Wellington, New Zealand (AP) – A mountain in New Zealand considered as an ancestor of Aboriginal peoples was recognized Thursday as a legal person after a new law granted him all the rights and responsibilities of a human being.
Mount Taranaki – now known as Taranaki Maunga, its name Maori – is the last natural characteristic to obtain personality in New Zealand, which judged that a river and a stretch of sacred land are people before. The virgin and snowy sleeping volcano is the second highest on northern island in New Zealand at 2,518 meters (8,261 feet) and a popular place for tourism, hiking and snow sports.
Legal recognition recognizes the theft of the Maori mountain in the Taranaki region after the colonized in New Zealand. He accomplishes a compensation for the government of the country to indigenous peoples for prejudice to land since.
The law adopted Thursday gives Taranaki Maunga all the rights, powers, duties, responsibilities and responsibilities of a person. His legal personality has a name: Te Kāhui Tupua, which the law considers as “a living and indivisible whole”. It includes Taranaki and its surrounding peaks and lands, “incorporating all their physical and metaphysical elements”.
A newly created entity will be “the face and voice” of the mountain, says the law, with four members of the local Māori Iwi, or tribes, and four members appointed by the Minister of Conservation of the country.
“The mountain has long been an honored ancestor, a source of physical, cultural and spiritual subsistence and a last place of rest,” the legislator responsible for the colonies between the government and the Maori tribes said on Thursday.
But the colonizers of New Zealand in the 18th and 19th centuries first took the name of Taranaki then from the mountain itself. In 1770, the captain of the British explorer James Cook spotted the top of his ship and appointed Mount Egmont.
In 1840, the Maori tribes and the representatives of the British crown signed the Waitangi Treaty – the founding document of New Zealand – in which the crown promised that the Maori would retain rights on their land and their resources. But the maori and English versions of the treaty differ – and the violations of the crown of the two started immediately.
In 1865, a large bunch of Taranaki land, including the mountain, was confiscated to punish the Maori to rebel against the crown. During the next century, hunting and sports groups had a say in the direction of the mountain – but the Maori did not do so.
“Traditional Maori practices associated with the mountain have been prohibited while tourism has been promoted,” said Goldsmith. But a Maori protest movement from the 1970s and the 1980s led to an increase in recognition for the language, culture and the rights of Maori in New Zealand law.
Rédress included billions of dollars in Waitangi colonies Treaty – such as the agreement with the eight tribes of Taranaki, signed in 2023.
“Today, Taranaki, our Maunga, our Maunga Tupuna, is freed from the channels, the chains of injustice, ignorance, hatred,” said Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, co-leader of the political party Te Pāti māori and descendant and descending and descending and descending and descending and descending and descending and descending and descending and descending and descending and descending and descending and descending and descending and descending and descending and descending and descending and descending and descending and descending and descending and descending and descending and descending and descending And descendant and descendant and descendant of the political party Te Pāti Māori and descendant and descending of the Taranaki tribes, using a sentence which means the ancestral mountain.
“We grew up knowing that there was nothing that someone could do to make us less connected,” she added.
The legal rights of the mountain aim to maintain its health and well-being. They will be employed to stop forced sales, restore its traditional uses and allow the work of conservation to protect the native fauna that prosperous. Public access will remain.
Do other parts of New Zealand have the personality?
New Zealand was the first country in the world to recognize natural characteristics as people when a law is adopted in 2014 has granted personality to Te Urewera, a large native forest on North Island. The ownership of the government has ceased and the Trug Tribu has become its tutor.
“Te Urewera is old and durable, a fortress of nature, living in history; His landscape is abundant with the mystery, adventure and distant beauty, ”begins the law, before describing its spiritual meaning for the Maori. In 2017, New Zealand recognized the Whanganui river as human, as part of a colony with its local IWI.
The bill recognizing the personality of the mountain was unanimously confirmed by the 123 legislators of the Parliament. The vote was welcomed by a Waiata that sounds – a Maori song – from the public gallery, filled with dozens who had traveled in the capital, Wellington, of Taranaki.
The unit provided a brief respite in a tense period for racial relations in New Zealand. In November, tens of thousands of people walked in Parliament to protest against a law that would reshape the Waitangi Treaty by fixing rigid legal definitions for each clause. Detractors say that the law – which should not adopt – would undress the Maori of legal rights and would considerably reverse the progress of the last five decades.
