Tributaries First is a practical way to protect the Great Lakes by starting where the water first enters them – in the small rivers, creeks and wetlands that feed the lakes and carry both life and pollution downstream. Instead of treating the lakes only as big water bodies to be monitored, Tributaries First treats each tributary and its watershed as a living relation that can be recognised in law, cared for in ceremony and defended by guardians.
The idea builds on real precedents. In 2021 the Magpie River, Muteshekau Shipu, in Québec became the first river in Canada to be recognised as a legal person through paired resolutions of the Innu Council of Ekuanitshit and the Minganie regional municipality, which granted the river specific rights, including the right to flow freely, maintain biodiversity and stand in court. Alderville First Nation is now advancing legal personhood for Rice Lake and the Ganaraska River, with band council resolutions and regional advocacy that aim to protect the lake’s rights in the face of pollution and overfishing. On the St Lawrence River, Yenny Vega Cárdenas and the International Observatory on the Rights of Nature are promoting legal personhood and a bill of rights for the whole watershed, including a guardian committee and a specialised water tribunal.
Tributaries First takes the lessons from these efforts and applies a simple principle: act at the smallest capable scale. The main unit of action is the watershed, especially tributaries that cross First Nations reserves and United States reservations, then flow through municipalities and counties. At those crossings, Indigenous governments and local authorities can each pass aligned resolutions that recognise the tributary as a legal person with defined rights, and create shared guardian circles that speak for the water rather than for any single human interest.Personhood is not symbolic. It gives a river or lake legal standing, so that guardians can bring cases when its rights are violated, similar to the way corporations are treated as legal persons. Globally, this approach is part of the rights of nature movement that has already recognised personhood for rivers such as the Whanganui in Aotearoa New Zealand and others across Latin America. In each case, Indigenous law and worldview have led the way, asserting that water is not a resource but a relative.
For Tributaries First, that sacred relationship is central. Work in each pilot watershed begins with local ceremony and teachings, often led by women and grandmothers who carry water responsibilities. Legal instruments are paired with stories, maps, youth projects and community science, so that personhood is felt in everyday life as well as in courts and council chambers.
The next phase of Tributaries First focuses on planning and funding. Partner communities around the Great Lakes will identify pilot tributaries, build local circles that include Indigenous governments, municipalities, elders, youth and scientists, and draft ready to use personhood resolutions and bylaws based on existing models from Magpie, Rice Lake and the St Lawrence. The long term goal is simple and ambitious: a basin where every tributary is treated as a living relation in law and practice, and where clean feeder rivers help restore the health of the Great Lakes for generations to come.
