After a long struggle, the country's indigenous people have finally been heard, and the mountain Taranaki will be granted certain rights.
The over 2,500-meter-high and dormant volcano with snow-capped peaks will become a legal person and formally receive rights and obligations like other New Zealand citizens. The decision was made in the New Zealand parliament, reports AP.
"A revered ancestor"
The new law clarifies that the mountain is considered sacred. It also opens up for legal proceedings where the indigenous people can bring the New Zealand state to court for colonial injustices, with the land itself as a plaintiff.
The mountain has long been a revered ancestor, a source of physical, cultural, and spiritual nourishment and a place for final rest, said parliamentarian Paul Goldsmith, who led negotiations between Maoris and the government, to his fellow colleagues.
The legal person created in the bureaucracy will be the mountain's "face and voice" outward and will be represented in practice by four representatives from local Maori groups and four appointed by the government.
Love settlement
The volcano with snow-capped peaks is one of several large volcanoes on New Zealand's North Island, which in indigenous people's legends have been given human-like qualities.
In mythological stories, the volcanoes were warriors who fought for the favor of the beautiful mountain Pihanga. But it was another mountain, Tongariro, that won and therefore the others withdrew to other parts of the island – Taranaki to its west coast – to stand there in eternal sorrow.
When British explorer James Cook saw the mountain for the first time, he gave it the name Mount Egmont. That was its official name until 2020, when the authorities gave it its Maori name, Taranaki Maunga.
The mountain will be accompanied by the primeval forest Te Urewera and the Whanganui River, which are also legal persons. New Zealand became the first country in the world to grant parts of nature such status with a decision in 2014, when Te Urewera was placed under a Maori group's guardianship.
