Mountain becomes latest natural feature to be granted personhood by law

Mount Taranaki, now known as Taranaki Maunga, has been granted personhood (Dita Alangkara/AP)

A mountain in New Zealand considered an ancestor by indigenous people was recognised as a legal person on Thursday after a law granted it all the rights and responsibilities of a human being.

Mount Taranaki – now known as Taranaki Maunga, its Maori 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 8,261ft and a popular spot for tourism, hiking and snow sports.

The legal recognition acknowledges the mountain’s theft from the Maori of the Taranaki region after New Zealand was colonised.

Mount Taranaki now has the same rights as human being (David Frampton/AP)

It fulfils 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 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”.

A newly created entity will be “the face and voice” of the mountain, the law says, with four members from local Maori iwi, or tribes, and four members appointed by the country’s conservation minister.

“The mountain has long been an honoured 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 Maori tribes, told parliament in a speech on Thursday.

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.

New Zealand was the first country in the world to recognise 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 Tuhoe became its guardian.