Cherokee youth win legal rights for waterway in first all-female U.S. effort

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Tribal Council unanimously passed a resolution recognizing legal rights for the Longperson, a waterway system stretching more than 1,270 kilometers from the Great Smoky Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico. The effort was led by the NAIWA Daughters, a group of Indigenous girls aged 10 to 17, marking what the Earth Law Center calls the first all-female-led rights-of-nature effort in the U.S. and the second youth-led tribal resolution of its kind.

The resolution grants the waterway five rights, including the right to exist and regenerate free from harmful disturbance, freedom from pollution, and protection under EBCI law. The idea originated when the girls, tubing down the river, noticed tourists stacking rocks that disturb habitat for the eastern hellbender salamander, and later trained through a Bioneers rights-of-nature program.

The resolution joins similar efforts by the Ho-Chunk Nation, Yurok Tribe, Nez Perce, and others, part of a broader Rights of Nature movement recognized in more than 40 countries. A 2022 lawsuit by the Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe, filed on behalf of salmon, led the city of Seattle to agree to build fish passages at its dams.

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