A mountain in New Zealand considered an ancestor by Indigenous people was recognized as a legal person on Thursday [January 30, 2025] after a new law granted it all the rights and responsibilities of a human being.
Mount Taranaki — now known as Taranaki Maunga, its Māori name — 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.
How can a mountain be a person?
The law passed 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, the law says, with four members from local Māori iwi, or tribes, and four members appointed by the country’s Conservation Minister.
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Why is this mountain special?
“The mountain has long been an honored ancestor, a source of physical, cultural and spiritual sustenance and a final resting place,” Paul Goldsmith, the lawmaker responsible for the settlements between the government and Māori tribes, told Parliament in a speech on Thursday.
But colonizers of New Zealand in the 18th and 19th centuries took first the name of Taranaki and then the mountain itself. In 1770, the British explorer Captain James Cook spotted the peak from his ship and named it Mount Egmont.
In 1840, Māori tribes and representatives of the British crown signed the Treaty of Waitangi — New Zealand’s founding document — in which the Crown promised Māori would retain rights to their land and resources. But the Māori and English versions of the treaty differed — and Crown breaches of both began immediately.
In 1865, a vast swathe of Taranaki land, including the mountain, was confiscated to punish Māori for rebeling against the Crown. Over the next century hunting and sports groups had a say in the mountain’s management — but Māori did not.
“Traditional Māori practices associated with the mountain were banned while tourism was promoted,” Goldsmith said. But a Māori protest movement of the 1970s and ‘80s has led to a surge of recognition for the Māori language, culture and rights in New Zealand law.
Redress has included billions of dollars in Treaty of Waitangi settlements — such as the agreement with the eight tribes of Taranaki, signed in 2023.
How will the mountain use its rights?
“Today, Taranaki, our maunga, our maunga tupuna, is released from the shackles, the shackles of injustice, of ignorance, of hate,” said Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, a co-leader of the political party Te Pāti Māori and a descendant of the Taranaki tribes, using a phrase that means ancestral mountain.
“We grew up knowing there was nothing anyone could do to make us any less connected,” she added.
The mountain’s legal rights are intended to uphold its health and wellbeing. They will be employed to stop forced sales, restore its traditional uses and allow conservation work to protect the native wildlife that flourishes there. Public access will remain.
Do other parts of New Zealand have personhood?
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. Government ownership ceased and the tribe Tūhoe became its guardian.
“Te Urewera is ancient and enduring, a fortress of nature, alive with history; its scenery is abundant with mystery, adventure, and remote beauty,” the law begins, before describing its spiritual significance to Māori. In 2017, New Zealand recognized the Whanganui River as human, as part of a settlement with its local iwi.
How much support did the law receive?
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.
The unity provided brief respite in a tense period for race relations in New Zealand. In November, tens of thousands of people marched to Parliament to protest a law that would reshape the Treaty of Waitangi by setting rigid legal definitions for each clause. Detractors say the law — which is not expected to pass — would strip Māori of legal rights and dramatically reverse progress from the past five decades.
-via NPR, January 31, 2025
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Note: The article doesn’t get fully into the implications of the broader, global “rights of nature” movement (of which this is part), which is powerful tool for not only recognizing Indigenous ways of relating to the world, but also preventing ecological damage.
Examples of rights of nature include rivers having the right to not be polluted, etc. Powerful tool for leveraging the courts and legal frameworks against environmental destruction.
…Now I’m going to dispute that the founders could not have dreamed this. I think they would have found this scenario extremely plausible once you explained the stage upon which this little human drama takes place, if not the outright logical outcome.
Because you can’t tell me that is not EXACTLY how Benjamin Franklin would behave if he were around today.
The Department of Defense ordered a handful of news media outlets to vacate their offices inside the Pentagon so that they may be replaced by some conservative press organizations.
In a memo issued on Friday, Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense John Ullyot said the Pentagon wanted to “broaden access to the limited space of the Correspondents Corridor to outlets that have not previously enjoyed the privilege and journalistic value of working from physical office space in the Pentagon.”
It was not clear what if any role Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth played in the decision.
i’m very quickly getting sick of left leaning dudes being like “eh well getting rid of DEI isn’t really the worst thing he could do” like congratulations you dumb fucks you fell for the fascist propaganda
they want you to think of DEI as the corny workplace training you had to take that one time so you’ll shrug it off as they axe every program that suggests minorities should have equal rights
this is the kind of shit that will happen as a result of moves like this. “but but but that’s not even DEI—“ it doesn’t fucking matter because everyone knows DEI is code for literally anything that doesn’t center white men
white straight cis abled men
White straight cisgender heterosexual Christian men.
As a college professor: Put aside the value of any particular bit of DEI. Can we consider the scary precedent of governments telling colleges what they can and cannot teach? Because we are supposed to be centers of free inquiry and instruction, not fucking mouthpieces for the state or national government.
The systems include a vast database containing birth dates, Social Security numbers, appraisals, home addresses, pay grades and length of service of government workers, sources said.
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amhrancas 