Wellington, New Zealand – A mountain in New Zealand considered an ancestor by indigenous peoples was recognized as a legal person on Thursday after a new law granted him all the rights and responsibilities of a human being.
Mount Taranaki, now known as Taranaki Maunga, his name Maorí, is the last natural characteristic that personality is granted in New Zealand, which has ruled that a river and a section of sacred land are people before. The vistic volcano latent with snow is the second highest on the north island of New Zealand at 8,261 feet and a popular place for tourism, hiking and snow sports.
Legal recognition recognizes the theft of the Maori mountain of the Taranaki region after New Zealand was colonized. It fulfills a repair agreement of the Government of the country to indigenous peoples for damages perpetrated against the land since then.
Luaiaiqian/Xinhua/Getty
The law approved on Thursday grants Taranaki Maunga all the rights, powers, duties, responsibilities and liabilities of a person. His legal personality has a name: te kāhui tupua, which the law considers “a living and indivisible whole”. It includes Taranaki and its surrounding peaks and land, “incorporating all its physical and metaphysical elements.”
A recently created entity will be “the face and voice” of the mountain, says the law, with four members of the local Maorí Iwi, or tribes, and four members designated by the country’s preservation minister.
“The mountain has long been an honest ancestor, a source of physical, cultural and spiritual livelihoods and a place of final rest,” the legislator Paul Goldsmith, responsible for the settlements between the government and the Maori tribes, on Thursday, in A speech.
But the New Zealand colonizers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries first took the name of Taranaki and then the mountain itself. In 1770, British explorer Captain James Cook saw the peak of his ship and called him Mount Egmont.
In 1840, the Maori tribes and representatives of the British Crown signed the Wagangi Treaty, the New Zealand Founding Document, in which the Crown promised that the Maori would retain the rights of their lands and resources. But the Maori and English versions of the Treaty differ, and the violations of the crown of both began immediately.
In 1865, a vast strip of Taranaki land, including the mountain, was confiscated to punish the Maori for rebeling against the crown. During the next century, hunting and sports groups had a voice in the mountain management, but the Maori did not.
“Traditional Maori practices associated with the mountain were prohibited while tourism was promoted,” Goldsmith said. But a Maori protest movement of the 70s and 80s has led to an increase in recognition of the language, culture and Maori rights in the New Zealand Law.
The repair has included billions of dollars in the Treaty of the Waithi agreements, as the agreement with the eight Taranaki tribes, signed in 2023.
“Today, Taranaki, Taranaki, our mountain, our hatred, the shackles of the Grilletes, the Sharckles of the political party of the Taranaki tribes, using a phrase that means ASEANS ASAN ANANS ASEAans.
“We grew up knowing that there was nothing that anyone could do to make us less connected,” he added.
The legal rights of the mountain are destined to maintain their health and well -being. They will be used to stop forced sales, restore their traditional uses and allow conservation work to protect the native wild life that blooms there. Public access will remain.
Amy Toensing/Getty
New Zealand was the first country in the world to recognize natural characteristics as persons when a law approved in 2014 granted personality to Te Urewera, a vast native forest on the North Island.
The governmental property of the forest ceased under the law and the Tūhoe tribe became its guardian.
“Urewera is ancient and lasting, a strength of nature, living with history; its landscape is abundant with mystery, adventure and remote beauty,” the law begins, before describing its spiritual importance for the Maori. In 2017, New Zealand recognized the Whatanui River as a human, as part of a settlement with its local IWI.
Matthew Lovette/Education images/universal images Group/Getty
The bill that recognizes the personality of the mountain was unanimously affirmed by the 123 legislators of Parliament. The vote was received by a Waiata, a Maori song, from the public gallery, full of dozens who had traveled to the capital, Wellington, from Taranaki.
The unit provided a brief respite in a tense period for racial relations in New Zealand. In November, tens of thousands of people marched to Parliament to protest a law that would remodel the Wagangi treaty by establishing rigid legal definitions for each clause. The detractors say that the law, which is not expected to pass, would strip the Maori of legal rights and drastically reverse the progress of the last five decades.
