Mian Crist

And as McFarlane writes, at the heart of this conflict was a struggle between two incommensurable ways of seeing the river.

The first is that of the crown, a utilitarian perception which has always viewed the Whanganui River as a resource and service provider, there to be manipulated and exploited as the state has seen fit, and to be anatomized into its notionally separable, commodifiable elements, the bed, the banks, the flow, the fish, the minerals that lie beneath it.

And then there's the second way of seeing the river, and he gives a quote here from Gerald Albert, who's the lead negotiator for the river,

And Albert says, we want to begin with the view that the river is a living being and then consider its future from that central belief.

We have fought to find an approximation in law so that all others can understand that from our perspective, treating the river as a living entity is the correct way to approach it as an indivisible whole instead of the traditional model of treating it from a perspective of ownership and management.

So this act, this act in New Zealand that was passed, really kind of sparked what became known as the Rights of Nature Movement.

This kind of idea has been picked up in various places around the world, particularly in Ecuador, which I think we'll get to.

But this idea of incommensurable ways of seeing rivers in terms of the way the state sees them and in terms of the way various indigenous peoples see them or people who have lived on land for a very, very long time and have relationships with rivers and their ecosystems.

And I think this disconnect is actually what McFarlane is getting at in this book in a very, very deep way, because I think, Peter, you and I were both a little surprised that there wasn't more law in this book.

There's really a lot of

imagination of just how can we see a river?

How can we imagine a river?

And I was really struck that the beginning of part one of this book, which is this section on Ecuador, begins with a quote from Ursula K. Le Guin.

She writes, one way to stop seeing trees or rivers or hills only as natural resource is to class them as fellow beings, kinfolk.

I guess I'm trying to subjectify the universe because look where objectifying it has gotten us.

To subjectify is not necessarily to co-opt, colonize, exploit.

Rather, it may involve a great reach outward of the mind and imagination.

And this quote, a great reach outward of the mind and imagination, reappears at the very, very end of the book, almost in the last paragraph.

And that signals to me that that's really what this book is about.

So I feel like I've been talking for a moment.