The 14th learning session of the Co-creation with the More-than-Human sandbox in June 2026 explored Rights of Nature by Tribal and First Nations with Frank Bibeau, a self-described “free-range Tribal Attorney” who serves as Executive Director of the 1855 Treaty Authority — an intertribal organization formed by several Anishinaabe bands in Minnesota to protect, regulate, and exercise hunting, fishing, and gathering rights guaranteed under the 1855 Treaty — and as Director of the Tribal Rights of Nature program of the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights.
A member of the Anishinaabe people of Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota, he has spent his career developing the legal tools to exercise and defend treaty rights both on and off reservation — work that, over more than a decade, has produced landmark Rights of Nature enforcement cases in the United States.
The session examined what Tribal Rights of Nature is at its foundation — an obligation older than any law — and how that obligation is being translated into enforceable legal mechanisms, what those mechanisms can do in practice, and where they run into limits.
What follows is a synthesis of key questions, insights, and cross-cutting threads from the dialogue.
Read or listen to the synthesis on our Substack.
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