New Zealand’s Mount Taranaki is now legally a person

A mountain in New Zealand is now legally recognised as a person after being granted all the rights and responsibilities of a human by the government.

The new law offers extra protection for Mount Taranaki – now known as Taranaki Maunga, its Maori name – and means it has all the rights, powers, duties and responsibilities of a person.

It is part of an agreement between New Zealand‘s government and the indigenous Maori tribes, which have long considered the 8,261ft mountain an ancestor.

The mountain’s legal personality has a name, Te Kahui 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”.

Four members of the local Maori iwi, or tribes, and four others appointed by the country’s conservation minister, will make up a new entity that acts as “the face and voice” of the mountain, the law rules.

The legal recognition also acknowledges the mountain’s theft from the Maori of the Taranaki region after New Zealand was colonised, and fulfils an agreement of reparation from the country’s government to indigenous people for harms perpetrated against the land since.

The legal rights essentially give the tribes more power to uphold the mountain’s health and wellbeing in an era where it has become a popular spot for tourism, hiking and snow sports.

Despite the new bill, which passed unanimously through parliament, the mountain will remain a publicly accessible destination.

“The mountain has long been an honoured ancestor, a source of physical, cultural and spiritual sustenance and a final resting place,” Paul Goldsmith, the politician responsible for the settlements between the government and Maori tribes, told parliament in a speech on Thursday.

Read more: bhttps://news.sky.com/story/new-zealands-mount-taranaki-is-now-legally-a-person-13300186