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Environmentalism Isn’T New: Lessons From Indigenous Law, Joseph Kowalski

Buffalo Environmental Law Journal

The much-overlooked laws and lifeways of Indigenous people show that concepts of environmental sustainability have long been a part of the human tradition. By studying the Indigenous jurisprudence of societies that maintained these traditions into the modern era, much can be learned. Rather than making laws in regards to the land, the land itself was the source of the law, for the environmental laws were built around a relationship with the land.

Through most of human history, the western world had a similar relationship. However, the Holy Roman Empire’s interpretation of Biblical scripture, which at that time was law, forever …