WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A mountain in New Zealand considered an ancestor by Indigenous people was recognized as a legal person on Thursday after a new law granted it all the rights and responsibilities of a human being.
Mount Taranaki, now known as Taranaki Maunga, is the latest natural feature to be granted personhood in New Zealand, which has ruled that a river and a stretch of sacred land are people before. The pristine, snow-capped dormant volcano is the second-highest on New Zealand’s North Island at 2,518 meters (8,261 feet) and a popular spot for tourism, hiking, and snow sports.
The legal recognition acknowledges the mountain’s theft from the Māori of the Taranaki region after New Zealand was colonized. It fulfills an agreement of redress from the country’s government to Indigenous people for harms perpetrated against the land since.
The law passed on Thursday gives Taranaki Maunga all the rights, powers, duties, responsibilities, and liabilities of a person. Its legal personality has a name: Te Kāhui Tupua, which the law views as “a living and indivisible whole.” It includes Taranaki and its surrounding peaks and land, “incorporating all their physical and metaphysical elements.”
A newly created entity will be “the face and voice” of the mountain, with four members from local Māori iwi, or tribes, and four members appointed by the country’s Conservation Minister.
New Zealand was the first country in the world to recognize natural features as people when a law passed in 2014 granted personhood to Te Urewera, a vast native forest on the North Island. In 2017, New Zealand recognized the Whanganui River as human, as part of a settlement with its local iwi.
The bill recognizing the mountain’s personhood was affirmed unanimously by Parliament’s 123 lawmakers. The vote was greeted by a ringing waiata – a Māori song – from the public gallery, packed with dozens who had traveled to the capital, Wellington, from Taranaki.