‘The Seine is like a person,’ dreamed Prévert in 1957. Since 2020, the Seine Guardians collective has been working to turn this poem into a collective project. Opposing the anthropocentric view of life and its extractivist practices, the Seine Guardians collective defends a bioperspectivist view of the river, respecting the intrinsic value of nature. At its source in Côte d’Or, the Seine is little more than a puddle with invisible underground veins. Here, a Gallic sanctuary celebrated Sequana, the goddess of the river symbolizing its healing powers. In January 2024, while the Seine’s flooding power is feared more than ever, the Seine guardians gathered there to map its threats and imagine how to reinvent its representation. Later this year, in response to Soulèvements de la Terre’s call for mobilisation against a mega-warehouse project in Gennevilliers, the Seine guardians read the Declaration of the Rights of the Seine, with their feet in the river. In September 2024, at the Carnavalet, the museum of the history of Paris, the Seine spoke out against its polluters in a mock trial. The guardians denounced the logistics that enslave it, the pipes that hinder its freedom, and the concrete that clogs its arteries. The trial prompted the city councils of Paris and Rouen to organize citizen conferences on the rights of the Seine in 2025, leading to the drafting of a bill. Public events, support for voluntary institutions, alliances with local struggles: the guardians of the Seine make a river out of all water.
