A forest, a river, and a mountain in New Zealand have something unusual in common—they're all legally people. Taranaki Maunga, the second-highest mountain in New Zealand, was granted legal personhood in a unanimous vote in the country's parliament Thursday, RNZ reports. Mount Egmont, the name Captain Cook gave it in 1770, has been officially retired and it will now only be known by its Maori name. The surrounding Egmont Park has been renamed Te Papa-Kura-o-Taranaki, meaning "the highly regarded and treasured lands of Taranaki." Personhood was granted to the Te Urewara rainforest in 2014. The Whanganui River received the designation in 2017.
The personhood designation gives the mountain and the surrounding area the rights and responsibilities of a person, the AP reports. The park now "effectively owns itself," per RNZ. "When we think about the concept of personhood, what we are doing is putting in place a very Maori Indigenous concept into western law," Jamie Tuuta, the lead negotiator for Taranaki Mounga, tells the Guardian. "Our worldview is our maunga are ancestors, they're not resources but they are living beings and so the notion of legal personhood fits well with our worldview," he tells RNZ.
Under the law passed Thursday, a new legal entity will be the "face and voice" of Taranaki, with four members appointed by local iwi, or tribes, and four by the government, the AP reports. The public will continue to have access to the popular winter sports destination. Paul Goldsmith, the minister in charge of modern negotiations related to the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi between Maori chiefs and British colonizers, formally acknowledged the "immeasurable harm" done in the 1860s, when the mountain and 1.2 million acres around it were seized to punish local iwi for rebelling against the British crown, reports the New Zealand Herald. (More New Zealand stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
