What might the Wye think of being granted Rights?
Whilst people seek understanding of Rights for Rivers really means, and how to enact these rights, the ancient Waters of the River remember when Rivers were well governed, when strict laws and taboos kept rivers clean and protected fish populations from over consumption.
Local authority representatives, barristers, celebrants and local people gather to formally launch the River Wye Charter of Rights. Photo credit: Eamon Bourke, Friends of the River Wye.
There is an awakening within human consciousness, a re-membering of yourselves and your place in nature. If I could stretch our imagination wider than it is now, so you could see and understand the living world as an intelligent purposeful place, within which humans are short-lived and minor characters, deserving of joy, yet lost and wounded by your separation from the natural world, yourselves and each other. If you could see the world as shifting patterns of energy manifest in beauty, you would dance through the world as rivers do. Sometimes people can be like children, foolish and blind to the consequences, at times selfish but at heart, good. My Charter of Rights is part of your stepping up into maturity, taking responsibility for yourselves and the world around you.
What would the Wye want us to know as we attempt to change how we govern Rivers?
This time is about the restoration of all that has been lost, and the creation of a society which re-learns how to belong to nature again. It’s time to honour your place in the world, to use the inventions of the developed society to share knowledge, re-create beauty and return to Right Relationship and your celebratory roles.
It is from within this wider cultural shift, that the ideas of different river governance spring, they are part of this change. Rivers need to be understood as sacred, a manifestation of ancient Deity, part of the Life-force of the landscape, they cannot be owned. Rivers require freedom to be what they are, to shape their own path, to move and flow as the wider climate and rains determine.
People need to re-learn how to flow and connect to yourselves, your hearts, each other and wider nature. Rivers do that naturally, it is part of our essence, and we can teach you how to do this again. I can guide your thinking and inspire your ideas, so the structures and governance you create actually work.
It is time to trust nature and rivers again.
Councillor Elissa Swinglehurst Deputy Leader of Herefordshire County Council pledging to uphold the River Wye Charter of Rights. Photo credit: Eamon Bourke, Friends of the River Wye.
