Who "Owns" Nature?

Until fairly recently, I never thought much about this question. Most of my life I just passively assumed that whatever Nature forms--plants, trees, birds, animals, rocks--existed within the bounds of a person's property line were also owned by the person whose name was on the property deed. This meant then that "Old Man Jackson's apple tree" and all the apples it produced were in fact the property of that wizened, gritty farmer, regardless of the fact that the apple tree had been growing since before his birth. According to property law in the U.S. and most other countries, a person can own both the land and the particular Nature beings that live there. In another example, someone can give another the right to hunt ducks on their property because they "own" the ducks that swim in their pond.

But do they own the ducks? Not according to Indigenous beliefs. In Native science, all aspects of nature are sovereign to themselves and enspirited, not ownable just because someone decided they could buy the rights to a place and its creatures. The ownership perspective I speak of is rooted in a historical colonization that took place around the world through "exploration," resulting in the decimation of Indigenous cultures across the Americas (and throughout the world) and establishing a human-centric belief system that allowed ownership of Nature and ultimately its treatment as a commodity, a resource that can be used, ill-treated, and used up according to the will of its owner. In this scenario, it's easy to damage the environment and any of its parts if we see it as nothing more than a "thing" at our human disposal. Ergo, the global environmental crisis we find ourselves in.

Here's a cool thing: in 1972, a USC law professor wrote a seminal article suggesting that nature should have rights equal to personhood. Since that time, the Rights of Nature movement has been quietly developing, and today at least 12 countries and numerous smaller American constituencies recognize the ecosystem as possessing legal rights that support its protection. Both Ecuador and Bolivia have even enshrined the Rights of Nature into their national constitutions. This amazing shift towards legally acknowledging, and protecting, the inherent value and sovereignty of Nature means that eventually Old Man Jackson's apple tree and apples will no longer "belong" to him, but instead simply live and hopefully thrive with his stewardship.