Fascism demands a martyr.

So maybe it's time to reframe the question.
Not: Can a river be a person?
But: How did we ever believe it was the King's to begin with?

We scoff at animism,
but rarely at monarchy.
We doubt the soul of a forest,
but not the title deed it was given
by someone in London,
a few hundred years ago,
acting on God's behalf.

So yes—maybe it seems radical to say
a river should have rights.
That a tree might deserve legal standing.
But is it more radical than saying a king in England
can claim ownership of that river,
of that tree?

The divine right of kings was transcribed into law,
and law, unlike land, doesn't need to make sense.

It doesn't matter that these lands were never ceded.
That no treaties were signed across most of British Columbia.
That people lived here, loved here, buried their dead
long before "The Crown" was even an idea.

This is what "Crown land" means.
Not a noble phrase.
Not an abstract nod to governance.
But a legal extension of a colonial theology
in which nature was never sacred,
only usable.

The concept is almost mythological in scale:
that a monarch
—anointed by heaven,
draped in jewels, living oceans away—
can own the rocks, tides, and cedar groves
of a place they've never seen.

From this logic came the Crown.
And from the Crown came paperwork.
And with that paperwork
Mountains became property.
Rivers became real estate.
Forests became assets.

And so we find ourselves not at a crossroads, but at a weaving.

The rational and the relational.

The symbolic and the sacred.

The microscope and the song.

Because the stories that cannot be proven,

are often the ones that save us. 10/10

Science can tell us how to split the atom, but not whether we should.

It can sequence the genome, but not teach us how to belong.

For that, we need the old ways. Not as relics—but as teachers. 9/10

We would ask permission before we extract.

We would sing to our food.

We would remember that every action has a ripple.

We would learn humility again. 8/10

Even if you take these beliefs as symbolic, they carry a logic of love. They remind us that the Earth is not a machine, but a body. Not a resource, but a relative. And if we were to live by these symbols—even without literal belief—they would reshape the foundation of our civilization. 7/10

When an elder offers tobacco to a plant before harvest, there is no peer-reviewed study that can explain what passes between them. But something does. A feeling. A respect. A remembering of the covenant between species: I will care for you, if you care for me. 6/10

Science can measure chemical signals, track data across seasons, map migration patterns and nutrient flows. But it cannot measure spirit.

It cannot quantify reverence.

It cannot replicate relationship. 5/10

Science may ask: Where is the proof?

But the stories do not flinch.

Because their power does not depend on being proven—

only on being honoured. 4/10

These are not quaint myths to be outgrown—they are systems of understanding, ethics, and belonging, refined over millennia through direct relationship with place. 3/10

Indigenous peoples across the world hold stories of a world that is alive. A world where rivers speak, where mountains breathe, where plants dream and teach and grieve. 2/10