The proposed Seventh Generation Amendment would constitutionally protect future generations’ access to common resources.

Evidence

The rights of the people to use and enjoy air, water, and sunlight are essential to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These basic human rights have been impaired by those who discharge toxic substances into the air, water, and land. Contaminating the commons must be recognized as a fundamental wrong in our system of laws, just as defacing private property is wrong. On that basis, the Seventh Generation Amendment to the Constitution of the United States declares, … The right of citizens of the U.S. to enjoy and use air, water, sunlight, and other renewable resources determined by the Congress to be common property shall not be impaired, nor shall such use impair their availability for use by the future generations. — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations, 984

Categorization

• DEFINE: Presents the exact text of the proposed constitutional amendment, centering pollution-as-wrong-against-commons.
• XREF: Bridges to eco-justice pedagogy’s commons framing and to later environmental-rights scholarship like rights-of-nature constitutions. — connects to: Relational and intergenerational time is central to Indigenous worldviews. — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 44; Industrial production must shift from a linear to a cyclical system to survive. — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 974