Mount Taranaki is officially a person.
The volcano — known by its Māori name Taranaki Maunga — is no longer under the ownership of the New Zealand government as of Jan. 30, NBC News reported. It was granted all the legal rights and responsibilities as a human being, and it will leave behind its British colonial name Mount Egmont.
The mountain is considered by the Māori to be among their ancestors, and the tribe will work with government officials to assume its care.
The move to change its ownership and personhood status under the Jan. 30 Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Bill comes in response to a history of land confiscations and transgressions against the Māori.
“Today, Taranaki, our maunga [mountain], our maunga tupuna [ancestral mountain], is released from the shackles — the shackles of injustice, of ignorance, of hate,” said Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, co-leader of political party Te Pāti Māori.
Hundreds of Māori gathered outside New Zealand’s parliament to celebrate the Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Bill being signed into law.
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Natural entities have been gaining rights in recent years, especially in New Zealand when it became the first country to enact such a law in 2014. The country recognized Te Urewea sacred forest as a legal person, granting its guardianship to the Tūhoe tribe, and in 2017, the Whanganui river followed suit as the local iwi (tribe) assumed responsibility for it.
Other countries gave natural elements rights in efforts to fight climate change. Orange County, Florida, in the United States voted in the 2020 election to adopt a Rights of Nature law, becoming the largest municipality in the U.S. to do so. The law largely applies to bodies of water.
“Our waters also have new legal rights: to exist, flow, be protected against pollution, and to maintain healthy ecosystems. This vote heralds a new day in Florida in which our waterways are accorded the highest protections available under law,” said Chuck O’Neal, the chairman of the Florida Rights of Nature Network.
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