17. The Law Is in the Ground

Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world

“The law is in the ground,” said Doug Campbell, an Aboriginal elder. What did he mean? Western law, by contrast, starts with the idea of protecting property, which means that owning things becomes central to Western values and status. To imagine what a law of the ground looks like, I talk about what it took to recover from a postviral syndrome many years ago—a complete reordering of priorities to place my health absolutely first. At this moment we need to reorganize our cultural priorities to place the health of the Earth absolutely first. It will mean transforming the law—and one way to do this is to place the rights of nature into law.

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