American Indian Culture and Research Journal

The global decline of anguillid eels is well-documented across all continents where nineteen related species migrate. In North America, the population decline (and in some cases, extirpation) is related to numerous factors including industrial development. Eels experience violent mortality and migration barriers which have been linked to extractive infrastructure affiliated with settler colonial land occupation. The intricate migration pattern of Anguilla rostrata (American eels) is one of those species, an ecologically significant fish that has ancestral and persistent relevance to First Nations and tribal nations in Canada and the US, respectively. This paper draws from Anishinabe ontological grounding including intergenerational dodem gikendaasowin (clan or kinship knowledge) to suggest that humans are living in a world that includes an aquatic governance mediated by eels. A primary contribution is the suggestion that attention to such framing has applied relevance to intergenerational land-based healing, for extension of ongoing pursuits including Indigenous environmental justice, water governance strategies, and renewed interspecies relations. The application of these nascent concepts affects possibilities for current and future generations to exert reflective capacity and advocate for greater decision-making in matters of water governance. This paper suggests these opportunities be afforded to inheritors of ancestral Anishinabeg legacy dispersed throughout areas in Anishinabe-aki, where eels have resided and migrated and may do so again; to survive, eels benefit from informed policy and governance practices that facilitate physical assistance. New regimes may be built from human reflexivity and the desire to give back to life, an inherent principle of Anishinabe water governance and the application of Nibi Inaakonigewin (water laws).