If you are looking for a powerful read, may I recommend Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane, a British writer widely thought of as one of the most influential contemporary voices in nature writing. You may have to wait a few weeks yet, as this book is only available as an e-book or in hardcover until early April.
Anyone who has grown up in a land filled with lakes and rivers, like those who call or have called Northern Ontario home, has a deep appreciation and love for water, not as a resource but as a partner in traversing this lovely wild land. In his book, Macfarlane calls the reader to consider, from a philosophical and practical view, the health of rivers and how they are inseparable from us, so that we might navigate this changing climate and the fearful challenges before us with greater wisdom and empathy.
Macfarlane’s books are taught in many Canadian universities. He acknowledges learning from Cree understandings of land and other Indigenous guardianship models. Cree language gives name to the elements of Nature as living beings, not as a collection of objects. The Cree see the natural world in terms of relationship, each possessing a spirit deserving of respect and honour, recognizing them as separate living beings with whom humans may interact, be influenced and educated by.
Oral histories give voice and agency to these beings, teaching each new generation how to live well with Nature. Macfarlane puts the various Indigenous strategies to work in his examination of rivers. The “river walks” translated from sîpiy pimohtêw in Cree. English language proves this most clearly in the choice of words—natural resources. We often use “it” when referring to animals and other elements of Nature, as though their value is below ours.
Macfarlane studied several cultures, both ancient and contemporary, as to how they consider rivers in terms of living beings, as relatives, and as legal persons. He explored the nuances of Māori concepts of kinship (whakapapa), North American Indigenous teachings and European folklore and philosophy, all of which differ dramatically from Western views.
He began his investigation into rivers with an open mind, even with a dose of doubt and uncertainty as to what he would find. He was certain it would not be an easy answer. He traversed three landscapes— “a cloud forest in Ecuador, a cluster of poisoned waterways in Chennai India, and the Mutehekau Shipu as referred to by the Innu people 600 miles northeast of Montreal” (New York Times, June 2025).
The Canadian Geographic reported April 8, 2022, that in February 2021, the people of Ekuanitshit, Que., together with the regional municipality, announced that the Mutehekau Shipu (also known as the Magpie River) had been granted legal personhood, which in turn set the precedent for the fight to protect Nature across this country and beyond. This declaration added momentum to a global movement to grant the same to all rivers worldwide, such as has been done with the Whanganui River of New Zealand, the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers of India and the Atrato River in Columbia. Law is evolving to allow for our ecological interdependence.
Why does this matter? readers might ask. Changing how we speak, says Macfarlane, can change how we act, can change how we relate with Nature, where the boundary line between humans and rivers collapses. The human body is largely made up of water and as such, Macfarlane refers to this as “ecological kinship”.
Language shapes ethics which explains how devastating it has been for Indigenous culture when children were robbed of their familial language in residential schools. That broken connection further severed their relationship and understanding of how to live their authentic lives, which is part of Indigenous DNA. This is not an overstatement.
Macfarlane’s writing clearly shows his love of words. Children are central to the story. In a New York Times review of Macfarlane’s book by Jennifer Szalai, “adults have had their senses dulled by civilization’s demands” and as a result, struggle to see the natural environment as “vital creatures” the way children do. Children willingly believe in a world of “talkative trees, singing rivers and thoughtful mountains,” says Macfarlane. But at some point, we educate this relationship out of them until eventually they too become adults who participate in Nature as something not to have a relationship with but rather something to control.
Upon reading Macfarlane’s words, I was quickly transported back to my childhood on the Rainy River. The water rushing by pulled at me in my play. I found peaceful and restorative solitude there with my toes wiggling in the cool water, as I dangled from branches hanging over the water.
I believed in the stories that filled my head, the river on an unending journey to find its way north. I felt its pain when some mornings the pollution from the papermill upstream left the entire river’s surface covered with a foamy brown, bark-laden chemical-smelling muck. I was blessed to call that mighty river home.
“Is a River Alive?” provides us with a framework for rethinking our responsibility to the environment when such a shift in our thinking is urgently needed. The path forward not only needs new technologies and policies but requires us to develop a new way of seeing. If we can understand that rivers are alive, then we can begin to imagine a future where both humans and nature can be stronger together.
