When the River Can Sue You, Eco Colonialism Ends

By Marique B. Moss (Miriguá Miásh, "Woman in the Water") - Hidatsa/Dakota; African American
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Conservation in this country did not start with care. It started with control. The first parks and projects were about removing us, taking our homes, our fields, our hunting grounds, and calling that "protection." From Yellowstone to the Missouri River, the idea of wilderness was built by erasing Indigenous nations and pretending the land had always been empty (Gilio-Whitaker, 2019). That mindset, this eco colonialism, still shapes how laws and policies are written today.

I carry that history with me as a woman from the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation. My people have always lived with the Missouri River. For generations, we farmed the rich bottomlands that fed our families and supported our trade. Our Four Sisters, corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers, held our culture together. They carried our economy, our ceremonies, and our teachings. The river valleys and the wide plains hold our history. These are the places where our ancestors built their homes, planted their fields, and learned to live in balance with the earth.
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That balance was broken by projects like the Garrison Dam. Built between 1947 and 1953, it was presented as progress, a way to prevent flooding and generate power. But progress came at our expense. More than 150,000 acres of farmland, cottonwood forests, and wildlife habitat were flooded to create Lake Sakakawea. Entire villages were displaced, and the river's natural cycles were destroyed (Lawson, 2009). Cities and industries downstream gained the benefits, while our economy, culture, and way of life were left underwater.

This is what eco colonialism looks like. Federal laws like the National Environmental Policy Act and Antiquities Act are often used without our consent, restricting how we hunt, gather, or hold ceremony on lands that were once ours. Even when laws require consultation about cultural sites, the process often becomes a checkbox exercise rather than meaningful consent (Wilkins & Lomawaima, 2001).

Today, this is how we are fighting eco colonialism: by pushing for laws that recognize our relationships to land and water. In Aotearoa (New Zealand), the Whanganui River has been granted legal personhood, reflecting the Māori belief that the river is an ancestor and cannot be owned (Charpleix, 2018). It means the river can be spoken for, represented in court, and even sue those who harm it, treated as a living relative rather than a resource to be used up. That model shows what it could look like if our Missouri River, which holds the same importance to us, was truly protected under law.

The 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty guaranteed our people 12.5 million acres, but executive orders systematically reduced this to less than one million acres by 1910, all in the name of "conservation" (Treaty of Fort Laramie, 1851; Kappler, 1904/1972; Prucha, 1994). When the Flood Control Act of 1944 authorized the Pick Sloan Missouri Basin Program, Congress never consulted us, treating our homeland as empty space to flood (Lawson, 2009).

The harms of eco colonialism reach far beyond the land and water. It endangers our women and girls, who face the violence of border towns and the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (Deer, 2015; Lucchesi & Echo-Hawk, 2018). Resource extraction brings transient workforces, leading to trafficking and violence as "man camps" form around oil fields and pipeline routes. Environmental policies that open our territories to extraction create the conditions for this violence against our people.

But we are not only surviving. We are rebuilding and fighting back through environmental law, policy, and land based practice. We are demanding free, prior, and informed consent for every project that touches our lands and waters, following frameworks established in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007), which calls for Indigenous nations to have final authority over projects that impact their homelands and waters. We are using these frameworks to challenge violations when agencies fail to assess how regulations impact our treaty rights.

We partner with Native land trusts to keep stewardship in our hands. Our Natural Resources Department protects tribal lands, our Energy Division oversees oil and gas activity, and our Tribal Park spans 2,100 acres of Badlands, preserving landscapes, wildlife, and culture. The MHA Nation Interpretive Center carries our languages and stories forward alongside this work.

And as an agricultural people, we are planting the seeds that kept our culture alive, reclaiming our role as environmental stewards. Through networks like the Indigenous Environmental Network and Land Back initiatives, we are showing that Traditional Ecological Knowledge represents thousands of years of living with and protecting these ecosystems (Berkes et al., 2000; Whyte, 2013).

To move beyond eco colonialism, conservation must shift from control to relationship (Schlosberg & Carruthers, 2010). Land and environmental decision making power must be returned to tribal nations. Consent must be real, treaties must be honored, and Indigenous environmental stewardship must be trusted and supported.

We are planting, we are protecting, and we are leading. The rivers, the plains, and the forests will not be saved by removing us. They will be saved because we are still here.
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Hiraaguca hiro Mahahgua'ac! We are still here!

References

• Berkes, F., Colding, J., & Folke, C. (2000). Rediscovery of traditional ecological knowledge as adaptive management. Ecological Applications, 10(5), 1251-1262.
• Charpleix, L. (2018). The Whanganui River as Te Awa Tupua: Place based law in a legally pluralistic society. Geographical Research, 56(1), 27–38. https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-5871.12238
• Deer, S. (2015). The beginning and end of rape: Confronting sexual violence in Native America. University of Minnesota Press.
• Gilio-Whitaker, D. (2019). As long as grass grows: The Indigenous fight for environmental justice, from colonization to Standing Rock. Beacon Press.
• Kappler, C. J. (Ed.). (1972). Indian affairs: Laws and treaties (Vol. II, pp. 594–596). U.S. Government Printing Office. (Original work published 1904)
• Lawson, M. L. (2009). Dammed Indians revisited: The continuing history of the Pick Sloan Plan and the Missouri River Sioux. South Dakota State Historical Society Press.
• Lucchesi, A., & Echo-Hawk, A. (2018). Missing and murdered Indigenous women: A snapshot of data from 71 urban cities in the United States. Urban Indian Health Institute.
• Prucha, F. P. (1994). American Indian treaties: The history of a political anomaly. University of California Press.
• Schlosberg, D., & Carruthers, D. (2010). Indigenous struggles, environmental justice, and community capabilities. Global Environmental Politics, 10(4), 12-35.
• Treaty of Fort Laramie with Sioux, Etc., Sept. 17, 1851, 11 Stat. 749.
• United Nations General Assembly. (2007). United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Resolution A/RES/61/295.
• Whyte, K. P. (2013). On the role of traditional ecological knowledge as a collaborative concept: A philosophical study. Ecological Processes, 2(7), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1186/2192-1709-2-7
• ​Wilkins, D. E., & Lomawaima, K. T. (2001). Uneven ground: American Indian sovereignty and federal law. University of Oklahoma Press.