Supporting biodiversity and plant justice through varying Indigenous concepts of covenants of reciprocity

This session explores how various examples of Indigenous land stewardship throughout North America provides a powerful example through which to de-center human exceptionalism in resource management and environmental governance. Unlike western ecology, Indigenous concepts of biodiversity usually acknowledge relationality through kinship and obligations between humans, the sacred world, plants, animals, fungi, and abiotic factors. This concept of biodiversity opens space for the emerging field of plant justice and the acceptance of plants as legal ‘persons. It envisions justice for the land involving an agreement between land and people that is simultaneously ecological and cultural. It recognizes that ecological integrity arises from reciprocal exchanges (what systems ecologists might call negative feedback loops or the biogeochemical give and take among members of an ecosystem) that produce biodiversity and ecological stability. It emphasizes moving forward from a widely held understanding amongst many Indigenous peoples of kinship with an animate and spiritual more than human world that is eloquently articulated in distant time stories where humans are surrounded by and interact with intelligences other than that of humans. Following from participatory action methodology this approach suggests that we apprentice to both Indigenous knowledge holders and the plants themselves so that through empathy and learning we might better understand the gifts plants have to offer and what legal dignity looks like for humans, plants and ecosystems.