Equality Under the Law

New Zealand’s parliament has granted a mountain the same legal rights as a person, an effort aimed at compensating Indigenous Māori people from the Taranaki region for injustices perpetrated during the colonial period almost two centuries ago, the BBC reported.

The legislature last week unanimously passed the Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Bill, which will grant Mount Taranaki a legal name – its original Māori name Taranaki Maunga – and all the rights, powers, duties, responsibilities, and liabilities of a person.

The bill also granted protection for the mountain’s surrounding peaks and land.

Four members from Māori iwi – or tribes – and four others appointed by the New Zealand conservation minister will work together to manage the mountain, acting as its “face and voice.”

Free access to the mountain will remain unchanged. But the law will also allow the Māori to protect the health and well-being of their mountain.

The Treaty of Waitangi – signed in 1840 – established New Zealand as a country and the British Crown guaranteed specific rights to Indigenous people concerning their lands and resources.

However, the Māori and English versions of the Treaty differed and the British Crown breached both, the Associated Press reported.

A part of Taranaki land – including the mountain – was confiscated from the Māori in 1865 as a punishment for rebelling against the Crown. This resulted in the Indigenous group losing all control over the mountain until a Māori protest movement in the 1970s and 1980s began pushing for recognition of Māori language, culture, and rights.

This new law aims to make amends for past mistakes and recognizes the Māori belief that natural elements are ancestors and living beings.

Co-leader of the political party Te Pāti Māori (the Māori Party) Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said Taranaki Maunga is finally free from “the shackles of injustice, of ignorance, of hate.”

Taranaki Maunga is not the first natural element to be recognized as a legal person as the parliament has granted personhood before to a native forest and a river.

The new legislation comes at a delicate time for race relations in New Zealand where Māori legal rights and cultural identity are at risk of being repudiated by a new law.

In November, tens of thousands marched to Parliament against a proposed law redefining the 1840 treaty, warning that it would erode Māori rights and undo decades of progress.

The bill is unlikely to pass, however.