Resolution of the Innu Council of Ekuanitshit & Resolution of the Minganie Regional County Municipality on the Personality and Rights of the Mutehekau Shipu (Magpie River)

The Ruling

The Innu Council of Ekuanitshit and the regional municipality of Minganie adopted parallel resolutions recognizing the Mutehekau Shipu as a legal person and enumerating nine rights: to live, to flow, to respect for its natural cycles, to evolve naturally, to be preserved, to maintain biodiversity, to perform its essential ecological functions, to maintain its integrity, and to be free from pollution. Guardians appointed by both governments hold standing to litigate on the river's behalf.

The Personhood Argument Not Made

The doctrinal innovation here is jurisdictional pluralism: Indigenous law and Quebec municipal law together construct a personhood that neither could create alone. This is personhood-by-confederation rather than personhood-by-decree, and it sidesteps the federal question that sank Lake Erie. The river is a person not because a sovereign declared it so, but because two neighbouring authorities decided it was so, and there is — as yet — no court willing to say they cannot.

The Execution Gap Created

The Magpie was identified by Hydro-Québec as a candidate for as many as eight hydroelectric dams. The personhood resolutions are the legal scaffold for resisting that pipeline, but no Canadian appellate court has yet tested whether a guardian can enforce the river's rights against a Crown corporation. The doctrine exists; the precedent does not.

Primary sources & research

• Read the primary source →

Related cases

• Flint Water Crisis (Mays v. Snyder et al.) (2015)
• Shelley v. Kraemer (1948)
• Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act 2017 (2017)
• Sierra Club v. Morton (1972)

Part of The Personhood Prism, the companion to The Execution Gap by Thomas William Hornig. See all personhood cases →