When Salmon Speak: Intercultural Respect and the Rights of Nature

A few years ago, I sat in an Ashéninka Indigenous community in the Peruvian Amazon, invited to listen, not as a researcher with answers, but as someone learning how to understand what “respect” truly means for them. It was not a word. It was a way of relating.

Years later, in conversation with Mark Wedge, an Indigenous leader and restorative justice practitioner dedicated to protecting salmon and strengthening relationships between people, land, and waters, I learned how his people speak of the salmon’s right to their own territory.

Today, salmon are at the center of a legal case (Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe, 2022) that asks something that might sound “different” to some: what if they are not resources, but beings with rights?

At a time of climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and collapsing ecosystems, this question is not abstract. It asks us to rethink how we relate to the living world and whether our legal systems are capable of recognizing relationships that many Indigenous Peoples have never forgotten.

When salmon go to court 

In an unprecedented legal action, salmon—represented by the Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe—are suing the City of Seattle. The case seeks recognition of salmon as rights-bearing beings, with the inherent rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, and evolve.

The lawsuit emerges from decades of harm. Hydroelectric dams constructed along the Skagit River—without the free, prior, and informed consent of the Tribe—have disrupted salmon migration and spawning cycles, contributing to a dramatic collapse in salmon populations (Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe, 2022).

But what makes this case different is not only the ecological damage—it is the framing.

For the Sauk-Suiattle, salmon (Tsuladxw) are not merely fish. They are relatives. They are part of their people, embedded in their culture, diet, and spiritual practices.

In this context, the lawsuit is not just about environmental protection. It is about responsibility. Tribal members are acting on behalf of salmon in the same way guardians might act for a child—because salmon are understood as beings with whom they share a relationship of care and reciprocity.

This case reflects a broader shift: from seeing nature as property to recognizing it as a community of living beings.

More than fish: A relationship 

During a doctoral research co-conducted with Ashéninka and Yine Peoples, I learned that respect is not simply about politeness or rights; it is about how relationships are enacted (Váquez-Fernández & Ahenakew, 2020).

In these communities, respect involves care, sharing, non-imposition, and the recognition of multiple forms of personhood—including animals, rivers, and invisible beings.

This understanding challenges dominant Western assumptions. In many legal systems, respect is granted only to “persons”—typically defined as humans or legal entities like corporations. But who counts as a person is not universal. It is culturally and politically constructed.

As our research shows, what is often called “mutual respect” in Western frameworks can fail in intercultural contexts because different worlds are not speaking about the same thing (Brown, 2000; Fish, 1999; Vásquez-Fernández et al., 2021).

For Ashéninka and Yine collaborators, respect requires asking for permission, honoring protocols, and recognizing the agency of territories and non-human beings. It is not about consultation after decisions are made—it is about relationship before action.

In this sense, the salmon case is not new. It is an expression—within a legal system—of relational worlds that have existed for centuries.

The rise of the Rights of Nature 

The Rights of Nature (RoN) movement seeks to transform how law understands the natural world. Instead of treating ecosystems as property, it recognizes them as subjects with rights—similar to how corporations are treated as legal persons (Steel et al., 2026).

This shift is both legal and philosophical.

On one hand, it grants rights to entities like rivers, forests, and species. On the other, it challenges the underlying worldview that separates humans from nature.

In the salmon case, this dual purpose is clear. The lawsuit aims not only to secure legal recognition for salmon, but also to shift consciousness—toward seeing the natural world as a fellowship of living beings rather than a set of resources.

Importantly, the Rights of Nature movement draws heavily on Indigenous worldviews. Around the world—from Ecuador to Aotearoa (New Zealand)—legal innovations have emerged that reflect long-standing Indigenous relationships with land and water.

Why this case matters now 

We are living through overlapping crises—climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution—that are pushing ecological systems to their limits.

Salmon are indicators of this crisis.

Once numbering in the tens of thousands in the Skagit River, some salmon populations have now declined to the hundreds (Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe, 2022). This is not only an ecological collapse—it is a relational rupture.

For the Sauk-Suiattle, the loss of salmon affects food systems, livelihoods, and spiritual practices. It also raises questions of justice, as the dams that caused these impacts were built without their consent, potentially violating treaty rights and international frameworks such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the right to Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC).

At the same time, this case reflects a broader historical moment. 

Ideas once unthinkable—like recognizing women as rights-bearing subjects—shifted through growing awareness and knowledge; in a similar spirit, extending rights to non-human beings is beginning to gain recognition. This shift is reflected in a 2024 resolution by the BC Assembly of First Nations supporting the legal recognition of the rights and personhood of Mother Earth and her creatures (BC Assembly of First Nations, 2024).

The question is no longer whether we can afford to rethink our relationship with nature—but whether we can afford not to.

Path forward 

So what would it mean to move forward differently?

From my perspective, the answer is not simply to adopt Rights of Nature laws, but to transform how they are practiced.

This requires what we called in our collaborative work an intercultural respect approach—one that creates space for dialogue between legal systems without erasing their differences.

Intercultural respect emerged as a way to build relationships across paradigms. It involves principles such as care, non-imposition, protocol compliance, and the recognition of multiple forms of personhood (Vásquez-Fernández et al., 2021).

Applied to governance, this means:

• Recognizing Indigenous Peoples as decision-makers, not stakeholders 
• Honouring Indigenous laws and protocols alongside state law 
• Ensuring that legal innovations like Rights of Nature do not override Indigenous sovereignty 

It also means rethinking the role of law itself—not as a tool of control, but as a space of relationship.

Bridging rights-based and kinship-based approaches is not easy. It requires care, humility, listening, and a willingness to unlearn.

But it may be one of the most important tasks of our time.

 

Relationships and stories beyond the courtroom

Legal cases like this one are only one way these relationships are being expressed. Storytelling offers another.

Documentaries such as The Pristine Coast  (Renyard, 2023) reveal the intricate connections between ocean systems and life on Earth, showing how seemingly invisible processes for us terrestrial beings (humans) are deeply tied to planetary balance. In doing so, they remind us that ecosystems are not isolated units, but living and connected systems we are embedded within.

Similarly, The Herring People (Renyard, 2025) tells the story of Indigenous relationships with herring along the Pacific coast, highlighting how cultural flourishing, food systems, and marine life are inseparable. The film shows that when herring decline, it is not only an ecological loss, but a disruption of relationships that have been sustained for generations.

In Haida Gwaii: On the Edge of the World (Wilkinson, 2025), the land and waters are not presented as scenery, but as living presences that are interconnected with Haida law, governance, and identity.

These stories echo what the salmon case is bringing into legal language: that ecosystems are not resources to be managed, but relationships to be honoured.

Conclusion

When I think back to those conversations in the Amazon, I remember that respect was never abstract. It was lived; it was practiced.

It was about how you entered a territory, how you spoke, how you listened, and how you understood your place in a web of relationships that extended beyond the human. The salmon case invites us into a similar reflection.

The lawsuit asserting the rights of salmon ended in a settlement in which Seattle agreed to create fish passageways around its dams, improving salmon migration without a court ruling on their legal rights (Eco Jurisprudence Monitor, 2025).

It asks us to consider whether our legal systems can recognize relationships that are already known and practiced by many Indigenous Peoples. It challenges us to expand who counts as a subject of respect.

Ultimately, this is not only about salmon. It is about us—all beings that inhabit and share planet Earth.

What if protecting salmon means remembering that they were never separate from us and that we were never separate from them?

 

References  

• BC Assembly of First Nations. (2024). Support for the legal recognition of the rights of nature and personhood of nature (Issue October, p. 3). BCAFN.
• Brown, C. (2000). Cultural diversity and international political theory: From the Requirement to “mutual respect.” Review of International Studies, 26(2), 199–213.
• Eco Jurisprudence Monitor. (2025). Sauk-Suiattle (USA) Tribal Court Case: Tsuladxw (salmon) v. City of Seattle. https://ecojurisprudence.org/initiatives/rights-of-salmon-case/
• Fish, S. (1999). Mutual respect as a devise of exclusion. In S. Macedo (Ed.), Deliberative Politics: Essays on democracy and disagreement (pp. 88–102). Oxford University Press.
• Renyard, S. (2023). The pristine coast. Juggernaut Pictures.
• Renyard, S. (2025). The herring people. Juggernaut Pictures.
• Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe. (2022). Civil complaint for declaratory judgement. https://turtletalk.blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/sau-civ-01-22-001-civil-complaint.pdf
• Steel, D., Vasquez-Fernandez, A. M., Cripps, R., DesRoches, T., & Mintz-Woo, K. (2026). Rights of nature, intercultural respect and climate change. The Monist, 109(2), 1–37.
• Váquez-Fernández, A. M., & Ahenakew, C. (2020). Resurgence of relationality: reflections on decolonizing and indigenizing “sustainable development.” Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 43, 65–70. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2020.03.005
• Vásquez-Fernández, A., Shuñaqui Sangama, M., Ahenakew, C., Pérez Pinedo, M., Sebastián Lizardo, R., Canayo Otto, J., & Kozak, R. A. (2021). From “mutual respect” to “intercultural respect”: Collaborating with Asheninka and Yine Peoples in the Peruvian Amazon. Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law, 53(1), 127–153. https://doi.org/10.1080/07329113.2021.1889791
• Wilkinson, C. (2025). Haida Gwaii: On the edge of the world. Shore Films.