Ancient Traditions Supporting Ireland’s Rights of Nature Initiatives
Ireland’s history provides ways to reframe human relationships with the natural world.
In 2023, Ireland’s Oireachtas (National Parliament) endorsed a plan for a national referendum on an amendment to enshrine rights of nature (RoN) in the Irish constitution. If this amendment passes, Ireland would become the first European country to recognize rights of nature at the constitutional level.
The RoN movement in Ireland presents a unique opportunity to explore the abiding presence of ancient animistic cultural traditions within a modern Western society.
Many of the earliest, and most prominent, rights of nature initiatives developed in areas with a strong Indigenous cultural presence (e.g., Ecuador, Bolivia, New Zealand, and tribal nations in the United States) and were often driven by Indigenous communities. In stark contrast to currently dominant Western cultural frameworks that center human ownership and management, “RoN laws recognize the ecosystems as living spiritual beings” in their own right and often focus on the renewal of preexisting cultural frameworks of sustainability. Thus, RoN laws can provide protection for nature while simultaneously strengthening and revitalizing indigenous cultural traditions.
The RoN movement in Ireland presents a unique opportunity to explore the abiding presence of ancient animistic cultural traditions within a modern Western society. Ireland, on the far western edge of Europe, was never conquered by the Roman Empire. This allowed traditional beliefs and practices, including respect for the land as animate and conscious, to persist longer than in many other parts of Europe. For example, Ireland’s pre-Christian system of Brehon Law continued to govern the treatment of not only people but also water, trees, animals, and more through the mid-seventeenth century. It has been described as an Irish form of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), a term typically reserved for Indigenous cultures. Activists and legal scholars suggest that Brehon Law and other elements of Ireland’s heritage could be important sources of insights for the current Irish RoN movement.
Despite Ireland’s modernity, a range of ancient traditions, stories, and practices endure to the present day. These include an ancestral language that encodes a deep relationship to the land, a reverence for holy wells and sacred rivers with ties to ancient mythological figures, and an acknowledgement of the otherworldly significance of areas such as Iron Age ringforts and special “fairy trees.” The Church and later British colonizers actively suppressed these animistic traditions, leading to horrific deforestation and an internalized disconnection from the land. Even so, they were never fully eradicated. Their ongoing presence expresses a life-celebrating rebellion against what is being lost to industrialization worldwide. Both burgeoning Gaeilgeoir (Irish language-speaking) communities and contemporary Druidry present opportunities for a renewed depth of connection with the landscape in Ireland.
Ireland and its history show us an interesting layering. In clear view is a western European country trending toward modernity. Beneath that lies a painful legacy of colonial trauma. And beneath that, in turn, rests a foundation of perspectives and practices from a much older, rooted relationship with place and the rest of nature that to this day persists in various forms. Ireland thus stands out as a kind of “bridge culture” spanning what might be called Indigenous and non-Indigenous frameworks for relating with place. We witness both a modern capitalistic, transactional relationship with nature alongside one that treats nature with respect and even mystical reverence. In a recent set of interviews, fifteen Irish activists cited the connection to traditional beliefs and customs as a source of their motivation and engagement in the RoN movement. Interviewees specifically identified such elements as ancestral language, fairies and folklore, connection to the land and holy wells, the traditional relationship between the health of the king and the health of the land, and consequences for cutting down sacred trees. The example of Ireland offers opportunities to explore if, and how, to daylight and engage such still-alive frameworks and lore in many other industrialized countries to support positive eco-cultural change.
Ireland stands as a reminder that ostensibly non-Indigenous societies can have deep precolonial cultural roots and that, without engaging in cultural appropriation, we can draw from these in our journey to become naturalized to place.
Given that Ireland has never fully forgotten its animistic ways, its RoN movement raises profound questions about how to regenerate deep and respectful relationships with nature after centuries of colonization, trauma, and broken connection. In Braiding Sweetgrass, environmental biologist Robin Wall Kimmerer uses the phrase “being naturalized to place” to advocate for regrowing our attitudes of connection, reciprocity, and humility toward the lands where we live. Ireland stands as a reminder that ostensibly non-Indigenous societies can have deep precolonial cultural roots and that, without engaging in cultural appropriation, we can draw from these in our journey to become naturalized to place.
As ecopsychologists, the authors of this article are keenly aware of humanity’s capacity for intimate, multidimensional engagement with the land and of how far contemporary society has wandered from such relationships. Instead, we see a widespread sense of separateness and human superiority that both suffocates the human spirit and leads to behaviors that contribute mightily to the global environmental crisis. From an ecopsychological perspective, the more humble, caring, and collaborative relationship with the more-than-human world central to the rights of nature movement holds particularly exciting potential. This is the kind of relationship with nature that has allowed certain cultures to thrive for thousands of years. Enshrining such a view within our current legal systems is a radical and healing step for contemporary humanity and for the Earth.
