion of course

[eyeball]

2 hours ago, herbie said:

Hard to say. The people who remember WTF a cord even is are in retirement homes. The guys on FB and the community bulletin boards are passing off a pickup (anything from an F250 level to the box or a bloody Maverick with a 4 ft box) for $200 +

I hear you...I delivered hundreds of loads of firewood over the years. I had an old 1 Ton flat-deck I built a box on and turned into a dump truck. $150 a load was what I was charging...15 years or so ago I guess when I stopped.

2 hours ago, herbie said:

Quite a few in town think they're "saving money" with wood heat and some even tell me it's better environmentally than natural gas.

Its become a bit of a luxury alright but we get more than a few power outages around here so its also bit of a necessity. It's harder to get since logging wound down and we deactivated all the logging roads. That said I still see lots of wood washing up on the beaches around here. I salvaged hundreds of logs off beaches - halcyon days, especially that year a freighter lost some 20000 logs hereabouts, much of which was export grade old growth Douglas Fir.  Some of those logs were worth a couple thousand bucks or more.  My buddy and I milled up the biggest stuff for our homes and the edge grained stuff went for boat lumber.  I probably sold a couple hundred hydro pole sized logs for pilings as well.

Quote

Same ones who won't go to the pot store because you never know what the govt is putting in the weed....

Why not just grow their own?  Its about as hard as growing a tomato FFS.

Edited September 25, 2024 by eyeball

[eyeball]

On 9/23/2024 at 9:28 AM, blackbird said:

Trying to change Canada's political system to legally follow animism is a huge step backward into darkness if it succeeds.

As pointed out earlier in the thread corporations are routinely regarded as being the same as a person. In some countries corporations even have religious rights.

Are corporations even mentioned in your holey book, is there an 11th Commandment we haven't been told about?

[blackbird]

"Both the ungodly and their wickedness are equally detestable to the Almighty Creator. What they create will be punished along with its maker. That’s why even the idols of the Gentiles will face judgment because these creations have become an abomination in the Almighty Creator’s sight. These idols lead people astray and become traps or stumbling blocks for the souls of men, causing the foolish to stumble."

The Folly Of Idolatry And Its Consequences - Bible Study Ministry

Making lakes and other things persons with rights is a form of idolatry.  Not only is it a lie, but it destroys the natural order of things.  Man was given dominion over nature and this destroys that concept.  It is a return to pre-settlement days of aboriginal heathen worship of Mother Nature.

[Nefarious Banana]

17 hours ago, eyeball said:

I hear you...I delivered hundreds of loads of firewood over the years. I had an old 1 Ton flat-deck I built a box on and turned into a dump truck. $150 a load was what I was charging...15 years or so ago I guess when I stopped.

Its become a bit of a luxury alright but we get more than a few power outages around here so its also bit of a necessity. It's harder to get since logging wound down and we deactivated all the logging roads. That said I still see lots of wood washing up on the beaches around here. I salvaged hundreds of logs off beaches - halcyon days, especially that year a freighter lost some 20000 logs hereabouts, much of which was export grade old growth Douglas Fir.  Some of those logs were worth a couple thousand bucks or more.  My buddy and I milled up the biggest stuff for our homes and the edge grained stuff went for boat lumber.  I probably sold a couple hundred hydro pole sized logs for pilings as well.

Why not just grow their own?  Its about as hard as growing a tomato FFS.

Nothing quite as comforting and warm as wood heat, a re-newable resource. Firewood production will keep you fit and crabby ... (smiling)  That saltwater wood will eat your stove eventually. Husqvarna 2100 (Walker-ized) for the poaching of the odd snag. 

[eyeball]

3 hours ago, Nefarious Banana said:

Nothing quite as comforting and warm as wood heat, a re-newable resource. Firewood production will keep you fit and crabby ... (smiling)  That saltwater wood will eat your stove eventually.

Sure will if it's left too long on the beach.

But yeah wood heat is tough to beat.