full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Kelsey Leonard: Why lakes and rivers should have the same rights as humans

Unscramble the Blue Letters

We know we are in a global climate crisis, but globally, our waters are also threatened, and we are facing a glbaol weatr cisris, and if we want to address these crises in our lifetime, we need to change. We need to fundamentally transform the way in which we value water. And this is not something new for us as Indigenous peoleps. Our Indigenous legal systems have a foundational principle of understanding our nonhuman rioetlnas as being lvinig and protected under our laws. And even for the Western world, environmental legal theorists have argued for the rights of nature since the 1970s. But we need to do better. We need to change. And we need to grant legal ponrosheod to water, because it affords the following rights and protections. It grants water the right to exist, flourish, and naturally elovve, and most of all, it protects the water from us, from human beings that would do it harm, from human-caused climate-change impacts, from pollutants, and from man-made contamination. Moreover, it reverses the ateccped hierarchy of humanity's domination over nutrae. As human beings on this planet, we are not superior to other beings on this planet. We are not superior to the water itself. We have to learn how to be good srdtewas again.

Open Cloze

We know we are in a global climate crisis, but globally, our waters are also threatened, and we are facing a ______ _____ ______, and if we want to address these crises in our lifetime, we need to change. We need to fundamentally transform the way in which we value water. And this is not something new for us as Indigenous _______. Our Indigenous legal systems have a foundational principle of understanding our nonhuman _________ as being ______ and protected under our laws. And even for the Western world, environmental legal theorists have argued for the rights of nature since the 1970s. But we need to do better. We need to change. And we need to grant legal __________ to water, because it affords the following rights and protections. It grants water the right to exist, flourish, and naturally ______, and most of all, it protects the water from us, from human beings that would do it harm, from human-caused climate-change impacts, from pollutants, and from man-made contamination. Moreover, it reverses the ________ hierarchy of humanity's domination over ______. As human beings on this planet, we are not superior to other beings on this planet. We are not superior to the water itself. We have to learn how to be good ________ again.

Solution

  1. accepted
  2. crisis
  3. evolve
  4. living
  5. peoples
  6. water
  7. nature
  8. personhood
  9. stewards
  10. relations
  11. global

Original Text

We know we are in a global climate crisis, but globally, our waters are also threatened, and we are facing a global water crisis, and if we want to address these crises in our lifetime, we need to change. We need to fundamentally transform the way in which we value water. And this is not something new for us as Indigenous peoples. Our Indigenous legal systems have a foundational principle of understanding our nonhuman relations as being living and protected under our laws. And even for the Western world, environmental legal theorists have argued for the rights of nature since the 1970s. But we need to do better. We need to change. And we need to grant legal personhood to water, because it affords the following rights and protections. It grants water the right to exist, flourish, and naturally evolve, and most of all, it protects the water from us, from human beings that would do it harm, from human-caused climate-change impacts, from pollutants, and from man-made contamination. Moreover, it reverses the accepted hierarchy of humanity's domination over nature. As human beings on this planet, we are not superior to other beings on this planet. We are not superior to the water itself. We have to learn how to be good stewards again.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
legal personhood 10
human beings 4
indigenous peoples 3
water crises 3
indigenous legal 3
granted legal 3
grant legal 3
water injustices 2
navajo nation 2
future generations 2
legal systems 2
nonhuman relations 2
good stewards 2
legal personality 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
granted legal personhood 3
grant legal personhood 3
indigenous legal systems 2

Important Words

  1. accepted
  2. address
  3. affords
  4. argued
  5. beings
  6. change
  7. climate
  8. contamination
  9. crises
  10. crisis
  11. domination
  12. environmental
  13. evolve
  14. exist
  15. facing
  16. flourish
  17. foundational
  18. fundamentally
  19. global
  20. globally
  21. good
  22. grant
  23. grants
  24. harm
  25. hierarchy
  26. human
  27. impacts
  28. indigenous
  29. laws
  30. learn
  31. legal
  32. lifetime
  33. living
  34. naturally
  35. nature
  36. nonhuman
  37. peoples
  38. personhood
  39. planet
  40. pollutants
  41. principle
  42. protected
  43. protections
  44. protects
  45. relations
  46. reverses
  47. rights
  48. stewards
  49. superior
  50. systems
  51. theorists
  52. threatened
  53. transform
  54. understanding
  55. water
  56. waters
  57. western
  58. world