Crystal Cavalier-Keck’s environmental advocacy was born out of a belief that nature deserves the same empathy and consideration usually reserved for humans, instilled by her upbringing in the Occaneechi band of the Saponi tribe.
Cavalier-Keck will be speaking at 12:30 p.m. today in Smith Wilkes Hall for the Chautauqua Climate Change Initiative. Her lecture, “Rivers Have Rights,” will explore her work as the founder, with her husband, of Indigenous activist organization 7 Directions of Service, focusing on her advocacy for the passage of Rights of Nature laws around the country.
“As humans, we have been taught early on that we are in control of nature, or we can somehow control it,” Cavalier-Keck said. “Rights of Nature really talks about this Western legal framework, because in order to operate in our society across the world, you have to have some sort of governance system. … (By) giving nature a personhood status, we would then be able to have someone advocate on its behalf.”
With the passage of Rights of Nature laws, natural features would be considered persons in the U.S. legal system, Cavalier-Keck explained, allowing individuals to file lawsuits or other legal complaints on their behalf. For example, someone could sue a corporation that pollutes a river — not because of the potential effect that pollution may have on people downstream, but because the rights of the river itself have been violated, opening the door for legal action.
Cavalier-Keck’s environmental advocacy began when a pipeline was slated to be built on her ancestral Occaneechi-Saponi lands in rural North Carolina. She and her husband, Jason Crazy Bear Keck, started putting together campaigns and building coalitions of other activists to stop the building of the pipeline, not only because of its environmental risks, but also because of the damage it would cause to Indigenous burial grounds and sacred areas. 7 Directions of Service was officially born, and its first advocacy project proved largely successful, with construction of the pipeline slowed almost completely to a halt. At the center of 7 Directions of Service is the idea of “Defending the Sacred,” and that idea applies to anyone and everyone.
“You don’t have to be some titled person, or you don’t have to have a position,” Cavalier-Keck said. “What you’re doing is you’re just taking a stand that you are going to help protect what is sacred; air, water, fire and earth, they’re all sacred. … Without those four basic things, we cannot live.”
Cavalier-Keck hopes to leave her audience feeling galvanized, with the tools to join the movement, whether that be with 7 Directions of Service or with their own local environmental or Indigenous activist groups.
The gravity of the current environmental situation, she said, cannot be ignored, and the protection of the “circle of life” is critical to the long term preservation of the planet.
“From the littlest water amoeba to the blue whale, everything is in relationship, and each thing survives on others,” she said. “Our survival hinges on the survival of the planet.”
